Open Levinson

Paul Levinson's Open Salon Blog

Paul Levinson

Paul Levinson
Location
New York City, New York, USA
Birthday
March 25
Title
Professor
Company
Fordham University
Bio
Paul Levinson's The Silk Code won the 2000 Locus Award for Best First Novel. He has since published Borrowed Tides (2001), The Consciousness Plague (2002), The Pixel Eye (2003), and The Plot To Save Socrates (2006). His science fiction and mystery short stories have been nominated for Nebula, Hugo, Edgar, and Sturgeon Awards. His eight nonfiction books, including The Soft Edge (1997), Digital McLuhan (1999), Realspace (2003), and Cellphone (2004), have been the subject of major articles in the New York Times, Wired, the Christian Science Monitor, and have been translated into ten languages. New New Media, exploring how Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and blogging have changed our lives, was published in September 2009. Paul Levinson appears on "The O'Reilly Factor" (Fox News), "The CBS Evening News," the “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” (PBS), “Nightline” (ABC), and numerous national and international TV and radio programs. He reviews the best of television in his InfiniteRegress.tv blog. Paul Levinson is Professor of Communication & Media Studies at Fordham University in New York City

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SEPTEMBER 17, 2012 11:10PM

Bones 8.1: Walk Like an Egyptian

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One thing I missed in the past season of Bones was a cracking good mystery, the kind in which Bones excelled in the first few seasons.  We get that and more in the superb return of Bones tonight for its 8th season.

Among the highlights -
  • Booth and Bones reuniting as Bones, now blond and still on the run, bursts into Booth's motel room.  We get a classic segue from Booth wrestling with his at first (for a moment) unknown intruder to the two, well, wrestling in a much better way on the floor.
  • Hodgins nearly choking Pilant to death, which is what most people in the audience wanted.
  • Great performances and workouts from each and every one in the cast - that is, in addition to the above, Cam, Angela, Sweets, and Caroline, each working in their own ways to clear Bones.  And kudos to Edison, for a fine job as Bones' temp (in retrospect) replacement.  I'm glad that Cam gave him a permanent place in the Jeffersonian at the end, complementing Bones and Bones.
And the ending itself was standout.  Bones, smuggled back into the Jefferson to do hands-on work (another fine scene), gets the goods on Pilant.  But, as Bones is cleared and Pilant's taken away to prison, Max observes that he'd rather see Pilant dead.  Will Max get the chance?  Maybe, in some future episode.

But it won't be in prison.  Because, in one last twist for the night, Pilant with his programming genius has figured out a way to make the Egyptian government and the FBI think that Pilant is really an Egyptian - meaning, the Egyptians are able to get him released and sent back to Egypt.

Now, aside from Pilant's successful, brilliant programming scam, I'm not quite clear, legally, how this worked.   Caroline sagely wisecracks that she didn't even know there was an Egyptian government these days.  But even if Pilant was the Egyptian his forged record now shows him to be, surely the FBI would not have released him to Egyptian custody if he had murdered someone here.  Presumably Bones' evidence was so tied to Pilant, that, when the man in custody was thought to be someone else - an Egyptian (due to Pilant's manipulation of the data) - that newly created man no longer had a connection to the murder.  (Or, might the "Egyptian" have diplomatic immunity?  But no one said he was a diplomat - and, even if he was, that kind of immunity might not apply to heinous crimes.)

In any case, the effects of the twist do something far more interesting than locking Pilant up in the prison - he's now loose and a threat, who could come back to do deadly damage at any time.  We haven't seen the last of him, and Bones is off to a roaring 8th season start.

See also Bones 7.1: Almost Home Sweet Home ... Bones 7.2: The New Kid and the Fluke ... Bones 7.3: Lance Bond and Prince Charmington ... Bones 7.4: The Tush on the Xerox ... Bones 7.5: Sexy Vehicle ... Bones 7.6: The Reassembler ... Bones 7.7: Baby! ... Bones 7.8: Parents ... Bones 7.9: Tabitha's Salon ... Bones 7.10: Mobile ... Bones 7.11: Truffles and Max ... Bones 7.12: The Corpse is Hanson ... Bones Season 7 Finale: Suspect Bones

And see also Bones 6.1: The Linchpin ... Bones 6.2: Hannah and her Prospects ... Bones 6.3 at the Jersey Shore, Yo, and Plymouth Rock ... Bones 6.4 Sans Hannah ... Bones 6.5: Shot and Pretty ... Bones 6.6: Accidental Relations ... Bones 6.7:  Newman and "Death by Chocolate" ... Bones 6.8: Melted Bones ... Bones 6.9: Adelbert Ames, Jr. ... Bones 6.10: Reflections ... Bones 6.11: The End and the Beginning of a Mystery ... Bones 6.12 Meets Big Love ... Bones 6.13: The Marrying Kind ... Bones 6.14: Bones' Acting Ability ... Bones 6.15: "Lunch for the Palin Family" ... Bones 6.16: Stuck in an Elevator, Stuck in Times ... Bones 6.17: The 8th Pair of Feet ... Bones 6.18: The Wile E. Chupacabra ... Bones 6.19 Test Runs The Finder ... Bones 6.20: This Very Statement is a Lie ... Bones 6.21: Sensitive Bones ... Bones 6.22: Phoenix Love ... Bones Season 6 Finale: Beautiful

And see also Bones: Hilarity and Crime and Bones is Back For Season 5: What Is Love? and 5.2: Anonymous Donors and Pipes and 5.3: Bones in Amish Country and 5.4: Bones Meets Peyton Place and Desperate Housewives and Ancient Bones 5.5 and Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot and Psychological Bones 5.7 and Bones 5.8: Booth's "Pops" and Bones 5.9 Meets Avatar and Videogamers ... Bad Santa, Heart-Warming Bones 5.10 ... Bones 5.11: Of UFOs, Bloggers, and Triangles ... Bones 5.12: A Famous Skeleton and Angela's Baby ... Love with Teeth on Bones 5.13 ... Faith vs. Science vs. Psychology in Bones 5.14 ... Page 187 in Bones 5.15 ... Bones 100: Two Deep Kisses and One Wild Relationship ... Bones 5.17: The Deadly Stars ... Bones Under Water in 5.18 ... Bones 5.19: Ergo Together ...  Bones 5.20: Ergo Together ...  Bones 5.21: The Rarity of Happy Endings ... Bones Season 5 Finale: Eye and Evolution



"As a genre-bending blend of police procedural and science fiction, The Silk Code delivers on its promises." -- Gerald Jonas, The New York Times Book Review

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