Bones (TV Series) The Archaeologist in the Cocoon (2013) User Reviews

Don't watch if you expect a documentary...

[soliloque · 7/10 · 3 November 2013]

I'm not agree with others reviews of this episode. Yes there's a lot of wrong science reference, but it's a television show. It's for entertainment. If you want real science reference, watch a documentary... More than 90% of the viewers of the show don't see the difference in the pronunciation of Neanderthals or how they live... it's not national geographic... it's Bones. Stop to listen if you can't do the difference between a good fiction show and an educational program...

For the episode itself.. it's not the best, but it,s a good one. Too much of the old murder not enough of the fresh one... And no enough clue about who's the murderer... I think the writer could do 2 episodes with the 2 story lines.... like the one where they have to find how the man died in the tragedy of 11-09... they don'T add a second murder ...

Bleach Doesn't Work On Blood

[mediamusings12 · 8/10 · 24 October 2023]

Hi Bones Booth Pod!

I feel compelled to write a more favorable review of this episode, to balance out the more critical ones. While I actually sadly do agree with the reviewer who thinks that Season 8 on the whole is one "unwatchable" skip after another, I do enjoy this episode, because it feels like classic "Bones". I also think it's important to note that while I dislike most of Season 8, I personally think that the show gets back on track by the first few episodes of Season 9 and stays good throughout the rest of the series).

Like another reviewer already said, if you are expecting everything in this show to be 100% realistic and factual, maybe you aren't watching for the right reasons. I love "Bones" specifically because it's a little bit silly, and maybe even a little bit dumb at times. I also love it because of its well written characters and because of the romantic relationships we get to see. So, I really don't care if the B plot of this episode is factually accurate or not. The important part for me is that we get to see Clark again, and he has finally been given a full-time job at the Jeffersonian. It is nice to see him in a professional role that plays to his specific strengths as an anthropologist, and while it does cause him to butt heads with Brennan a little bit, I still appreciate their dynamic.

Brennan has always been touted as the "best forensic anthropologist in the world", but sometimes that gives her a superiority complex, and she has difficulty accepting when other people are pioneers in their field too. We see this at the end of S5 when she has a hard time accepting that Daisy has been offered the Miluku job, and is only okay with it once she gets to go too. We see a similar tension between her and Clark in this episode. She has difficulty accepting that she isn't the one who made a significant scientific discovery with the Neanderthal bones, and that she won't be credited on Clark's future paper in a scientific journal. When Brennan shows professional envy towards other people, she comes across as a little bit mean and arrogant. It's not the best look on her, but I also do understand where she is coming from. Before she met and eventually fell in love with Booth, her professional accomplishments and her intellect were how she valued herself, and how other people valued her. In Brennan's mind, not being the best in her field, feels like losing a core part of her identity.

Overall, a better and more interesting episode than some people give it credit for.

Fiction, Not Freaking Reference Material

[PartialMovieViewer · 10/10 · 28 September 2020]

I'm giving this ten stars because Booth and Bones do the Ramapithecus Rock better than anyone. The overall show will eventually stoop lower than the back of an an Australopithecus, but not yet. This story deals with a spiffy archaeological find which mixed two different flavors of hominids, bazillions of years ago, partying in their favorite cave-bar; someone runs out of grog; Ook whines; a fight ensues and the loser becomes a midnight snack for Ugg. Oddly enough, Hollyweird got some errors, OMG. Sadly, it happens.

Green Cheese

[Hitchcoc · 6/10 · 21 February 2023]

I just found this whole episode bland and unscientific. It is set up so Clark and Brennan can butt heads. She wants to be the one examining the ancient bones, but he has the area of expertise that gives him dibs. It all rolls along until a really dull presentation takes place with a ridiculous set of conclusions to make Neanderthals the first Americans. The murder is an author who has written several faux scientific books with tenuous conclusions. But he was so arrogant that he set himself up. I do want to respond to the guy who runs the creation museum. He has every right to do that, but someone said he deserved respect. You don't get respect by just believing something. If I say the moon is made of cream cheese and you show me that it is made of stone and I still don't buy it--do I deserve respect. There's an old joke. A man goes to a mental institution to meet a man who claims to be Napoleon. When asked who told him he was Napoleon, the man replies--"God did." A man in the corner yells, "I never did!" Saying it and believing it doesn't make it so.

SPOILERS This could have been a good episode

[yerlo · 2/10 · 16 January 2013]

First, this cheesy episode was such a rip off of the PBS NOVA about Neanderthals and modern man (Becoming Human). It's not news that they interbred and that Neanderthals were not the knuckle dragging grunting dimwits they have been portrayed, that all modern man outside of Africa is 1-4% Neanderthal. So they find bones of a "mixed race" family of 3 plus one Homo Sapiens man. From this, they weave a sappy emotionally charged story that this was the first mixed couple, that they were outcasts living on their own, that a Homo Sapiens man (read white)searched them out, tried to kill the Neanderthal (read non-white) man and all ended up dead. The child (sob sob)starved to death as she huddled with her mixed "race" dead parents. This was called the first hate crime, it's all so gut wrenching. What crap. If interbreeding were so outrageous and offenders were killed, there would not be so many Neanderthal genes all over the world. DNA showed many Neanderthals were fair and red-headed and they had the same capacity for speech as we do. These 4 imaginary bodies would never have lasted out in the open for 25,000 years in any case. Better evidence is found in caves where Neanderthals lived and buried their dead. If the writers had no agenda and made the characters consistent, the anal Dr. Brennan would have pointed out the correct pronunciation is NeanderTal because in German the TH is pronounced T. The first specimen was found in Neander's Valley, thus the name. This could have been such a good episode and educational, but they descended to race baiting and unscientific inaccuracies. Blech. The audience shouldn't know more than the "expert" characters.

Yeeeeahhh, no.

[spam2-599-534176 · 3/10 · 3 February 2013]

As the above poster and this anthropologist note (http://www.poweredbyosteons.org/2013/01/bones-season-8-episode-11- review.html), this was a terrible episode that got the biological anthropology horribly wrong.

From the mispronunciation of Neandertal to the gratuitous reconstruction of the "final moments" of the family's lives, it was simply bad science and bad TV.

It's been nice in the past when Bones tackles a more archaeological issue (as in S06E06, with the slave ship Amalia Rose -- Saroyan in particular gets a lot of good lines in that episode). I didn't think the writers could get the archaeology even more wrong than the forensics, but they did.

Unwatchable

[xbatgirl-30029 · 2/10 · 16 December 2021]

Season 8 is likely then point when Bones has officially jumping the shark and landed in a whole different time zone. Technically, you could argue the introduction of Pellant is the actual shark jump, but season 8, for the first time, is just one bad unwatchable, episode after another. When the reruns pop up I sadly delete them or they make me too worked up. This episode is definitely one to delete.

Bones has always played it loose with science but they veer way too far from reality here. They couldn't hire a single technical consultant? But even before we get to the nonsense Neanderthal plot, we are subject to ridiculousness such as Hodgins seriously believing the body found in the tree is a mothman. Or Bones practically breaking into tears when Clark is assigned to study the fossils instead of her. There's nothing worse than a writer showing up to a long running series and turning the characters into whiny clowns.

Also, it's so silly to have Clark asking for Hodgins and Angela for help (beyond contrived plot convenience). There's no one more qualified working at the entire Jeffersonian? Knowing about bugs in modern N. America, especially in relation to corpses, is not the same as specializing in bugs in ancient Asia. I can fanwank Angela helping out in her down time, but pulling Hodgins from an active case is just dumb. Compounding the zero accuracy involved in overall ancient history (including even when Neanderthals became extinct), the writers don't even seem to understand how various fields of study are incredibly specialized. There's just no respect for knowledge or science exhibited here, which is what I think ticks off so many fans of a show that usually promotes at least the idea of science.

Most of the episode, until I finally turned it off with disgust, is various characters standing around, whining and bickering. Then we're forced to listen to the grandstanding speeches of the creationist guy. (Sorry other reviewer, creationism is not science. Period. It's not some alternative fact, both sides nonsense.) That's when I had to delete another one without finishing. I've endured it once, never again.

The entire series of Bones is admittedly pretty silly fantasy. But overall it's about the characters we enjoy and their goofy mysteries. This episode changes the characters so they are unrecognizable and obnoxious, all to grandstand and hit us over the head with morality most reasonable fans of a show in its eighth year already agree with. Skip it.

Offensive portrayal of believers

[QueenPendragon · 3/10 · 15 April 2021]

I like some parts of the episode but found the portrayal of the creation museum owner offensive and inaccurate. Creation scientists don't ignore evidence, they simply interpret the scientific and geological evidence from a different background. And as for the age of artifacts, they posit that carbon dating is inaccurate due to assumptions of uniform rate of decay. They don't pretend that artifacts and fossils aren't what they clearly are. Hollywood should stop disrespecting alternate views and have more respect.

Extremely chauvinistic

[oovag · 1/10 · 10 February 2021]

There are some excruciatingly chauvinistic episodes in this series but no worse than this one. The racial madness so dearly loved by the US-Americans is portrayed as something already existing in the Stone Age. Usually this series does it better.