BONES/SLEEPY HOLLOW Halloween Crossover Event is Thankfully Not Eventful

S11E5″The Resurrection in the Remains”

S3E5 “Dead Men Tell No Tales”
[Photos: Patrick McElhenney & Tina Rowden/FOX]

If you watch Sleepy Hollow but don’t usually watch Bones, I hope you recorded Bones because Abby and Crane appear on Bones, and Booth and Brennan appear on Sleepy Hollow. If you didn’t, a little exposition on Sleepy Hollow keeps the storyline understandable. If you did, watch Bones first.

Two college kids are setting up a party in a desecrated church. It is desecrated by time and neglect and murder, it seems, as one of them falls through the rotten floor with a keg of beer and finds a very gooey disgusting corpse under the floorboards. Of all the poor hapless people who find corpses on Bones, these two guys are some of the best screamers ever.

We next see Booth and Brennan’s home, where she is busy making Jell-O brains for Christine’s class, and Booth is bringing in tons of Halloween candy. Booth sneaks a bite and Brennan tells him that he ate real brains, a model she brought from the lab. After the spit take she tells him she lied and pranked him. They are called to the murder site.

Besides the body of a young woman, they find a mortsafe, or iron coffin. It contains the headless body of a redcoat and has a strange symbol on the coffin. Hodgins knocks a lit jack-o-lantern into the coffin where it neatly rolls into the place for the head. This is a nice homage to The Headless Horseman, because a shattered pumpkin is found after Ichabod Crane’s encounter with the horseman in the original story.

They take both bodies back to the lab and quickly decide that the headless body is authentically old. The girl they have more trouble with. Her face has been smashed and Angela’s reconstruction doesn’t work until they factor in ear piercings and a change in hair color.

After finding out her identity they visit her medical school and talk to the boyfriend, who says that he hadn’t seen her in eight days but she was happier than she had ever been. Hodgins figures out from the coat that the headless guy is a high ranking officer. Booth finds a book of witchcraft in The dead student’s locker, and the symbol on the book is the same as the one on the coffin. Bones and Hodgins are discussing this when Hodgins suggests that the the pagan symbols, headless corpse, and Halloween could mean that something otherworldly is going on.

That is Abbie and Ichabod’s cue. They walk into the office. There is  some banter about Crane’s clothing, where upon he asks, “Do I look like I come from the planet Vulcan?” Good for you, Crane, for the proper use of a cultural reference.

They want the headless body, but Bones is not about to let it go until they complete their murder investigation. Seeley Booth researches Abby Mills and Sleepy Hollow and finds that they have quite a decapitation problem in town. He and Aubrey discuss Ichabod’s weird name, a conversation in which Aubrey just digs himself in deeper and deeper. Rather than just being funny this shows that Bones, like Sleepy Hollow, is a world in which the original story was never written, nor the numerous movies or Headless Horseman appearances in other stories that followed. Someone would surely recognize the name.

Bones and Crane are cute together. It’s fun to see Brennan look at someone else like they are nuts. He tells her they think the corpse is Abraham Van Brunt, who was decapitated on the battlefield. She tells him that while it could be him, the corpse was recently decapitated with a modern saw. Angela comes in and tells them she got a facial reconstruction from the bones and DNA. This is quite a stretch, since they haven’t found the skull yet, and it’s not very consistent with not being able to find the girl without factoring in piercings and hair color change.  It is not Van Brunt, but General Howe. Ichabod thinks this is far worse than this being the corpse of the Headless Horseman. Booth and Abbie then find a modern saw, hammer and a note that says “Last night was insane” in the murdered girl’s apartment.

Ichabod studies the witchcraft book, which is a Book of Shadows, and Hodgins figures out to use candlelight (virtual) to bring out a hidden message that says that the book tells the Witness how to use the skull to bring back the dead. Hodgins guesses that this is why Sara, the murdered girl, dug up the skull. Crane hints that he needs more resources to dig deeper. He obviously has something else in mind. I don’t know what he knows about the power structure at the Jeffersonian, but while Hodgins rattles on about what they have, he waits for Bones to give the go ahead and then accepts graciously.

Cam finds that Sara had some dead neurons that suggest that she died two weeks before she died. Booth and Aubrey discuss pranking Bones back, and find that Sara spent money on champagne two weeks ago. Booth knew Corbin, who talked about Abbie to him a bit. They find the guy Sara was with the night her life changed, and find that they have been playing Flatliners in their spare time. He confirms that Sara dug up the skull and they left it in the lab. Arterial spray in the anatomy lab confirms that it is where she died. They check the medical waste and find the skull and realize it is the murder weapon. It matches the facial injuries and a splinter from it pierced an artery.

 

Meanwhile, Crane has “found” a letter from George Washington saying that he wanted Howe buried in the states, preferably in Sleepy Hollow. Bones says the handwriting and signature don’t match. Crane points out that Washington had his correspondence written by a “trusted captain”. Himself, of course. Bones is skeptical and takes it to Angela to be examined. She finds it to be authentic in every way except that the handwriting of the person it was dictated to matches that of Ichabod Crane. Angela must have thought that Crane could have forged or she wouldn’t have had a reason to test his writing against the letter.

Booth finds the doctor who supplied the drugs for Sara’s death experiences. He is interrogated but does not confess.

Brennan and Ichabod talk about the letter. She does not accuse him of forgery but presents it as a contradiction. He offers her an idea, that he is descended from the Ichabod Crane that wrote it and perhaps handwriting is inherited. She accepts this because all other possibilities are eliminated. Crane also tells her that Howe had a false tooth made of porcelain. They find it in the medical waste and it has Sara’s boyfriend’s DNA on it. It turns out that Sara took him on a near death experience as well and he saw nothing and lost his faith and got mad and whacked her with the skull.

Our four protagonists have a nice cozy drink together. Booth and Brennan leave. She has to sign off on Howe’s remains so they can be shipped to Sleepy Hollow. Crane declares that he thinks Benjamin Franklin once gave him a drink like the one he is drinking, and Abbie questions whether he is really saying that Benjamin Franklin invented Sex on the Beach, and he says Franklin called it “Fondle in the Forest”. She accuses him of making stuff up, and he points out that she will never know.

Brennan finds Wendell wheeling out Howe’s remains. The remains jump up and scare her. It is, of course, Booth in a mask that does somewhat resemble Howe. She says she will fire Wendell, or at least prank him and make him think that he is fired, for a year. Then she says she is pranking Booth by saying she would do that. So she gets the last trick in.

Except, of course, that it is she who was pranked. Ichabod Crane pulled one over on her and he managed to do it because she would never imagine the truth as a possibility, that he is a time traveler due to having “lived” through the last two hundred years. She had a real live resurrected Revolutionary War captain in front of her and could not see it.

The episode was cute and fun. However, it is a blatant attempt to get us to watch Sleepy Hollow, akin to those blurbs on books that say if you like this, you will also love that. If you like Booth and Brennan, you will like Crane and Mills. Angela thinks they are like Booth and Brennan. Hodgins thinks they are like himself and Angela. Bones just flat out states that they should sleep together, it worked for her. That embarrasses Crane to no end.
So Howe is off to Sleepy Hollow. Let’s see what happens next…

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The driver taking Howe’s skeleton to Sleepy Hollow first has his radio go out, then sees a cloaked figure on the road. He runs through it, not having time to stop, and pulls off the road. Pandora is behind him. She tells him it’s nothing personal and chokes him with her mind, but lets him run away. She then tells Howe that eternal rest is for unimportant men and throws a disk on his skeleton. Worms appear all over him but he gains flesh instead of losing it. They needed to do it longer because he ends up looking like a dessicated corpse, not unlike the mask that Booth used in the previous episode. The resurrected Howe is all for getting vengeance against Crane.

Abbie, Ichabod, Jenny and Joe are bowling for Halloween. Jenny is a Mountie, Joe is a surgeon, I’m not sure who Abbie is, maybe Beyonce, and no one knows that Ichabod is actually in costume. He’s John Adams, he says. It’s the waistcoat. They run into Miss Corinth, the nice lady who is helping Crane with his citizenship. She is wearing a sexy Betsy Ross costume. Little does she know that it’s the best costume to get his interest. She also “gets” his costume. He gets a phone call that Howe’s body has been stolen.

An angel, a devil and a vampire are throwing eggs in a graveyard. They wander into a mausoleum only to encounter Howe, who looks very fearsome. My first thought is that it is a great costume, a zombie red coat. The devil and the angel get away, but the vampire is frozen with fear and the redcoats bursting out of the tomb walls get him.

Abbie and Crane check out the van and follow the footprints to the graveyard. Ichabod knows that it’s a mausoleum that was built to bury redcoats in. They find the vampire’s body and they encounter Howe. They shoot through Howe’s hand, which instantly heals. The undead soldiers chase Crane and Abbie but sink into the ground when the sun rises.

Abbie has a talk with her boss. He offers her a job as task force coordinator chasing down smugglers of antiquities from war torn areas as soon as they get their warrants.

Crane is very rattled by Howe’s reappearance. He can’t find any information on it. He tells Abbie that if he had gone through with his mission, assassinating Howe in cold blood, countless lives and time could have been saved. Abbie picks up on the clue in that memory, that Howe had the item in his possession, the stone disk that Pandora placed on his body. They deduce from that what the zombie soldiers are and that they need to find Howe’s original tomb. (I think they could have just played World of Warcraft.) They decide to use Howe’s blown off finger bones and take them to the Jeffersonian to have Bones find out where he was interred. Booth and Bones are worried about being done in time to take Christine and her brother out for Halloween as Jane Goodall and a chimp, but they agree to do it.

Jenny and Joe are on their own investigation. They have found disturbing evidence that an old family friend, Atticus Nevins, is the man after the shard of Anubis. They are bothered by the idea that Corbin was friends with a kingpin of black market antiquities and decide to go check it out.
Bones and Ichabod have a discussion about science and belief while examining the finger bones. He says that art and love show there is more than science. She counters that they are science. Between them they discover that the bones contain sandstone that is particular to the capitol building. Bones insists on going with him. Crane hems and haws but she gives him the determined chin and he gives in. I think that he is afraid of her.

Booth and Abbie are talking about how this is really important but she can’t tell him when Bones and Crane walk in and say that they are going to the capitol building to find this historically important tomb. Abbie questions that they are all going. Crane says Bones doesn’t like to negotiate. Booth says Bones doesn’t like to negotiate. Bones says that she is fine with whatever outcome, because either they will find something or prove Crane wrong. Booth says she’s comfortable, we are going. Crane shoots Abbie a fearful glance. Poor guy.

Meanwhile Joe and Jenny find the old bait shop he remembers from when he was a kid. They also find Nevins’ flunkie. She tells them Nevins said they would find her. Joe promises the shard in exchange for information.

Our fearless foursome finds a secret door in the basement that opens using Crane’s ring. Booth steps on a pressure plate that causes a wall to come down, leaving him and Abbie caught on one side and Crane and Booth caught on the other. It gets worse: blue fire comes out of the room where Bones and Crane are. Cranes says it is Greek fire, the fire that can not be extinguished. Bones says it is napalm. Crane flashes back to the great fire of New York, where he has pieced together that it was a fire started by Greek fire that was used against Howe’s zombie soldiers. Booth and Brennan go back to the Jeffersonian with plans to start an archaeological dig.

We see Pandora and Howe out for a stroll amidst the trick or treaters. Pandora steals a little girl’s bag and tells General Howe that when the last sunbeam sets, he can go forth and slaughter.

Joe, Jenny, Abbie and Ichabod have mixed ten gallons of Greek fire and found the ancient flamethrowers to use it with. The plan is to bring the undead redcoats into tunnels beneath the city where they won’t burn down the city, using Ichabod as bait. I’m not sure this would work, considering that there are legendary underground fires that have burned for years.

The redcoats march down the street of Sleepy Hollow. The bystanders are awed by the costumes and wait to see what happens next. They are only a little bit nervous when the guns are pointed at them. Suddenly, Abbie drives between them and the bullets bounce harmlessly off the car. They are only carrying muskets, after all.  Crane challenges Howe and leads him into the tunnel. Abbie continues shooting soldiers but they all drop into the ground. Abbie and Joe are waiting below and torch them at Crane’s command. He is looking quite fierce and wild at this point. Crane challenges Howe again but he self immolates to keep Crane from having the satisfaction of killing him. The stone disk burns with him.

Crane is relieved, the Jeffersonian is planning a preservation of the tomb, and Abbie pushes Crane to ask Zoe Corinth for a date, which he does. Abbie is ready to join the task force but her boss, Daniel Reynolds, shows her that she is already involved. The man they want to take down, Nevins, is the same man that Joe is looking for and they have pictures of Jenny and Joe meeting with his head operative. It figures that her sister would be the cause of the first conflict between her life and her job as an FBI agent.

Even though they have beaten General Howe and his soldiers, Pandora has received her necessary amount of fear and only has one bud left that needs to bloom.

The writers very deftly wove the disparate elements of the Bones world with the world of Sleepy Hollow. They did this by mostly leaving them in their own worlds. The Bones episode is a Bones episode in every way. The spooky stuff starts when we get to Sleepy Hollow. They use the strengths of each show and don’t let the weaknesses trip them up. They also establish Sleepy Hollow as a supernatural procedural, relying heavily on historical knowledge instead of forensic knowledge. This is not a bad thing.

However, the worlds still don’t fit. We, the audience, know that Bones is wrong when she tries to dissect love or dismiss art as the search for the perfect mate. But the very presence of Ichabod makes her, and all of the Jeffersonian, wrong all of the time. The girl in the Bones episode could be a zombie instead of losing brain cells to an attempt to create a near death experience. It opens up a world of possibilities that Ichabod Crane and Abbie believe in that are not real on Bones. Ichabod dismisses this as skepticism on Brennan’s part. “She’d dismiss Moloch as a tall man with a skin condition.” And that is not fair to the world that Bones and Booth and the squints at the Jeffersonian reside in, just as it would unfair to have Bones established as the real world, and Abbie Mills and Ichabod Crane certified as crazy. This was fun, and I hope Sleepy Hollow picks up some audience from Bones, but I also don’t really want them to do it again.

Bones airs on Fox on Thursdays at 8/7 central.
Sleepy Hollow airs on Fox on Thursdays, 9/8 central.