Originally aired: Tuesday December 13, 2005 on FOX Writer:
Hart Hanson Director:
Greg Yaitanes Show Stars:
David Boreanaz (Special Agent Seeley Booth),
T.J. Thyne (Dr. Jack Hodgins),
Michaela Conlin (Angela Montenegro),
Jonathan Adams (Dr. Daniel Goodman (Season 1)),
Eric Millegan (Zack Addy),
Emily Deschanel (Dr. Temperance Brennan)
Guest Stars:
Heavy D (Sid Shapiro) ,
Billy Gibbons (Angela`s Dad) ,
Bob Bouchard (Mr. Addy) ,
Jim Ortlieb (Hal) ,
Margaret Avery (Ivy Gillespie) ,
Christina Copeland (Lisa Pearce) ,
Ty Panitz (Parker)
Production Code: 1AKY08
It’s December 23, Christmas time and the Jeffersonian is not away from that from the decorations to the fact that there is a Christmas party and Angela, dressed like an elf is running after Temperance trying to get her to go with she to the party. She is using arguments about she wouldn’t let her do inappropriate things and there will be secret Santa. Brennan doesn’t agree with the last since she doesn’t like secret Santa and continues working with a skull.
When she finally agrees on going just for 20 minutes a voice is heard, it is Booth calling her name. He enters swiping his card and with a suitcase in his other hand. As Angela is explaining her suit Brennan picks up a file where a photograph of someone remains and Booth explains that where found on a fallout shelter from the fifties on Federal property while digging to make a solarium. The picture shows the skeleton with a revolver in his right hand which is across the chest. Brennan tells Booth is not a suicide despite the bullet in the head and the gun in the hand because there is no way he could shout himself and end up with his hand across his chest. So when she says that if he brings the skeleton in she will prove is not a suicide he tells “Merry Christmas Bones!” and turns while whistling calling two FBI guys who came in carrying the remains.
Off course Angle starts to complain about going to the party. Bones tells her to go ahead and she will meet her in a few minutes. She also asks Booth to escort Angela to the Christmas party and look after her. Booth says he can’t, he has to make some really important Christmas shopping to what Angela responds that is not last minute until tomorrow (December 24) and she drags him to the party.
Meanwhile Zack and Jack are in other side of the lab testing a robot that Zack is working on who is supposed to follow voice commands, just that when he tells stop it turns and when he calls turns it stops. Then Jack takes a bottle containing a clear liquid, its pure alcohol and he is planning to put it on the eggnog at the Christmas party.
After a while Zack is inspecting the remains and Jack arrives drinking eggnog and mocking about Zack’s robot.
Bones picks up something from one of the pockets of the victim’s coat, Booth comes in and asks her what she found, it was two open one way tickets to Paris of Pan Transit airlines and according to Booth the company went out of business in the sixties. Bones asks about the party and he just says: “that wasn’t a party that was a Star Wars convention”. She also shows to him the bullet that was still on the skull, it’s a 22 caliber which matches the gun.
While they are talking Brennan stops all of the sudden looking up as she saw Jack carrying a container in his hand and Zack is following him. She asks if it is pure alcohol to what Zack answers without hesitation “yes Dr. Brennan”. She tells them about some previous 4th of July fiasco and how Dr. Goodman wouldn’t let them do it again and finally asks Zack to clean the bones and Jack to look for insect evidence. Suddenly Angela appears wanting to make them all forget about the case and go party.
Moments later Zack and Hodgins are on the lab, he first is with a saw and a mask asking the later to put him mask on because he is going to take core samples from the bone. Hodgins puts it on and Zack starts but in one point Hodgins removes his mask to drink some eggnog. At that moment an alarm starts and they run to the decontamination shower.
In another part of the lab the rest are looking estranged and just when Booth asks what is going on Dr. Goodman answers: “Biological contamination”. The door starts to close as Booth runs to it but it shut before he could get there as Angela tells him to don’t worry because the doors seals automatically in that cases. When Booth starts asking some more questions Zack and Hodgins arrive with towels around their waists and still wet and Zack starts explaining how he was cutting the fallout shelter bones when the alarm went off and the rest of the teams learns how Hodgins wasn’t following the autopsy protocol.
They are all gathered in front of a computer screen talking to the Head of the Jeffersonian (who is actually dressed as Santa) who tells them that the pathogen was Coccidiomycosis, the fungus responsible of Valley Fever, a disease that can manifests as pneumonia, meningitis, spontaneous abortion or death. Off course the source was the bones. Since Hodgins wasn’t wearing the mask he can be infected and contagious to all of them because they are breathing the same air so they will be put on quarantine.
Zack managed to put the bones in an isolation table with ultraviolet light to keep working on the bones without spore’s problems. He also found a woman wedding band.
Again out on the main room they are lined up while they are getting shots of a cocktail of medications just in precaution for a possible infection. They learn that it will be a couple of days before knowing if they are infected meaning that they will spend Christmas together so they start to blaming each other for they actual situation. The Head of the Jeffersonian tells them to ask their love ones to call him so they can create a save environment to visit them on Christmas Eve. Finally they have to beware of the side effects of the drugs, one of them mild hallucinations and euphoria. Also, the first symptoms are just like a common cold, they are told. For then, Booth has started to hallucinate.
Later, Hodgins and Zack are on sleeping bags on top of the examination tables and they start talking about how they were supposed to spend their Christmas. Hodgins was going to Quebec and Zack was supposed to be with his family in Michigan.
In another room Booth is laying on the floor on his sleeping bag while Dr. Goodman in on a couch, also in his sleeping bag. Booth is still hallucinating and Dr. Goodman is trying to give him the scientific explanation of why he is watching lights on the ceiling.
Dr. Goodman starts telling Booth how he is the spirit of Christmas in his house; he has a wife and two twin daughters (five year old) and shows a picture to Booth. Just like that Booth tells him that he has a four years old son named Parker and because his mother didn’t marry him his parental rights are vague. This year he couldn’t get him the excellent present that he does every Christmas.
In another office, both Angela and Bones are on sleeping bags on the floor and Angela is trying to get Brennan to help her make Christmas: decorations and secret Santa. Then Bones gets up as she tells Angela that what she will do for Christmas is solve a murder.
Bones is at the platforms looking under a microscope when Booth arrives jumping and wearing Angela’s elf hat telling her that is after midnight, Christmas Eve day. He grabs a bench and sits down just right next to her asking what she is looking at. She is studying traces of metals in bones as he just puts his elbows on the tables and his face between his hands looking sad just to say: “You don’t seem too upset about missing Christmas” to what her reply was that the indications are that if Christ existed, he was born in late spring not in winter. When Booth asks if she is the “Christmas killer” she just says “it’s the truth”. Booth leans over her and tells her “the truth is you hate Christmas so you just spout out all these facts and you ruin it for everyone else”. “Christmas is the perfect time to reexamine your standing with you know…” and points up. “You can’t measure the man upstairs in the beaker so he can’t possibly exist” he says just to finally add before leaving, they heads standing very close: “you don’t know if you are sick but you are more than willing to take drugs just in case; seem to me you could give the man upstairs the same benefit of the doubt that you do on an invisible fungus”. By that he leaves and she gets back to what she was doing.
It’s morning, December 24, and Zack and Hodgins and coming down the stairs and Booth is doing pull ups on a bar. He stops and joins them as they are walking over Dr. Goodman who is getting coffee of a cart full with breakfast and Angela joins them too telling them her plan about decorations and secret Santa with handmade gifts. They all welcomed the idea and Booth asks if Bones is participating and they all just say “uh uh”. Booth starts asking about why Brennan is like that with Christmas and Angela fills him: “Brennan’s parents disappear just before Christmas, when she was fifteen”, “and she never knew what happened” Goodman adds.
Angela changed the subject; they need a way to choose who will be their secret Santa. As the squints starts thinking in some complicated ideas, Booth grabs a pencil and paper and start writing. He tears the paper and puts it on a canister then holds it to them and just ask them to pick a name.
At the upper level of the lab Booth is following Bones while he is filling in her the information about the man who built and sealed the shelter, Gil Atkins, a criminal (fencing and dealing with jewels and stolen arts) who died in 1983. She hands to him a paper with the list of the contents of his pockets which he starts reading and suddenly just tells that he has Goodman for the secret Santa and he doesn’t know what to give him. She starts rambling about how gifts are a way for “asserting dominance in a group” and how she can’t get behind that fact. Finally she asks him to talk to Dr. Goodman about some coins they found on the pockets.
In another side of the lab, Hodgins, Angela, Zack and Dr. Goodman are trying to see what to do to decorate the place. Hodgins says that they are friends and Dr. Goodman answers that “for a father like myself, like Agent Booth the decorations don’t make up for missing Christmas morning with the children”. As he said “Agent Booth” Hodgins, Angela and Zack just stopped all of the sudden what they were doing and start asking him to replay what he has just said leaving Goodman realize that neither of them knew this fact.
Goodman enters another lab area where is Booth looking at the belongs of victim. Booth have decided to help Bones in the case, “call it Christmas spirits” he told Dr. Goodman who starts looking the contents too. He tells Booth he is an archeologist, so he is good with artifacts. Goodman takes some letters with female handwriting on them, in the bottom of each one there isn’t any signature, just a kind of leaf.
Booth’s cell phone began ringing. He answers, its Rebecca, and he just says to her that Sid agreed to bring him (his son, Parker) and that she don’t have to see him. He had to add “Don’t make me beg”.
Hodgins is walking with Brennan, talking about how the analysis confirmed that the victim had Valley Fever, and he tells her about how Booth has a kid. When Hodgins realized that she didn’t know that he just leaves telling her “I wasn’t the one who told you”.
In other part of the lab, in the balcony is Booth on his cell phone and taking notes in a pad while describing the victim to the grandson of the tailor that made Lionel’s suit hopping to find out his last name. Bones arrives and he starts telling her what is he is expecting to find out with his phone call while he waits for the tailor’s grandson to look on the records. She all of the sudden start asking about his son, “you’ve never mentioned that”, she tells him. He replies, “Well, nothing brings people together like a Christmas lung fungus” when he is interrupted by the tailor’s grandson on the phone. Lionel Little is the victims’ name. He picked up his suit in November 7 1958 but never came back for his shirt like he was supposed to do on the next day and it was his wedding shirt. Just in that moment Bones sneezed and looks directly to Booth with a strange look. “Is that Valley Fever?” he asks.
Later they are all gathered in a examination table eating Chinese food talking about the case when Zack asks when the doctors will begin treating Bones for Valley Fever, Bones tries to defend herself telling that she only sneezed because the air was dry but Dr. Goodman asks about more symptoms. Booth cuts the conversation backing her up: “look she sneezed twice that’s it” and chance the conversation to Lionel again asking Dr. Goodman if he found something on the letters.
The letters were written by a woman, who was pregnant, they starts with hypothesis about why he went to Oklahoma, Dr. Goodman asking if it was to procure an abortion. To that Angela quickly says that that is not a Christmas Eve type story and Bones can’t help herself and starts talking about how in fact it is because “the whole Christ myth” is based on an unwed mother. Booth asks her to stop referring at that as a “Christ myth” because there are people that believe is true. “Well, who besides you” Bones asks and she learns that everybody in there actually believed in it. When Temperance realize that she is the only one no believing in God she just ads “I can understand why you would be sensitive Booth, you have a child out of wedlock”. The expression in Booth’s face suddenly changes; he is deeply hurt by Temperance’s commentary. In that moment Dr. Goodman changed again the topic focusing on the victim’s girlfriend again.
From the letters Dr. Goodman learned that the woman most have been African American and because Lionel was Caucasian they relationship was illegal on that time. Booth then understands the situation: they were running away, that was why there were two tickets to Paris, where in 1958 they could actually get married. Finally they are told that the visits are going to start.
Dr. Goodman goes first but the scenes are showed almost together. Goodman sees his wife and his two little twins. Hodgins gets to see his girl of the time. Angela receives her father. For Zack there was his large family. And Booth, Sid arrived bringing Parker, his son. As all that is folding, Bones is stand somewhere behind seeing the others as the take all the love from their families. She didn’t get a visit.
Back in Angela’s office Bones is watching a hologram that Angela did, is a Christmas tree. They start talking about Angela’s plans for Christmas and at the end Angela tells Brennan: “I know your parents disappeared just before Christmas”. With that said Bones stats telling Angela what happened on that Christmas with tears on her eyes (as Booth arrives and stays on the doorway): her brother (Russ) was 19 years old and he found their parents gifts, so he decorate and put the gifts for her but when she waked up and didn’t saw her parents she refused to open the presents until their parents where back. After that, which was like telling Russ he wasn’t enough family, he went west to work leaving her on foster care. When she was finished Booth tells her they have Lionel’s missing persons file and they go out to see it.
Booth, Bones and Dr. Goodman are sitting on the balcony with their feet hanging. Booth is reading the file. The victim is Lionel Little, born on May 19, 1934 in Tulsa Oklahoma who worked as lease inspector for a company called Silver Petroleum and had a coin collection. When he disappeared also did his collection, years latter the coins showed up on several cities and the sales were traced to Gil Atkins (the man who built the shelter). So he had to be the one who killed Lionel. According to the file the last woman who saw him was the cleaning lady called Ivy Gillespie and the leaf on the signature looks like an ivy leaf. Angela interrupts them telling Temperance that she have to find her so she can have the closure that Temperance herself never had.
Bones, listening to her friend, goes to her office and starts making phone calls trying to localize Ivy Gillespie. Finally, in Christmas morning, she found Ivy’s granddaughter and gives her information to contact her.
Booth enters Bones’ office where she is staring at a penny that they found on the victim’s pocket and starts scanning it. Angela send him after her because is Christmas morning. When he starts leaving she says “I’m sorry you didn’t get Christmas morning with you little boy”. “Thanks” is Booth’s only reply and he turns away.
At the holograph table they are all together, the Christmas tree appears with decorations and all and the gifts they made are all under it. “Merry Christmas” they all start wishing each other.
In another part of the lab they are all together (with Brennan’s exception) exchanging their handmade gifts. Hodgins made some Angela a photograph of something magnified; Booth gave Dr. Goodman a bird made with some kind of paper; Zack received a sketch of his family; Goodman made Hodgins like a jewelry box with a sacred scarab in top of it and finally Booth’s gift, Zack gave him his robot in that way he can have a present to his son.
Booth goes to Brennan’s office asking her what is wrong if a gift goes in both ways. She cut him asking him to see the penny they found on Lionel’s pocket. She scanned it just to find out that it was actually a bronze penny of 1943, not like almost all pennies on that time that were of steel to conserve copper for World War II. Today, today there are just 12 of them and it worth over 100 000 dollars. Dr. Goodman enters telling them that it is time for the results.
They are all together waiting for the results as the Head of the Jeffersonian and other guy on biohazard suits are running them in a computer and a green light turns on. They remove their helmets and one of them tells “Merry Christmas”. They all start walking out the Jeffersonian but Temperance stays behind. When Booth realizes it he stops and turns to her, she just says: “Go, go have Christmas. Wish your boy a Merry Christmas from me” to which he says: “I’m at Wong Foo’s if you decide you want company. Merry Christmas Bones” and he leave.
A young woman and some elderly one came in the lab. They are Lisa Pearce and Ivy Gillespie. Bones takes them to her office and she starts explaining all that happened. Ivy star crying when she realized that he didn’t abandoned her; that he was actually trying to keep his promise and go to Paris. But that is not all the happiness that Temperance gave them. Lisa wants to be a Doctor but she can’t afford it and that day she received a 100 000 dollars penny.
Brennan arrives to Wong Foo’s where Booth is sitting at the bar and she sits down by his side. She tells him how thing went with Ivy, “who is the secret Santa now” he adds. At that moment Parker arrives calling him. Booth picks him up, kisses him and gives to him his present. Booth asks him to say Merry Christmas to Bones and so he does. She smiles and wave him good bye and he waves back. Booth walks out with his son on his arms.
Temperance goes back to the lab and pick up some present and a card that she kept on a secure box in her office and starts opening it. There are from her parents. She smiles as tears filled her eyes.
Quotes
add » Goodman: This fellow knew something of value was being stolen.
Hodgins: Came down with an accomplice. I apologize, I've been hanging around Booth way too much.
Brennan: It's a valid hypothesis.. no doubt one of many.
Zack: They argued, one killed the other for the treasure. Doesn't that mean the vault will be empty when we find it?
(Pauses.) Oh my God, they got me too.
(edit) (Brennan and Booth at the counter of Wang Foo's)Brennan: Ivy Gillespie came to the lab after you left, with her granddaughter.
(Booth smiles knowingly) Don't you wanna know what happened?
Booth: I know what happened. You told her about Careful Lionel, you showed her the letters, the tickets, she cried. But, you made her happy.
Brennan: Not to mention I gave her a penny worth over a hundred thousand dollars.
Booth: She won't care about that today. You just gave somebody the best Christmas gift they could ever get. Who's the Secret Santa now?
Brennan: Stop!
(as soon as Brennan says that Zack's robot starts doing push-ups on the counter)Booth: Woah!
(they both laugh) And that weirdo assistant of yours just made me the coolest dad in the world.
(edit) (Having thought about what Brennan told him about the function of gifts)Booth: Listen, Bones, here is the thing. What if a gift goes both ways? What's wrong with that?
(Brennan igores what he says and talks about something unrelated) Look, all I'm saying is that maybe the real gift is when you accept something with a little grace.
(edit) Brennan: Hey, I'm sorry you didn't get Christmas morning with your little boy.
Booth: Thanks.
(edit) Brennan: Wait, Booth has a kid?
Hodgins: You didn't know?
Brennan: No!
Hodgins: I wasn't the one who told you.
(edit) It is revealed that Booth has a four year old son, named Parker.
It is revealed that Zack's family is not only huge ("40 nieces and nephews") but also Lutherans ("But if you ask my mom, I'm a Lutheran")
(edit) Storyline Goof: During their breakfast, Angela brings up Brennan's past, and Booth reacts as if he didn't know anything about it. However, in a "Pilot" scene, after Booth tells them that science can't solve mysteries, he had a little conversation with Angela. She tells him that he should know about her family and he replies that he "read the file".
(edit) Goof: According to the information Booth gets at the tailors, the last time they saw Lionel was November 7th, 1958. However, when they are sitting at the scaffold, Booth mentions that Lionel's boss reported him missing in January 1960. Took him a long time to figure his accountant was missing!
(edit) Goof: When Hodgins is talking to Brennan on the walkway he accuses her of being the Grinch and goes on to say that it isn't fair for the rest of the team either because "Goodman doesn't get to see his family, Zach can't see his kids and Booth won't see his son."
(edit) Goof: While eating their "Christmas Dinner", the team talks about how Lionel's girlfriend was pregnant in 1958 Oklahoma. However, at the end of the episode when we meet Ivy, she says that she gave birth to a half white child in 1960. There's no way she was pregnant that long!
(edit)
