The Man in the Fallout Shelter

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“The Man in the Fallout Shelter”
Bones episode
Episode no. Season 1
Episode 9
Written by Hart Hanson
Directed by Greg Yaitanes
Guest stars Heavy D as Sid Shapiro,
Billy Gibbons as Angela's father,
Margaret Avery as Ivy Gillespie and
Ty Panitz as Parker
Production no. 1AKY08
Original airdate December 13, 2005
Episode chronology
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"The Girl in the Fridge" "The Woman at the Airport"
List of Bones episodes

"The Man in the Fallout Shelter" is the ninth episode of the first season of the television series, Bones. Originally aired on December 13, 2005 on FOX network, the episode is written by Hart Hanson and directed by Greg Yaitanes. The plot features FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth, Dr. Temperance Brennan and the rest of her team being forced to remain at the Jeffersonian Institute over the Christmas holiday.

Contents

[edit] Summary

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Please improve this article if you can (March 2008).

This is a holiday episode based on events happening on Christmas Eve. On December 23rd, Booth brings in the skeletal remains of a man found dead in a bomb shelter discovered recently. Everyone is in Christmas-Eve mode with a company party going on upstairs. Bones and the rest of the team start investigating the dead man's story when Zack triggers the bio-hazard alarm while cutting through the skeleton.

The lab is shut down for containment and every one is under quarantine based on the discovery of a fungus causing Valley fever. The prospect of spending the two mandatory quarantine days away from friends and family makes everyone morose. Booth develops a side-effect of euphoria due to drugs given to immunize them from the disease.

The case, meanwhile, progresses into the discovery of a love affair between the dead man, Lionel Little, who worked as lease inspector for a company called Silver Petroleum and had a coin collection and his African American cleaning lady (Ivy Gillespie) in the late 1950s. Due to the oppressive racial climate in US, they plan to emigrate to France. Lionel tries to sell his invaluable coin collection to a shifty con artist who murders Lionel to procure the collection (worth appoximately $8000 at the time).

An emotional segment in the show occurs when everyone gets to meet their family and friends with Christmas carols crooning in the background. We find out that Booth has a 4 year old son named Parker (because his mother didn’t marry him his parental rights are vague), and that Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top is Angela's father.

With everyone else in the lab celebrating Christmas with secret Santa gifts, Bones decides to track down Ivy and reveal the lethal mystery behind Lionel's disappearance to her. Bones does this on Angela's advice. Angela says that Bones must find Ivy so she can have the closure that Temperance herself never had. (Parents disappeared when she was 15, nothing has ever been found). Bones, listening to her friend, goes to her office and starts making phone calls trying to locate Ivy Gillespie. Finally, on Christmas morning, she finds Ivy’s granddaughter who provides information to contact her.

Bones asks Booth to look at the penny they found in Lionel’s pocket. She scanned it to find out that it was actually a bronze penny minteed in 1943, unlike almost all pennies from that time that were made of steel to conserve copper for World War II. Today, there are just 12 of them and it is 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 guys in 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 leaves.

A young and an elderly woman came in the lab. They are Lisa Pearce (granddaughter) and Ivy Gillespie. Bones takes them to her office and she starts explaining all that happened. Ivy starts crying when she realizes that she wasn't abandoned by Lionel; that he was actually trying to keep his promise to go to Paris. But that is not all the happiness that Temperance gave them. Lisa wants to be a doctor but can’t afford it, but Brennan gives her and her grandmother Lionel's 1943 bronze penny, worth over $100,000.

After visiting Booth at Wong Foo's, Bones returns to the lab alone and retrieves several wrapped gifts and cards from an old suitcase; it was previously explained that when her parents went missing around Christmas, Brennan had childishly refused to open their presents to her until they returned- which they never did. Sitting alone on the couch with Angela's holographic Christmas tree and leftover decorations still up, Temperance finally opens her parents' gifts to her and smiles through her tears.

[edit] Music

The episode featured the following music[1]: -

[edit] Conception

 This article or section uses citations that are either broken or outdated.
This article or section uses citations that link to broken or outdated sources, and are deemed unreliable. Please improve the article or discuss this issue on the talk page. Help on using footnotes is available. This article has been tagged since March 2008.

The episode was written especially for the Christmas holiday in time to be aired in December in the United States. It takes place at Christmas time, which the writers describe as "a holiday vacuum sealed with family and friends within its own parcel of time. It has its own parameters, its own rules -- memories that are reconstructed and improved in our minds by years of conditioning."[2] This setting allowed the writers to expand on the details of the characters' lives and to continue with Brennan's background story, concerning the disappearance of her parents and her experiences in foster care system.[3]

[edit] Response

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As a lead-in program for House, Bones attracted 7.12 million viewers on December 13, 2005 with episode "The Man in the Fallout Shelter". In the Tuesday 8:00 pm ET timeslot, the episode ranked fourth overall in total viewership and among 18 to 49 years old viewers.[4]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Music season 1
  2. ^ "Writer's Block: The Man in the Fallout Sheltor", official site of Bones. Retrieved on July 15, 2007.
  3. ^ Woo, Kelly, "Tattling This Week: David Boreanaz Dishes About 'Bones'", AOL Television, November 22, 2005. Retrieved on July 15, 2007.
  4. ^ Berman, Marc, "The Programming Insider", Mediaweek.com, December 15, 2005. Retrieved on July 17, 2007.

[edit] External links

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