‘Bones’ Season 12 Recap: What Happened In Episode 2 ‘The Brain In The Bot’? Brennan Celebrated Her Birthday

After an action-packed Season 12 premiere, Fox series “Bones” aired an episode with its regular case-of-the-week format.

Season 12, episode 2 kicked off with the FBI investigating the death of tech genius Ian Goldberg. Goldberg owns a company called Social Cybernetics which makes robots that help kids suffering from autism. His body was found in the woods.

The crowning glory of Goldberg’s work is an artificial intelligence robot named AMI that can speak eight languages. The AMI is also a lot like Brennan (Emily Deschanel).

Hodgins (T.J. Thyne) quickly finds particles in Goldberg’s skull that match the material the AMI is made of. But the AMI has no recollection of meeting his maker on the day of his death. Booth (David Boreanaz) is first to proclaim that he is lying but robots really can’t lie. However, the team discovers that the AMI’s memory was wiped clean the day Goldberg died.

Who killed the head of Social Cybernetics in “The Brain In The Bot”?

Angela (Michaela Conlin) gets to work and uses the coder’s comments to uncover a signature. She discovers that Goldberg deleted the AMI’s memory but he left behind a sound file. The file reveals that he had scheduled a meeting with Patriot Industries. What is the company known for? Making sex dolls that talk like real women and not like they are actually robots. He was going to use his robots which are meant to help autistic children as sex dolls.

Sounds like a bad idea, no? The Jeffersonian learns that Goldberg had acid when he came up with this idea and he wasn’t doing it alone. He had acid with Randy in the woods. It was actually Randy’s idea to sell his robots as sex dolls to take money. Randy got angry when he didn’t get a cut in the profits and killed him with his pocketknife. A pocketknife that has traces of a preservative used in sausages. The same sausages Randy ate.

However, “Bones” Season 12, episode 2 wasn’t about the case but about Brennan’s 40^thbirthday. Earlier in the day, she learned that Angela won a MacArthur Fellowship. Brennan congratulated Angela before telling her that she never imagined she would win the fellowship, let alone before her. That hurts.

Nevertheless, Brennan knows how she comes across to her friends and colleagues. So, at her birthday party, she unveils three cakes: One for her birthday, the second for Angela’s fellowship and the third for Daisy (Carla Gallo) since she got a job at the National Forensic Lab. Turns out that Brennan recommended Daisy for the job and she nominated Angela for the fellowship. Awww.

Meanwhile, Booth gives his wife a present for her birthday: A court day for Zack’s (Eric Millegan) appeal.

Unfortunately, “Bones” Season 12, episode 2 ends with Brennan’s father Max (Ryan O’Neal) claiming that he may not be alive for long.

“Bones” Season 12 airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. EST on Fox.