A/N:

I'm sorry—if you loved this episode, you probably shouldn't read this. I hated it, and thought it was not just a farce but a travesty. It was so bad that I had to have the denizens of Wong-Fu's handle the wrap-up while I let the regular characters go drown their miseries in the Sea Chimp's Champagne Pool.

The Double Death of the Dearly Departed

(As the lights come up, we pass through a door in an ill-lit Hollywood backlot into a bar set with a vaguely Asian-esque decor. Presiding, a bartender with the cure for all things that ail us. We hope.)

"The Trouble with Harry."

"No. Weekend at Bernie's."

The irregular and written-off characters were all seated inside Wong Fu's, arguing animatedly over what to call the coffin in which they would bury the Dumb Dumb Dumb Dumb (how's that for four D's?) "The Double Death of the Dearly Departed."

"I still say The Trouble with Harry. Yes, the dead corpse thing was unfortunate," Max said as he sipped at his scotch, "but the lighting and makeup and costumes in the episode were far more akin to a Hitchcock film than some bad 80s comedy about two loser guys carting their dead boss around."

"Right. Because a guy in the habit of making dead bodies, carting them around, and then crucifying them and setting them up on stakes to burn on top of hotels is in a position to be discriminating." Sully couldn't help the snarky remark. He supposed Booth's Code of the West was in some way right, anyone who really loved Tempe wouldn't hesitate to do whatever it took to protect the blue-eyed, beautiful, brilliant anthropologist, but it still bothered him that Max hung around Sid's and offered comment on episodes like he had any right to remark on his daughter's life. At least Sully'd been on several episodes in a row, and not just completely intermittently when his actor wasn't in court or in prison or being divorced. To quench his peevishness, Sully had another sip of his mai-tai. He was still fighting off scurvy from his seemingly endless world-sailing trip.

"I must agree with young Timothy, here," Gordon-Gordon chimed in, swirling the Chateau-Neuf-de-Pape in his glass and inhaling deeply before sipping. It was a nice little wine, and might go well with his cassoulet-- Sid had promised to let him try out some specials at lunchtime for Sid's irregular regulars. "This week's episode showed no respect for the dead, was far too farcical, and reduced a wake full of academics, intellectuals and professionals to blithering fools, too busy gold-digging and fornicating to note the absconding, examination, and return of the person whose passing they were supposed to be there to observe." Sipping deeply, the psychiatrist looked off into space. "Although Cleopatra Esquire was rather lovely."

"You got that right, Gordo my man," smiled Sid, pouring out a Mountain Dew for the newest arrival to the irregulars' wrap up. "What do you think, Zach-o, my man?"

Zach swirled his Dew on the rocks, watching the neon liquid in his glass before speaking. "As Dr. Wyatt and Agent Sullivan referenced, I thought the handling of the body was utterly out of keeping with the respectful tone the WTF writers used to maintain with regard to the remains. Isn't the whole point of Dr. Brennan's going out in the field that she can ensure the proper handling of her remains so that they are shown the dignity she feels they deserve? Stuffing the body into the back of a brand named motor vehicle because there isn't room in the other brand named motor vehicle is hardly appropriate, and as different, thematically, as the physical cargo space difference between a Matrix and a Sequoia."

"That's what I'm talking about!" Competent and Perky Blonde Agent Perotta said from her end of the bar, raising her Cosmo in the air. "Woman's a ball-buster, sure, but she's all about the integrity of the justice process and honoring the sanctity of life. I can't believe she wouldn't have gone off to see that judge in his chambers, rather than engage in theft of a dead body. Why the hell would she put up with such a grievous insult? I mean, she unleashed whoopass on a knight and she's not going to go after some dumbass judge with that camera phone photo? I mean, where the hell was Caroline? It's all a WTF writer issue again. Someone smoking serious hash thought it would be funny to make them have to solve a murder within a few hours. And it provides Booth an excuse to yet again dump verbally on Brennan, though he said he's only repeating the judge's words." Lovely Brunette Agent Pritchard clinked her classic gin martini (in a coupe, please, none of these cocktail glasses) against Perotta's pink-tinged libation.

"You got that right, Cher," said sassy prosecutor Caroline Julian, holding down Sid's center booth and raising her Mint Julep.

Sam Cullen, sitting across from her, raised his neat scotch and clinked glasses. "We never had so much procedural hinky stuff when I was still on the show." Desk Jockey Charlie and Evidence Tech Marcus Geier nodded, then drank from their microbrews silently.

"Hell, even I would have said 'not that I think that, Tempe,'" muttered Jared, nursing his Diet Coke with lime. He was trying to go straight, there was no telling what the end of the season might have in store for him, and he was hoping to score some Serious, Meaningful time with his brother that might earn his actor some casting cred on other shows. "But nooooo, the WTF writers have Seeley being all nasty to her with that 'sad face' shit and the 'you just feel bad because you don't know him' spiel."

The back booth holding Brennan's other ex-boyfriends was somewhat murky, much like their pasts, but a distinct muttering escaped, led most vocally by Gay Jason and Deep Sea Welder Mark. "We thought we had real competition, but maybe we should go back and try to make up," Jason said, and Mark nodded. "Anything's game at this point, guys. At least we're not afraid to treat Tempe like a woman." There was a chorus of muttered agreement and a "hear, hear" from the ghost of Ian Wexler, who technically counted because Brennan turned him down for Booth.

Just then, the Sea Chimps walked in, looking stressed. Sid took one look at the colorful winged brine shrimp and ducked under the bar, coming up with bottles of Sofia champagne and long bendy straws for each chimp. "Yo, Chimps," he said solemnly, popping the corks and passing out bubbly to each of the meta-fictional characters. "Aren't you guys still supposed to be helping with the official wrap up over at the lab?"

Tinky-Winky drank the whole of his bottle in one pull, the liquid guttering at the end of his straw. "No," he burped sadly. "The regular characters were so damned depressed by this episode that they all came down to the champagne pool and started drinking before the credits were even done rolling. They were so busy wallowing in misery that we thought we'd better leave them to it and come over here."

"Damn," said Sid, shaking his head. "They didn't drink all that Cristal I sent over last week, did they?"

Po swiped a tear from her eye. "Sweets made a beeline for my stash along with Clark and the interns! And Brennan and Booth headed right for La-La's Grande Dame!"

Dipsy sniffled raggedly. "Cam drank my Moet et Chandon, and Hodgins and Angela went straight for the Dom Perignon." The Sea Chimps were so upset that their chorus of "Hodgins!" was off-key and totally ragged. Totally.

"I just don't know, kids," Sid sadly, handing out his special Sid's Chex Mix for the characters to munch on. "It's just ... I hardly know what to say. It makes me sound like my grandma, God rest her soul, but things just aren't like they used to be."

Everyone nodded, agreeing.

"I don't see why the undertaker stabbed the body seven times," Zack said. "Wouldn't you think he would call for help after it kept reacting once he'd stabbed it once?"

Sid nodded. "And I thought Cam's comment about the bodies at the lab ill-timed."

Perotta frowned. "Booth's taking the twenty from Hank Reilly's jacket pocket was boorish, even if he did see Dr. Hodgins there."

Sully chimed in. "Why was Angela going off like a waterworks at the start, and then she was all laughing it up at the graveside when Brennan's trying to make everyone drink the tea?"

Wyatt stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Perhaps I was so awash in misery at how bad this episode was to miss exactly how the mother adulterated the tea so that the whole batch was suspect and she wouldn't want everyone to drink it. Did she grind it up and mix it in with the leaves?"

Sam Cullen took a stiff swig of scotch. "That whole "hang on to the body while we interrogate the sushi vendor so we have an excuse to talk to Cleopatra Esquire and make two deaths for one body possible because of the strange things about fish enzymes" thing was extraneous in the extreme. And don't even get me started on Booth's singing "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" thing as a way to distract from the fact that Doctors Brennan and Hodgins were playing Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker in the kitchen there with the tea leaves."

"Dr. Bunsen Honeydew? I don't know what that means," Max murmured to Zack. Zack looked at his mentor's father strangely, then swirled his Mountain Dew in his glass.

"Some things apparently run in the family," Sully muttered to Sid, who snickered in response.

"Here's what bothered me, Chers," Caroline said. "After Mayhem, the first real shipper's episode since Con Man, we have this episode, and Booth's being caustic and mean to Brennan and telling her she doesn't know how to behave at a wake and is rude to people? It's proof the continuity gods have forsaken us. I mean, last week it's all two days in a car and I nearly committed suicide and this week it's all you don't know how to behave at a wake and make sure I'm dead before you bury me? WTF?"

In the corner, the abject Sea Chimps slurped more champagne, worked on nibbles of spam set out on toothpicks, and brainstormed over a new series of verses for "WTF Writers."

"The womens' outfits were nice," Perotta noted, trying to be perky. "Brennan's makeup was lovely-- though I didn't get why she wore a sleeveless dress under such a heavy wool coat. And Cam wore long sleeves, and yet Angela had some skimpy short-sleeved silky blouse on. But in general, the makeup and costumes for the women were great. The wife was well done, right down to the slip in the bathroom while she was bonking the undertaker, and the mother was elegant. Got to say, she didn't really look like she was dying."

Everyone nodded. "Can someone explain to me how Dr. Brennan noticed the rib breakage if she was just replacing a rose?" Zack asked. "It just isn't her character to go fondling a body. Unless they were sticking right out, which by my understanding they weren't. Maybe they were. I could only watch it once."

There were murmurs around the bar. They all could only watch it once, and were sure that there were things that they'd missed, perhaps redeeming things, but the overall episode had been so painful for them (at least as this author wrote them) that it was really hard to remember.

"Well, at least Seeley got to show he knows how to use a laptop and did that video link thing with the lab," Jared noted, trying to give his brother some credit.

People nodded before Sid grumbled. "Yeah. Further proof Booth's been playing the dumb card a little too hard this season. And what's up with that 'I can be devastatingly charming when you're not around,' thing?"

"Try incredibly smarmy," Perotta groused, motioning Sid for another Cosmo.

"Dr. Brennan's voice as she sang 'Amazing Grace' was lovely," Evidence Tech Agent Marcus Geier said. "I almost expected someone to ask her why she knew it, but I'm glad the WTF writers let that crack on her atheism pass."

"That poor clueless brother," Charlie said, shaking his head and quaffing his beer. "I felt so bad for him. At least he was too clueless to realize he was being interrogated-- unlike the head of the Caribbean Studies Department, who rightly called Brennan and Booth for being bizarre and macabre and otherwise inappropriate at a wake."

"At least Cam mentioned Michelle a few times," Zack stated, then furrowed his brow. "Although it would have been easy enough to re-shoot a few scenes to address some of the more obvious discontinuiterization issues. And what was up with Dr. Brennan being all offensive about voodoo? Did the writers forget about her knowledge in Man in the Morgue?"

Everyone nodded, then took a swig of their drink. "If that's the case, then it's the worst kind of easy out," Wyatt grumbled, composing menus almost idly on the back of some of Sid's napkins. He needed to do something to distract his mind now that his character would not likely reappear any time soon.

"What did we think about Brennan not knowing the victim?" Perotta asked.

"It made no sense," Michael Stires added. "In S1, she was always sending stuff off to various (off-screen) named department heads for consults, and in Intern in the Incinerator she knew who all the relevant institutional players, at least the department heads were. Tempe's an academic as well as a scientist. She knows how the name game is played among people who affect her getting her work done. She's focused, but not so focused that she wouldn't pay attention to details whose knowledge might assist her in achieving her ends."

Everyone looked thoughtful and nodded. Stires was a manipulative scumbag, yes, but he and Brennan were involved for a number of years. If anyone would know Brennan's capacity to function in professional circles, it would be him. Dr. Goodman, who had thus far been silent but lent an air of authority to the entire proceeding, nodded in agreement. "I concur with Dr. Stires. Simply because Temperance preferred not to play department politics didn't mean she was ignorant of them."

Everyone was into their second round of drinks by this point and the Sea Chimps were atonally muttering words that sounded like "sucks" and "plotzed" and "abused" without really getting too far on homonyms or new harmonies to which to put their choral critique. A disagreeable silence fell over the bar.

A firm knock and what sounded like someone saying "Ayyyyy", both as loud and jolting as Joshua's trumpet blare at the walls of Jericho shook the air inside the bar.

Everyone stilled, looking at one another in wide-eyed alarm. Stires got up slowly and went to the back door, stepping out into the alley and shutting the door behind him. The characters still inside Wong Fu's waited-- uncertainly, nervously, with nail-biting anxiety, much like viewers worried about the overall quality of the show-- until Brennan's old lover returned, shutting the door firmly behind him.

"Who was it," Sid asked, though he thought he already knew. (He was Sid. It was his job to just know stuff.)

Stires shook his head, looking stern. "Guy on a motorcycle wearing a white helmet and a life vest, leading a trailer full of water-skiing equipment."

A chill filled the air as the Sea Chimps whimpered and Tinky-Winky gathered the three smaller chimps into his arms.

Stires nodded solemnly. "I sent him over to the ABC lot, but that'll only work for so long."

Caroline gathered papers and stuffed them into her briefcase, then quaffed the rest of her julep. "Peyton!" she barked. "You finish your Cosmo. Sam, you stop sippin' your scotch. Charlie, you and Marcus quit nursin' your microbrews. As irregular characters playing official roles in the show, we've got official channels to go through to try to get this show back on track."

"What about me?" Sully asked, twirling his paper umbrella unhappily on the bar top before him.

Caroline shook her head. "I know, Tim. But you're retired, and I have a special assignment for you. You're young, clever and strong, and yet you still have some moral code, which makes the job I have in mind for you just perfect."

"What's that?" the floppy-haired ex-agent inquired.

"You, cher," the no-nonsense prosecutrix declared, "are going to head up the Black Tempe Brigade." Motioning to the FBI adjuncts she'd just mustered, Caroline continued. "If we fail to get this show back on the rails through the regular channels, then you, with your seconds Jared and Max, will do whatever it takes to ensure that this season doesn't go up in flames. You should feel free to use all Brennan's ex-boyfriends in whatever ways you see fit. They are expendable."

Max began to protest Sully's appointment as the head of the Black Tempe Brigade. "She's my daughter," he said, only to be dope-slapped in the back of the head by every former male love interest in the bar.

"Yes! And because of you she can't believe in true love, because your actions don't really represent the true love of a parent. Were you not watching Mayhem last week? Did you honestly think you loved your daughter so much that two days in the trunk of a car was an acceptable alternative?"

Sully was in Max's face, his preppy features contorted with rage and his floppy hair tangled with sweat. "This thing, this thing with Brennan and Booth. This is true love. Do you think this comes along every day? There is no way I am letting you head up this team."

Every ex-boyfriend agreed. Tempe's commitment issues were all Max's fault. They wanted this UST thing resolved, so Booth and Brennan could get on with calling each other Seeley and Temperance, with an occasional "Oh, Booth!" or "Oh, Bones!" in bed-- because really, after four years of Bones and Booth, it wasn't like they were going to switch to each other's first names all the time.

Sid looked at Caroline, then selected his crew. "Zack, Gordo-Gordo, Dr. Goodman, you're all with me. Logistics, Quartermasters', and Intel."

Caroline nodded, settling her briefcase on her shoulder. "I'll leave you four geniuses to get yourselves settled."

Zack smiled. "Dr. Wyatt and Sid always comprehend the emotional and physical needs of their patrons, Dr. Goodman is a master of political protocol and can soothe and distract people with his deep African-American tones, and I am capable of creating and obtaining equipment that will allow us to enter and exit secure facilities undetected."

Jared narrowed his eyes. "That's right-- you did that library card thing. You and me, kid, we'll catch up later." Jared had done a little more than Spring Cleaning and downloaded it all onto a zip drive before he was court-martialed or discharged or whatever happened to him during the discontinuerous lag between his character's appearances on episodes. He and Zack could be a formidable team.

"What about us?" asked the dispirited brine shrimp, led by Tinky-Winky. Po slurped down the last of her bottle then, hiccupping slightly.

Sid and Caroline shared an unspoken thought before Caroline turned a benevolent smile on the littlest Chimp.

"It's very clear," she said softly. "You four have the most important job of all. You have to follow our heroes wherever they go and croon, hum, sing, serenade, harmonize, melodize, and otherwise fill the air tunefully with every happy love song known to man and Chimp. Start with In Your Eyes, then move on to Ain't No Mountain High Enough. We are not calling the whole thing off, their love is here to stay, ("forever and a day," harmonized Charlie and Geier), because what a difference a new Bonesday could make, and even the WTF writers may be ready for a thing called love. But it won't happen if you don't amp up the love quotient around here."

Sid nodded-- "While show fans may be with our heroes come rain or come shine, the advertisers may have cold, cold hearts, and then all the trouble Brennan's gone to lately so she ain't misbehavin' will be for naught, because as fan fiction writers on this site have already written, even Brennan may get tired of her tears and then she'll be gone, daddy, gone."

Caroline crossed her arms. "So ... you Chimps get to work. I want the sun rising backward, the moon made of cheese, the cherry trees on the Mall in permanent bloom, and everyone in this bar walking three inches off of the ground."

"In other words," Sid said, "you go get our Booth/Brennan off-episode mojo going again. Maybe you can lift things enough that the next episode will be more Rear Window than The Trouble with Harry."

"When Harry Met Sally rather than Weekend at Bernie's," Gordon-Gordon corrected. "It is more of a comedy than a drama."

"Drama," said Sid. "With comedic elements."

"Comedy," retorted Gordon-Gordon. "With recognition of life's serious moments."

"Enough!" shouted Caroline Julian. "Whatever you want to call it, what it was this last episode sure as hell wasn't it. We've got to get to work, not bicker over meaningless categories. We should just be focusing on episode continuity, meaningful character arcs, procedural and scientific consistency, good writing and dialogue, and lots and lots of eyesex."

Everyone in the bar paused to recall the eyesex moment in Mayhem and swooned, then quadruple-swooned for good measure. Because damn, Booth and Brennan were both all glittery-eyed, and that Handkerchief Moment? OMG, totally metaphor of the season.

Swooning completed, Caroline swept her FBI troop out before her, leaving the fresh air of prosecutorial determination behind her. Team Tempe gathered in the back shadows of the bar, letting the dust and gloom of past discontinuous episodes mask their planning. The Sea Chimps tested their barbershop harmonies, found they had enough vim to start off with something short and sweet like "Come Fly With Me" as they fluttered on their love-created wings out of the bar.

Zack raised his Dew on the Rocks to toast with Sid, Gordo-Gordo and Goodman. "Here's to keeping the series serious enough that finding out which one of the partners Dr. Wyatt was talking about will be worth it."

"Hear, hear," said Gordo-Gordo.

"Excellent, Dr. Addy," said Goodman in a stenorian tone.

"Too true," said Sid inscrutably. (Sid does everything inscrutably. He's the frickin' Mona Lisa of bartenders.)

The four suppliers and schemers drank companionably for long moments, but eventually Gordo-Gordo could no longer ignore the feel of his compatriots' eyes flickering over him.

"No," he said in his clipped British voice. "I am not going to say whom. We should merely expend our best efforts to lead the show back to credible, dignified storylines with occasional humor and compelling yet not melodramatic character building."

"Took the words right out of my mouth, Dr. Wyatt," said blc's voice from above.

"Or you put them right into mine, my very dear author," the shrink-cum-chef and pot-stirrer-deluxe replied, eyes twinkling.

"Clever, Monty, very clever," blc replied, echoing Angela's quip from her last scene with Wyatt.

Wyatt smiled to himself. The show wasn't dead yet. It was just resting.