Bones (TV Series) The Murder of the Meninist (2016) User Reviews

What are they doing?

[sbjsmum-376-273221 · 6/10 · 1 May 2016]

I have been a fan of Bones since the beginning but have been disappointed by a number of episodes recently. This one was by far below the standard we have become accustomed too. The storyline was not as good and Bones was more abrasive than usual. And what are they doing to Angela and Hodgins , who have always been the best combination in the show in my opinion.

It seems that other s must feel the same as this episode has the lowest IMDb rating of all the episodes.

If they break Angela and Hodgins I don't think I will want to watch any more.

Negative reviews

[steveynz · 7/10 · 21 September 2021]

It was hilarious reading the negative reviews on this episode. They were clearly written by fragile little man boys... just like the ones in this episode.

I usually love this show but....

[abbeley · 1/10 · 8 May 2019]

..... this episode is the first (and hopefully the only) one that I have turned off because of how awful the storyline was. As a woman I was not left feeling empowered or even entertained, I was left feeling bad for men. They took a few valid concerns real men have and mashed them with criminally misogynistic messages. Every now and then there is an episode that clearly possesses the views of the series creators but this was ridiculous. That's with me not even acknowledging the terrible thing happening with Hodgins and Angela.

Terrible episode

[jon-jahren · 2/10 · 19 November 2016]

I think this is the worst episode I've ever seen of the series. Whoever wrote this should never get work again besides at Burger King. It's a mix of thinly veiled and unintelligent political statements and the authors personal straw men.

The plot is weak, some main characters are so unlikable it's almost criminal. Episode is almost completely void of logic, and Brennan seems to have had some sort of lobotomy performed on her.

The only reason it's not getting a 1 is because the music is as always good, and the director is doing his best with the useless script he's been given.

The worst episode ever

[benamiel · 1/10 · 25 February 2021]

In all honesty, I have been binge watching this show and loved almost every episode, but this? This episode was a bad joke. It took existence aspects of characters and disregarded them, for example Dr Brennan's lack of desire for facts is annoying beyond belief, for a character that is based on logical, factual thinking, to acknowledge the existence of a wage gap that has been disproven multiple times is a joke. This episode took real issues some men face and turned them in to a joke at best and at worst in to some conspiracy theory, which is an insult to any and all who truly believe in equality. And what the hell have they done to Dr. Hodgins? One episode prior to this he is happy to just be able to help in anyway he can, he is his happy, excited self and in this episode he is a wrack of a man that takes it out on his wife? The hell, don't try and turn him in to some abusive husband. To conclude, this is the worst episode I have ever seen, thank whatever deity you belive in that this episode took place so late in the show or I would have abandoned this show a long time ago. P.S. The writer of this episode should be banned from writing.

Yes! It Was Terrible

[Hitchcoc · 3/10 · 21 March 2023]

Where did this come from. I seem to recall a group developing on college campuses where men (especially unattractive ones) were lodging a campaign against women. Here we have the most fundamentally ridiculous actions of what are really hate groups. Then we have Brennan cold cocking that guy. That is battery and she should have been thrown in jail. Finally, they are making a man who had it together all his life, turning into an utter dragon. Hodgins has every right to go through the processes of fear and despair, but they are making him into the worst nightmare of everyone. He sees everything anyone does for him as condescending. I'm hoping there is a resolution here somewhere, where he can get back to taking what life still offers him and getting back to being himself, albeit a modified version.

The writers turned hodgins into a PAB

[zachariestp · 1/10 · 21 August 2022]

The writers committed character assassination on the best character in the show. They've made badly written, hatable interns/secondary characters before (like the insufferable daisy and turning Owen's main character trait to being a condescending asshat) but the main cast has always been well written. No way in hell would hodgins treat Angela this way, even going through trauma induced depression. The seemingly instant 180 in his personality is put there to turn him into a mid season villain/problem to solve until they pull some medical bs like "a ground breaking technique to transplant healthy spinal tissue to repair broken nerves." Or some such BS.

Very Disappointed

[zacretail · 1/10 · 4 August 2021]

It was hurtful and sad to see how the writers are treating issues that many men face. I kept hoping at some point there would be some redeeming quality to the episode, but in the end it was just disheartening.

Worse episode in the whole series

[robwoo-23817 · 1/10 · 13 January 2022]

It really interesting how these people have went out of their way to solve the murder of an actual Nazi and even a serial killer in the past but they acted like looking for the killer of this man was beneath them.

Subtle as a brick

[rcoll-imdb · 3/10 · 29 February 2024]

This episode of Bones commits one of the worst tropes of bad writing: when you're trying to write characters with diametrically opposite beliefs to you, but you can't rebut their main arguments (and you don't want the audience to sympathise with the "wrong" side), simply make them say the most sociopathic things to repulse the audience.

MRA groups do attract people with fringe beliefs. Some of them are incels, some are men who've been through rough divorces, but there are MRA ideas that are worth of discussion (which Brennan actually concedes). No matter, make the horrible men sl*tshame women and ask them to be muzzled to let the audience know they don't have to wrestle with those ideas.

The Booth gambling storyline from Season 10 was already dumb, Bones goes back to that well now by making Hodgins an a-hole to everyone around him. As other reviews have pointed out, this is simply drawing up a villain arc for the sake of ratings rather than a sincere attempt to dramatise how a person or two people in the case of Angela would deal with an event like this.

Bones is hardly the worst offender for moralising against the obvious ideological opponents of the showrunners, but they rarely stick the landing when they do, and this episode may be the worst example.