This is a middling effective tearjerker marred by a few specific things: First, the absolute insistence that everybody and everything is Christian. (How do you actually tell someone you don't know over the phone to tell somebody else you don't know "Merry Christmas"? How rude is that if they are any other religion?) Yes, some scientists have religious faith, but two thirds of a given group of scientists believing in the actual divinity of Jesus of Nazareth? Please. Which brings us to the scene where Booth and Brennan argue about faith; the scene ends with Booth saying, "You don't know if you're sick, but you're more than willing to take drugs just in case. Seems to me you should give the man upstairs the same benefit of the doubt that you do an invisible fungus." And he walks away while Brennan looks contemplative, like she needs to think about that argument. But the argument is complete rubbish: the fungus might be invisible to the naked eye but its presence has been tangibly established by evidence nonetheless; and even if it were a fair comparison, the best it amounts to is Pascal's wager, the argument that one should believe in God just in case he's real and wants to send non-believers to hell. This show clearly wanted to side with theists—not just theists but Christian theists—over atheists, and it uses bogus rhetoric and tear-jerking to do so. Bad! Bad TV program! ((Smacks 'Bones' with newspaper.))
Finally, this episode is marred by the most egregiously awful rendition I ever hope to hear of "Have Yourself oh! Merry Little Chruhmuh", courtesy of Tori Amos. No doubt Ms. Amos has considerable talent and appeal as a musician—I remember liking a thing or two from "Little Earthquakes"—but this performance was a catalog of WTF ARE YOU DOING TO THIS SONG?! moments: mangled pronunciation, bad microreadings, worse vocal habits... Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! Stinky! ((Smacks Tori Amos with newspaper.))
