The Worst Episode Of Bones, According To IMDb
Bones has some of the wackier plots of any police procedural on television. There's the time a fictionalized version of Banksy gets glued to a corpse, the James Bond parody, the time they steal a corpse from a funeral, and the victim who melts into a giant novelty chocolate bar. But that has always been part of Bones' charm. It's the grossest show for moms ever conceived, and part of the way the show balances death and almost sitcom-like cast shenanigans is through how outlandish the deaths can be.
Not all of the big swings on Bones connect, however. For example, fans decried the show's approach to a gender non-conforming pathologist in season 4. And the crossover episodes with Sleepy Hollow and The Finder beg credulity. There are multiple episodes where people see or interact with ghosts. But one episode holds the worst IMDb rating of all 246 episodes of the 12-season Fox stalwart.
Fans have no love for The Ghost in the Machine
Season 8's "The Ghost in the Machine" holds the lowest rating of any episode of Bones on IMDb, with a paltry 6.6 stars out of 10. Most episodes of Bones hover between 7 and 8 stars, but apparently, people aren't keen on an entire episode shot from the POV of a child's skull.
Yeah, you read that right. This entire episode is shot from the perspective of the skull of the victim, a teen skater named Colin, with a whole unrequited love subplot. Perhaps done in homage to the MASH episode "Point of View," everything we see in the episode happens in front of the remains. The thing is, suspects and victims' families don't usually go to the Jeffersonian Institute, which houses the lab, on Bones. Interrogations and interviews usually happen at the FBI, so they feel incredibly awkward and ham-fisted happening in front of Colin.
"The Ghost in the Machine" is one of the more supernatural episodes as well. Cyndi Lauper's recurring character, psychic Avalon, comes to the Jeffersonian to tell the crimefighters that Colin's spirit is calling out to her. He can't pass on until his unfinished business is resolved, which turns out to be confessing his feelings for a crush. Whether for the schmaltzy denouement, the gimmicky staging, or the big supernatural energy, the episode ranks very low among many Bones fans. And we can't say that we blame them.