Disclaimer: The parts and the sum and the whole of the thing belong to Fox and Mr. Hanson.

Note: So once upon a time I let Angela narrate a little episode called "The Parts in the Sum of the Whole." Since then, there have been requests to let Ange have at it with subsequent episodes. I've been publishing each as separate one-shots but for the sake of organization, here they are collected. Apologies to anyone who came here looking for a new cap. But never fear, I hope to have something up for "The Boy With the Answer" in the very near future.

Home Again, Home Again

So I'm a narrator, right? Right. Well there are different kinds of narrators and there are words for these things but my secret degree is totally not in literature. So, for our purposes, let's say that the greatest difference amongst narrators is how nosey we are.

Me? Pretty darn nosey. Which means I add the parts however I want, take a look at the sum, and relate the whole thing to you the way I see it. There's something kind of dishonest in that, I guess. And maybe that's why storytellers are usually pretty accomplished liars. Lots of practice.

Yeah, it's okay, I've accepted it. And it looks like you have too since you're here and not off spending your time on a project in Excel, or on doing laundry, or on a nice story conveyed politely in the third-person. Now I've rambled on about me when what I really wanted to do was just get to the meat of what I am: a piece of the architecture of the story.

And like I said, I'm nosey. I get my hands dirty and I alter the lens and I connect the dots. I'm a piece of architecture that is almost a character.

And I'm not the only one.

This week I'd like you to meet my pal, setting. His proper name for this particular story is "Burtonsville." But I like to call him Muggins for short. See, we've just been introduced, Muggins and me, and nicknames create an instant bond and all.

Muggins is like me. Nosey. But where I have a delicate (dare I say artistic) touch, Muggins is kind of a spaz. He blunders into the story awkwardly. Watch:

We first meet Muggins as two high school girls are wondering into one of Muggins's forest-bound, tumble-down barns (I say 'one of' because you get the feeling that Muggins probably has a lot of these. Like, the area's probably made up entirely of a high school and old, creepy hay lofts).

Anyway, the girls are looking for a place to explore the confusing world of teenaged sexuality (they've only been here with boys before) but instead of just saying that, they blame a Katy Perry song.

Yeah.

Go ahead. Roll your eyes. I know I'm dwelling on the irrelevant pre-credit scene but it's just too funny. The girls are all, "no touching, only the stuff in the song." Um, ladies? Does the song also mention the necessity of drafty barns and rotting hay? No? How about maggot covered skulls?

I think you need to listen to that song a little more closely.

So the girls scream and are totally grossed out. But what did they expect? I mean they live in Burtonsville. And old Muggins is pretty one-note. He's a horror setting. And it's not like he's very subtle about it.

The best thing about this story is the Ballad of Booth and Muggins (yeah, I also love the ballad of Booth and Brennan but I always love that so it's hardly worth mentioning at this point). Poor Booth. He hasn't met a lot of settings so active as Muggins. Muggins is the kind of setting that invades. He shapes people while they're in his clutches and makes them remember their shapes when they return.

The only place Booth's met like that is Kosovo and that was a whole other kind of horror setting. It's the kind a lot of people never leave.

So Booth is totally weirded out and a little frightened when he sees what Muggins does to people. There's the town sheriff who is hilariously aggressive about hitting on him. She was Brennan's lab partner. Brennan's not especially tactful about remember her as being overweight and Sheriff Rebecca rudely recalls Brennan as the creepy girl.

So we look at the icky, sloppy remains and Brennan calls the sheriff Becky and the sheriff calls her Morticia and it's like, say hello to Muggins! He's just doing his thing. Which has less to do with sloppy body parts than with shaping everyone into who they used to be.

And Booth's all awkwarded out by Muggins so he tells Brennan to be a rebel and go to her reunion and smear everyone's face in her accomplishments. He wants her to be proud and confident and enviable. And there she has a shot because she is those things. But mostly he wants to to be cool. And, face it, that's always been a lost cause.

So we hear about an old axe-murderer legend. The kind of thing which usually amounts to "don't go into the woods alone." But Burtonsville is totally wacky, even in its morality tales so the lesson is … don't go to school or you might get eaten? Guess that explains why Brennan was creepy. She wanted to learn.

I'd gloss over Sweets and Booth going over the case details via weblink except A) Booth takes off his jacket and hello! FBI t-shirt. Seriously, a person shouldn't look that good fully dressed. He contemplates another shirt and we're all really tantalized, torn between wanting him always to wear that FBI t-shirt (which, when did the FBI start tailoring its t-shirts to cling to a guy's torso? Not that I'm complaining) and wanting him to immediately take it off in order to change into the other one.

Oh. Right. There is a B. Which is B) Sweets gets all suggestive about Booth and Brennan sharing a motel like sudden proximity might make them forget all the reasons they've been solving murders for five years instead of making mad passionate love. Sorry, Sweets. If this was a motel story, maybe, but Muggins isn't that kind of setting. Remember those teenaged girls? Trysts in Muggins tend to end up with someone dead. So, for once, I'm gonna pitch my tent in the Platonic Crime Fighting Partners camp.

Fewer maggot covered skulls there.

But Sweets and Muggins haven't been properly introduced. Which Booth understands. To get Muggins you kind of have to be there. So he takes Sweets on a little tour of the room to prove that there won't be any adjoining going on.

Later, Booth and Brennan meet some Popular kids (italics totally necessary. They're a species). Booth recognizes them for what they are because he was one once and Brennan recognizes them for who they were. And when you put people back where they used to be they're gonna be who they used to be.

Everyone chats and Brennan's as abrasive as always. The blond girl kind of freaks out a little about Brennan liking dead things while the guy just pays her a compliment. And that's how we know the chick is the lesser of the two here. In high school it's tough to distinguish the mean people from the cool people. Later you realize the mean people were always the untouchable ones due to their own insecurity while the truly cool people were the ones who could charmingly appeal to the things you liked best about yourself. They were untouchable because everyone wanted to be near them and feel charming and cool by association.

Anyway. Brennan tries to toot her own horn and utterly fails. So Booth swoops in to save her by pretending to be her husband. And it's like one part sweet to one part offensive. Like, he's trying to help her out but he thinks he can only do it by claiming association and letting his coolness rub off on her. Yeah. I'd be more upset about it except he introduces himself as "Bobby Kent" and I'm too distracted by wondering if he has a brother named Clark.

So Booth and Brennan go off to find the janitor and I have a chat with Wendall. Which I'm not ready to talk about yet so we're gonna skip that. K? Thanks.

The janitor, Mr. Buxley, and Muggins are like best friends. Mr. Buxley totally gets that if you live there in Burtonsville, you just have to go with it. Just be absurd, just lurk in dark corners, just collect saw blades. Just revel in it.

When we make it to the gym everyone's starting to get into the groove. Everyone's got a blade. Everyone's got a motive. No one has a verbal filter. Seriously. The things these people say. We always thought Brennan was a little off but it turns out she's just a product of her setting. Good ole Muggins.

So we have this room full of people bent on hitting on either Booth or Brennan in the most awkward ways possible. And we have Mr. Buxley who is so fantastically creepy that we'd never believe he'd hurt a fly.

And everyone's just spinning around this reunion. The past here is like a black hole or maybe a centrifuge. All the changes these kids have made since the days of high school float to the top and are filtered away. The dance floor turns, the blades flash, and suddenly they're all back here again and suddenly they're all who they used to be. Except Booth. So he's freaked.

Everyone is afraid and insecure and suspicious. Everyone has a motive. Everyone is the worst dancer you have ever seen.

Then Seal starts to play. And yeah. I don't care who you are, "Kiss from a Rose" is just one of those songs. We know it. Booth and Brennan know it.

So she wants to dance and he wants punch.

This is her town and the prom she never had. She's back. She's the high school girl who wants one silly, perfect prom night to remember. 'Awkward and lonely' is still something she can escape, still something she thinks she can leave behind. The patterns don't seem permanent yet. And she's not wrong. Even now, she's not wrong. But settings cling to your feet like mud, they give you away with dirty footprints.

But he's not from here. He hasn't gone back. And in the here an now, when the patterns seem set in stone, being close too her means to much to him. It aches.

He says they've opened a door that neither of them wants to walk through. She's not ready to come in. He hasn't really resigned himself to walking out.

So he doesn't want to dance.

But he'll do it anyway. For that girl she used to be. And for the woman she is now even if she'd rather not see it.

It's awkward for a while. Lots of room for the Holy Spirit, for the differences between them. But then the blade flashes and the stars fall into place. (Yeah. Muggins is heavy handed.)

And Brennan is tearing up. Not a lot of things can get to this woman. He is one of them. Another is who she used to be.

She was always the creepy girl who liked dead things. The girl who's parents left, who's world was a lie. This is the prom she never got to go to. He is the guy she was never supposed to have.

So he holds her close. He's a guy who's been to war. He knows how a place clings to you. He knows all about being formed from the clay of where you're from. He knows what it means to be born from a horror story.

So he holds her and she holds him and the music plays and we hope one day the past can die. We hope we can all go somewhere else. We hope we can be the people we were never supposed to be.

But now is the past and now is the present so there's a murder and they're the Platonic Crime Solving Partners still. The most exciting thing going on now is the roving pie-delivery girl. I mean, I hope my reunion has one of those.

Soon we find out that the stars are the murder weapon and mean blond girl is the the killer. That's Muggins for you with the heavy handed poetic justice. You take a girl who always thought the stars should align for her and when they don't, she uses them to kill someone. Thanks for that, Muggins. Thanks for making people totally nuts.

Back in DC and out at the bar everyone's bashing on high school. And that's when we remember that they're all grown up freaks and geeks. High school, for them (us, I'm in there too) was a slasher film.

So we end, as is fitting, with a twisted moral out of Burtonsville. Most people say, "You can't go home again." You've changed or it's changed. Whatever.

The truth is, home is always with you. My pal setting is not just where you were once, it's what you're made of. So you can. You can go home again. The real question is whether or not you can ever leave.