Bones, season 3

The year's shadow is Gormogon: a killer assembling a skeleton from victims' bones, steeped in secret-society ritual, eating what he takes. The case surfaces in pieces - a vault of silver skeletons, a widow's-son pattern, a lodge of grievances against institutions - and the team treats it as the usual chess against the usual monster.

The rest of the season runs warmer than its predecessor: Booth and Brennan's partnership deepens through hostage negotiations, a stint in the ring, and Booth taking a bullet meant for her - then letting the Bureau fake his death for an operation, a deception Brennan does not forgive on schedule. Max Keenan stands trial for the deputy director's murder with his daughter testifying about blood spatter and, in the show's slyest hour, engineering reasonable doubt.

It ends with the season's quiet catastrophe. The apprentice Gormogon has been grooming is inside the lab: Zack Addy, the sweetest mind in the building, argued into a madman's logic one premise at a time. The explosion that hurts his hands is staged; the master is served; and the team's grief is the finale - Zack in a secure ward, the logic of it laid out flawlessly, and no one able to find the flaw except in where it ended.