I Kinda Dig Bones
If you only look skin deep, Fox’s Bones is yet another frustrating example of the Just Good Enough TV Drama — rote and predictable enough not to scare away lazy couch potatoes, but peppered with juuuuuuust enough smarts and originality to avoid viewers’ outright contempt. But underneath the surface, there’s at least the skeleton of a good TV show here. If Bones, inspired by the books of forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs, doesn’t get everything right — and it definitely doesn’t — at least it absolutely nails the things it needs to get right.
First and foremost: The casting. Emily Deschanel is Temperance Brennan (a name I still can’t say with a straight face). When she’s not being The World’s Best Forensic Bone Detective, she apparently writes novels about an anthropologist named Kathy Reichs. (I’ll pause here so you can roll your eyes.) She’s no-nonsense, carries a gun she unapologetically knows how to use, and can inflict significant pain on people half again her size without batting an eye. The impressive thing about this Holmesian superwoman is how Deschanel manages to make her human. It’s a pause in the voice here, a twitch at the corner of the mouth there, but it adds up to make Brennan vulnerable and interesting. Even when she’s whining, repeatedly, about her lack of social skills. As delivered by Deschanel, the catch-phrase-in-the-making “I don’t know what that means” is about ten times more entertaining than it has any right to be.
David Boreanaz plays Seeley Booth (the names, my God, the names!), an ex-sniper turned FBI agent who’s the Mulder to Brennan’s Scully. And yes, he actually goes and says that early on. After eight years playing a certain vampire with a soul, it’d be easy for Boreanaz to play the part of the square-jawed good guy on autopilot— but he doesn’t. Scarily enough, he’s actually got some kinda young Harrison Ford thing going, all snarky and charismatic, and it works well for him. And his gift for well-played slow burns gets an excellent workout here. He even manages to retain his dignity while delivering howlingly awful lines like this one: “I killed a lot of people when I was a sniper. Before I’m done, I’d like to catch at least as many murderers.” Uh … sure. Good luck with that.
There’s real chemistry between Boreanaz and Deschanel, even in the scenes where the director doesn’t put them about an inch away from each others’ faces for no apparent reason. You can believe the sparks that fly between them, though you may find yourself wanting to holler “Oh, just kiss already!” about five minutes in. Best of all, the script doesn’t require them to stick to their predefined roles as prickly antagonists. They can be kind to one another, unexpectedly humble and gracious, in ways that always surprise and never quite ring false.
The other crucial thing that Bones gets right: It makes the science look hard. We get to watch Deschanel sit in front of a desk scattered with dozens of minuscule bone fragments, and we’re shown the time and effort it takes to reconstruct a human skull from that seemingly impossible mess. Not even the show’s use of a preposterously whizzy holographic projector system can diminish the impression that scene makes.
Those elements, and the occasional bits of clever dialogue, are hugely important, because they make the many, many other things that Bones does wrong seem much less fatal. The plot in the pilot is almost completely uninteresting; it seems so perfunctory that I never ended up caring whether it was the senator, or the weaselly assistant, or the poorly explained stalker guy who did in the pretty young intern. Speaking of the poorly explained stalker guy, he gets set up as some kind of recurring character with a near-instant fixation on Brennan. It’s weird, makes no sense, and seems to promise nothing but annoyance. At least he’s slightly more entertaining than the wild assistant who makes sex jokes and flashes her bra to get people’s attention, or the haughty African-American museum curator who seems to have stepped directly out of Hollywood’s Big Book of Well-Meaning Stereotypes.
Also? I live near Washington D.C., where Bones likes to pretend it takes place, and I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of a river, not to mention a whole bunch of other stuff, between Arlington National Cemetary and the back of the Lincoln Memorial. (D.C. residents are also invited to try not to snicker every time the show mentions Brennan’s supposed place of employment, the “Jeffersonian Institution.”)
And then there’s all the “squints.” The show’s disgustingly in love with that term, the supposed FBI nickname for smart scientist types. By the 128th time the term gets used in the space of 44 minutes, it’s more than worn out its welcome. Hey, creator and showrunner Hart Hanson: Want to eradicate any goodwill I might have toward your series? Have someone say “squint” again, in any context other than “a narrowing of the eyes.” Go on. I dare you.
Do I think Bones will be a hit? Sure, provided not everyone gets as sick of the invented lingo as I did. It seems to be comfortably aping the House formula of engaging characters in predictable storylines. I’m not sure I’ll keep tuning in — but if I do, it’ll be Deschanel and Boreanaz’s unexpectedly fine character work reeling me back. Here’s hoping they eventually get some novel and intriguing storylines to match.