Review: Bones - Season One (2005)

This show had me curious for a loooong time. It didn’t appeal to my mother because of its name but something about it kept me reading up on it. It wasn’t until I read one reviewers (you know who you are!) thoughts that I really became intrigued by it. Recently I was in the video store and randomly I decided I was going to rent just the first disc – after all, what was the harm in that? Here are my thoughts on this FOX series.

Relationships are not one of Dr. Temperance Brennan’s best personality traits. She doesn’t get pop culture references, and would rather be distant emotionally than do a poor job at her work which is why she’s participating on an archeology dig instead of focusing on personal relationships and that is what she is doing following a break-up with her boyfriend. As one of the best forensic anthropologists in the country, Brennan (Emily Deschanel) has formed a partnership of sorts with the FBI in helping see their cases closed – cases that find victims too far decomposed to identify in the usual ways. It all comes to a head when the FBI has Brennan detained at the airport, and special agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) must bail her out. The tenuous relationship the pair of them has is complicated – Brennan relies solely on proven facts and Booth is more of an educated guess type of guy – and following that fiasco, Brennan is mad at Booth. In order for her to cooperate on their latest investigation, she demands to be involved in all aspects of the case – otherwise, she walks. Reluctantly, Booth agrees and the two of them set about finding out how a young woman’s body ended up in a body of water.

During the course of the investigation Booth and “Bones” (Booth’s appropriate nickname for Brennan but one which she detests) work varying angles but always return to one with a political connection. Calling in the team – or “squints” as Booth refers to them from the D.C. Jeffersonian, Dr. Jack Hodgins (TJ Thyne) finds clues from the residue on the body and Bones best friend, the free-spirited Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin) must use her artistic abilities to reconstruct a facial image of the victim. All of the people working on the case add pieces of the clues while Bones’ assistant Zach Addy (Eric Millegan) is eager to please and make them all see that he is a capable full-fledged team member.

Personally, there were a number of things keeping this series at arms length. Partially, it was from a somewhat mistaken assumption (an assumption that is a part of the show in later seasons) and another reason was because I didn’t think I needed to add yet another show to my already long list of favorites (yeah, my TV-on-DVD collection has grown from one or two to about… well, let’s just say, it’s way more than it should be). Turns out, I was right to resist it as long as it did because all it took was those first six episodes on that first disc rental for me to know that I’d be buying the show. And, ironically, my mother now likes the show probably better than even I do.

If you are a medical person or come from a family of medical professionals, this isn’t a show likely to bother you but… if not, it might make you a bit queasy at times. Bodies are found in varying stages of rot and some are even ripped apart by goodness knows what – that is likely a picture you don’t even want to think about, so moving on. Aside from that, this is a really intriguing if not slightly abrasive show. Airing on Fox for seven years now, it has a following (and has even given wings to a spin-off series) but it is too bad that it comes at the cost of a casual attitude about pre-marital sex. Lost somewhere in the rubbish of a worldly vision is a series worth experiencing. Conservative audiences will be put off additionally by thematic material when it’s revealed that Bones not only disbelieves in God but she doesn’t even believe in His existence. She claims no religion and sees it as a waste of time to put faith in anything that she cannot scientifically prove while Booth is a catholic who might not be very religious but he does believe in God. Bones lack of religion stems from what she saw as abandonment when she was at the tender age of fifteen but it doesn’t excuse her sometimes offensive comments about God. Still, being a viewer who can separate fiction from reality, I am well aware that while this character may be based off of a real person, she is just fictional. It’s best to remember that when watching this one.

(Be aware: Bones is rated TV14 for bodies in varying states of decay – translation: they are gross. Numerous sexual terms and innuendoes begin to be an easy part of dialogue. Characters talk freely about sexual relations in their proper medical terms being all scientists. Profanity is little compared to other content concerns, but there are uses of sh*t and others.)

Categories: Adult Comedy, Crime Drama, David Boreanaz, Drama, Emily Deschanel, Fox, Review, Season One, TV Show

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