Full disclosure. When I wrote the review for the first season of Bones, I was mid-way through the second season. By this point I'm a few episodes from the finale of season five (the most recent season.)
In the course of five years, Bones has been... well... something like three entirely different shows, to varying degrees of success. The first incarnation is most prominently displayed in season one when Bones serves as a hard-science forensics show with a forced romantic undertone and no elements of ongoing plot. It's also the most god awful. The supporting cast is alienating and lacks chemistry. Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan (The stunningly un-charming Emily Deschanel), serves as this clustershag superhero-ninja-scientist hybrid who transitions from being socially maladjusted to perfectly normal with no real rhyme or reason. The lack of on-going story elements means that it takes until season two for the show to start developing it's own mythology. It's just really... really terrible.
The biggest and most desperately needed changes in the show occur between seasons two and very early four, where the cast is filtered and re-established. Dr. Camille Saroyan (Tamara Taylor) shows up early in season two and serves as a desperately desperately needed check on Bones, who up until that point apparently controlled the universe because she was an expert at forensic anthropology. Camille ("Cam") comes in as the new head of the Jeffersonian Institute's forensics department. She's also a pathologist, which was one glaring technical error from the first season, since, ya know, there's a few obvious steps between "found dead body" and "examine skeleton."
Cam is a foil to Brennan for a while which gives the cast some slight balance. When you have a character who's both the best at everything and in charge of everything, there's no... oh what's the thing every story needs... right! conflict! There's no fucking conflict.
The second major cast adjustment is the slow phasing out of Zach Addy (Eric Millegan) who's minor crime is being a superfluous character, as Brennan's protege with the same field of expertise, and who's major crime is being absolutely and unbearable annoying. The entire Zach Addy character is a single punchline that plays over and over for three years. He's written out through a monstrously convoluted storyline in season three that, frankly, makes zero sense when you put it all together, but you spend so much time overjoyed that he's gone, you don't really care. After three years of Millegan's nasally drone, the story could have very well involved him being abducted by aliens and whisked away to planet Zed, and you'd swear it was as good, if not better than, the last episode of the Sopranos. Though, to the show's credit, he's largely uninvolved with season three until the conclusion.
So Cam shows up, Addy is gone, Hodgins (T. J. Thyne) gets to have actual hair and not that ridiculous white-guy 'fro, and we get Dr. Lance Sweets (John Francis Daley) and "the interns."
Sweets enters as an FBI psychiatrist who's job is to evaluate whether or not Bones and Agent Booth (David Boreanaz) can still work together after Booth *mufflemufflemuffle this would be a spoiler* He eventually winds up as part of the team serving as the in-house ego/id/phials guy.
"The Interns" actually make for a creative addition to the show, though I'm sure it's something that's been used somewhere else before. I just haven't seen it, and if TV has taught me anything, if I haven't seen it, then it's fucking new to me, now, isn't it? Anyway, there's a six-member intern rotation to help spice things up from episode to episode. They're all intensely bright but more or less do menial shit-work on cases, which makes a great deal more sense than Zach Addy who managed to be the second most vital member of the team despite that he should have been fetching coffee and digging through trash. He was an intern.
All the interns have distinct personalities and, despite not being central to the A-story, you find yourself getting excited when your favorites come up in the rotation.
"oh yay! it's a Vincent episode!"
"oh crap... it's a Daisy episode."
You get the idea.
I usually find it a trying task to come up with nice things to say about the mind-rotting wasteland that is Bones, but the interns angle was a really good idea for several reasons. It gives a perfectly valid reason to expand your B-cast and build your mythology without having to find a reason to write characters into an episode. It's just "oh hey, it's Clark's week on the rotation." No needless exposition as to why. They're simply there. And thank god, really. If they had to take time to explain why Clark was there, they'd have to cut into the time spent needlessly explaining the plot or having Bones and Booth make facial expressions at each other.
By season four the cast is complete fixed from season one and actually resembles a show someone might watch of their own free will and possibly enjoy. ...well, the cast at least.
:: Cigarette and Tang break. ...never a bad time for the orange-ish taste of Tang. ::
Like I was saying earlier, about it's hard-science beginnings, Bones never really decides what kind of show it wants to be. There was the aforementioned awful start, which was followed by a period of being deeply concerned with building it's own mythology via several on-going storylines, a host of callbacks, and other little goodies and do-dads that are rewards for having paid attention. The show transitions from a procedural drama to a life-affirming sit-dramedy. It was more noticeable when Bones had a "serious" episode among the usual lighthearted ones, as opposed to a "funny" episode ah la X-Files / every other drama series ever. We'll call this Bones: Phase II.
Bones: Phase II is actually probably the best incarnation of the show because you're not really supposed to take it all too seriously. The show's strength, if one can be found, is when it's playful. By season four, Bones, as a character, has finally been fleshed out into something that makes sense on a regular basis. She's consistently awkward and develops limitations. The show careful wrote out all of her fight-scenes, which was a godsend, since if you pair up a scientist with a tough-guy FBI agent, she probably shouldn't be able to defeated a room full of assailants in mortal kombat. Not to offend anyone's feminist sensibilities or anything, but a character that's the brains and the brawn is fucking boring, regardless of gender. If you disagree, just go watch Burn Notice and never stop watching Burn Notice for the rest of your miserable life.
Anyway, season four concludes with a really unfortunate choice for a finale. It's a dream sequence episode which Booth has in a coma and, while it's a pretty decent episode, it's usually not the best idea to have your big, final story of the year be one that has absolutely nothing to do with the plot. Season Four ends and thus begins Bones: Phase III: The Romancening.
Our third incarnation is a Detective/Romance Scientific Drama which, for my bitching about the "forced romance" in season one (and two, but I haven't actually bitch about that yet) at least this time around it's a central angle of the show. It's not something you get beat over the head with as a subtext to the story, it's the actual focus of the plot, which works. Not WELL, mind you, but it works.
By this point in the story it's almost unreasonable for Booth and Brennan to have not knocked boots yet. I mean, it's impossible. There are no two human beings who have had so many tender moments without ONE of them going "yeah, I should probably kiss him/her right now." I don't care how awkward or nervous you are. Literally EVERY episode ends with them looking longingly into eachothers eyes, usually sharing a drink, embracing, or walking arm-in-arm. Prior to the 100th episode I actually figured the show was just going to pull a CSI and have them go "oh, yeah, we've been a couple for years."
The big reveal comes in episode 100 where they explain their origin story to Sweets. They'd kissed once, six years prior, then fought, then didn't talk for a year.
response of the viewer: "so?"
intended response: "OMG! NO WAY! OH IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!"
// spooooilers below //
To close the episode, which is entirely told in flashback form, the two finally kiss. My exact response while watching was "thank fucking GOD. enough already!" ...but my relief was premature. No, he wants to, she's scared, blah blah blah, let's keep this train a-rollin'. Now he's not gonna wait for her anymore.
Have you ever wondered why shows in the UK are six episodes long? To avoid this bullshit. When you let things drag on forever, constantly teasing your conclusion, people get annoyed and bored. Granted, I've been watching Bones for two weeks, but there are people that have put up with five years of this shit. Hell, even Scrubs had the good sense to take JD and Elliott off the table for a year or two at a time. X-Files dragged it out forever, but at least there was a storyline about alien invasions I cared about in the mean time. This show is a fucking romance in which every side-character has had sex but the two leads who hold hands and cuddle on couches didn't think to kiss each other for FIVE YEARS.
The degree of patients the show expects from it's audience is totally unreasonable. Unlike many of my "television as literature" brethren, I honestly don't mind romantic sub-plots so long as they're addressed in the story. Well, okay, I have about six-hundred and seven rules about them, but they can be done without me pissing and moaning at my screen. They do invariably pay off with some sort of emotional reward, albeit a cheap one, and I like a good ballpark hotdog and a beer just as much as foie gras. But for god's sake, there comes a point where you've gotta... um... hang on, I'm thinking of a more eloquent way to write "shit or get off the pot."
Anyway, I have read ahead enough to find out that there isn't going to be a satisfying conclusion this season. There are four episodes left to bring me up to date, and I'm not sure if I'm disappointed or excited to be done with this bucket of hell until the fall.
Further self-indulgent analysis to come once I'm up to speed.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment