Bones

This show has 265 episodes which last about 40 minutes.  It was created before the era of binging television shows and it clearly shows what we have lost and gained. A bingeable television show forces an economy of storytelling - everything needs to be important and drive the story forward. That didn't use to be so important. Stories and characters could develop and grow. A danger of this would be plot inconsistencies, but Bones for the most part avoids this pitfall.  The characters are the same people as they are in the beginning, but they have grown and have more experience. I have heard that they are thinking of reviving this show, but honestly, I don't think it needs it. The ending was a perfectly respectable conclusion, and the last season was as good as earlier seasons so I don't think anyone should be disappointed about how it ended. The show is entertaining, but not without flaws, but as I hope to show, most of its flaws are those that exist in how stories are told nowadays in media.

Brenan is a brillant forensic anthropologist and novelist, she is the heart of the show, and she is who the show is named after. The character is well-written, and well acted. There are some things that ring true about it, and there are some problematic things that are certainly not unique to this show. She is a hyper-focused individual, and she does not have time for incompetence. There is an episode in a later season, where a character who joined the Jeffersonian is given a chance to intern with her, and she fires her on the first day. That's not because she's mean, it's because she believes the work to be so important. She loves her family and her friends, and is a deeply wounded individual who struggles to find a place in the world. The problems with the way her character is written are more broader than this specific show.  The first is that this commonly held belief that if you are smart in one area, you will be smart in all areas. I used to spend more time around brillant scientists, and they were more likely to be wrong about things that were not their area of interest because they assumed they were smarter than experts in those fields.  This phenomenom is almost never shown in fiction. In 'Bones', Dr. Brennan is never wrong about anything, whether about anthropology or anything else connected to being 'smart'.  There's an episode where her co-workers are trying to trick her with magic, and she easily sees through the tricks. It ends up being a sweet moment because then Booth at the end of the story shows her a magic trick and she seems to be surprised.  So she either lets Booth think he has tricked her, are the part of her brain that loves Booth shut off her rational brain to allow her to be tricked. But there's no reason why the world's foremost forensic anthropologist would understand how magic tricks work. The other problem with her character, is the same one that all brillant characters in fiction seem to have nowadays seem to have.  She is marked as being autistic, but the show doesn't come out and say that, like with Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory. She has trouble understanding the reactions of others, she didn't fit in for the longest time, and she shows an obsessive interest in one topic.  For example, there are many jokes where the character doesn't understand simple things, like what golf clubs are called. I don't think the character is actually autistic, I think the problem is that television has a hard time showing brillant characters without making them seem weird. Emily Deschanel does a great job with the character. She has this deep delivery which is very charming and adds depth to the character, but is hard to describe in print.

There's less to say about Booth, but that's because he is presented as the audience's surrogate, the normal character that allows us to relate.  He is also a deeply wounded individual who suffers from trauma due to his former life as a sniper. He's the typical ultra-competent character that is so prevelant in these shows. He also has an odd obsession with hockey for an American, which lead me to suspect that a Canadian is one of the writers of this show. There's also little moments that make sense for television, but not in reality. He will be part of a raid, and everyone is wearing protective equipment, but he will charge into danger without wearing a helmet. His gambling addiction is handled with tact, and I think it was probably helpful for someone who watched this series who struggled with that problem. Some of the best moments of his are when the story is ending, and they show us him and Brenan unwinding....usually these are very sweet and normal moments. 

Brennan is the heart of the show, and her relations with Booth and her father are what makes it spin. Angela and Hogdkins are the poles of the show. Angela shows the horror and disgust of their work, which her other colleagues mostly fail to register, and Hodgkins is the most part, a character that shows the joy of science and discovery. He is truly excited by what he does and his enthusiasm is infectious. Angela constantly struggles with the idea that her work in forensics is robbing her of time should could be spending creating art and bringing joy to the world. Hogdkins is presented, especially in the earlier seasons as a conspirancy nut, and he and Angela have at the beginning of the series a conversation that does not hold up at all.  The series debutted just after the American invasion of Iraq, and these two characters have an argument about the fact that Hogdkins believes the government lied to get Americans to accept the invasion, which is exactly what happened. I don't remember what Angela says, but to paraphrase it's something like, 'well, bla bla bla, we need to support our troops'. It's odd that Hogdkins' opinion is treated as a crazy conspiracy theory in America, but outside of America at the time, and now, it was and is completely accepted as true. I think Hodgkins' best moments as a character are when he is paralyzed and he has to make a choice, continue to wallow in self pity or fight to retain joy in what he does.  He's successful in that and the character is given joyful moments. 

Zack Addy is done dirty by the demands of the plot, the show clearly wanted to add more variety in the interm position, so they came up with a very assinine way to get rid of him, have him assist a serial killer despite having a life devoted to solving crime. The explanation of this is that Zack's brain doesn't function like the rest of ours, so of course he would easily swayed.  I think it's one of the biggest mistakes of the show. Although the great part about the show is that the writers do remember plot lines from the begining of the series and wrap this one up in the end.

Another mistake is the character of Avalon.  She is a psychic that for some reason is played by Cindy Lauper, ("Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"). It's a mistake because the premise of the show is to show how science can be used for solving crimes, and a psychic is as far away from science as possible.  The show also has a tendency to display some pseudoscience which never comes into question, like for example the use of a lie detector in the last season. It's understandable because this is a work of fiction and not a documentary, but generally the mission of the show is higher than that. Also in the beginning of the show, it was clear that the producers were trying to separate it from the other genre of science-based crime procedurals, CSI.  There's a moment where someone asks Angela to enchance an image, and she says that she can't do it because then it would just be a pixel- which is a dig at CSI. But then, there are things that character does that also blur the line between science and magic. Another big flaw in the science of the program is not the fault of the show, but of the science that was current when the show debuted.  In every episode, this is a part where the scientist examine the remains, and confidently declare the race of the victim. The problem with that is that race is a social construct that does not have any basis in science. Sure, people look different, but it is possible to have a 'white' skull appear to be a 'black' skull and vise-versa. I'm not an expert, but it seems like the modern consensus is that while ethnic groups (like Japanese and Japanese) may share some similarities, 'races' do not.  So a Thai person's skull and a Japanese person's skull won't be more similar that those of an African American or Native American.  That is what the current science teaches us, but that is not the show's fault because that is what was commonly believed twenty years ago, although some were starting to question it. I guess my biggest problem with this aspect is that they are never wrong in their identifications, which is completely unrealistc, and that their theories always lead to real world indentifications. 

A less serious flaw is how the skulls are represented on screen.  Dr. Brennan will spend hours of story time examining the bones, and then have a eureka moment, and say something like this tiny indent shows that the victim was murdered with a baseball bat.  Then there is a close-up of the tiny indent and it covers half of the skull.  I get that things need to be visually simple for television, but sometimes it was ridiculous. 

One of the major problems I have with the show is that the team is constantly trying to fight these brilliant serial killers who have expert knowledge in mutliple disciplines. I'm not sure if this is the right term, but there is something I'll call economy of focus. Most people are not brilliant at something at birth, it requires dedication and education. So the amount of time it takes to be brillant at one thing, prevents you from learning how to be brilliant at another thing. Serial killers might be brilliant at murdering, but they are usually not brilliant in other areas of their lives. And the brilliant serial killer is a trope that exists in many media properties, so it is not unique to Bones, and while I get the appeal of a brilliant evil villian, it just doesn't work for me anymore. I think the episodes where they are investigating a "normal" murder are the best. 

I know that is a long review, but the show is also long and I had a lot of thoughts, but to wrap it up, if you like detective shows, this is a nice change of pace.