'Bones' should go the way of the dinosaurs [View all]

[GopperStopper2680]

I'm not a big fan of television. I pretty much agree with the old adage that it's an 'idiot box'. In fact I don't even own one. But I do have occasion to see some of it visiting friends. Some of it like Dual Survival is ok. Most of it is pretty horrendous. The show 'Bones' definitely fits into the latter category. The following is my little rant about one of the worst shows on TV.

For those of you who are still blissfully unaware of this horrible show's existence I will give you an outline (But don't expect it to be very accurate or detailed since I'm usually trying to avoid watching this.)

The show stars Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz as Temperance 'Bones' Brennan and Seeley Booth respectively; a Forensic Anthropologist (or something) and an FBI agent. The two work to help solve crimes for the FBI (I presume) out of the back of a museum of all things. During every episode one or more sets of various human remains of unknown provenance are unearthed and studied by the protagonists. I have to say that I'm not aware of what city the story takes place in, nor will I bother to look it up-but I don't want to live anywhere in which a set of unidentified human remains is found on a daily basis. Oh, and get this: said remains usually turn out to be the result of foul play, meaning that where ever the place is that the story takes place, it has an unusually high homicide rate! How all-American!

The show involves a number of truly bad elements which make it in my opinion the dramatic equivalent of toxic waste. Hackneyed, screwball characters, tawdry, pretentious dialog, preposterously bad science, and my favorite-gobs and gobs of sickening human remains often found in bizarre and outre circumstances.

The show unabashedly showcases such earmarks of crapiness as an Brittish intern who can't relate to others without continually spouting trivia, be it apropos to the situation or not; a fantastic rapid prototyping machine that somehow wondrously casts full size articulated skeletons using visible green beams, and an absurd, magical crime reconstruction computer akin to a crystal ball which shows you precisely how a crime took place via a hologram when you input a few known parameters! The episodes often repeat some hook or central theme to such a degree that it becomes a refrain ad nauseum: One character repeated the phrase 'It's amazing!' repeatedly each scene in which he was shown.

The two major points of contention I have against the show are the Mylar thin and transparent characters and the terribly amateurish technical writing. The main characters themselves, Bones and Booth- a Forensic Anthropologist and a bureaucrat are in themselves the epitome of stereotypical in their roles: A cloistered, out-of-touch ivory tower intellectual and a hard nosed shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later badass. While Booth is a little more normal (for values of normal where these types are concerned) Brennan is of a highly intellectual bent, very bookish and ecclectic (read: weird) and seems to be disconnected from the way every day people think so such a degree as to leave you wondering if she isn't bat sh*t crazy.

Then there is the truly horrendous scientific writing. Now, everybody knows that it's not an entertainer's job to educate us, but at least having it somewhere in the right BALLPARK can't hurt, right? In one episode the show's resident mycologist whose name I don't know and won't bother to check mistook a slime mold for a fungus (it is in fact a protist-a eukaryote in its own distinct kingdom) evidently based solely on its common name. In another episode Booth seemed to suggest that carbon steel had been completely supplanted by stainless in every application; hence a dagger with a carbon steel blade must date from sometime during WWII! In yet another horrific episode we see that a small bucket full of Magnesium shavings has ignited torching a truck to the state its steel is partially molten! And on and on and on and on......

The tawdry, 2 dimensional characters, technical grade dialog and highschool science are all just great but the one thing that endears this show to me the most is the utterly sickening states in which the eponymous bones are discovered. Never do we find a nice clean skeleton simply lying in the woods somewhere (Which admittedly is rarely the case, but as you will soon see the Bones writers have a real affinity for pushing it)...No. In one episode we find a group of skeletons covered in pink, slimy things from the bottom of the ocean which turn out to be deep ocean Boneworms. (The episode made a big deal of the colorful name 'Boneating Slime Flower'). In yet another episode we find a set of remains lying in a coating of yellow jellyish stuff; the aforementioned slime mold. And in the worst one of all in my opinion we find in one episode a skeleton encased carbonite like in a giant chocolate bar! Said skeleton is discovered when a group of chocolatiers saw into the outsize bar releasing a flood of decayed glop. I couldn't touch a Hershey's bar for weeks!

Oh, one one more little nagging thing I couldn't stand about the show: Practically every episode was named 'the skeleton' something or other......Real creativity there. I guess they figured hey! It worked for Harry Potter!

All in all this is a show that I wish would hurry up and take its rightful place in the fossil bed with the other extinct horrible shows.