Bones Breaks the Mold

Fox's "Bones" is a detective show revolving around the collaboration between a forensic anthropologist and an FBI agent teamed-up to solve murders. One part detective drama, one part romantic comedy, the show is both realistic---in its science---and fantastical in its execution: the lab is clean and airy, the characters stylish and sexy, the dialogue quick and clever. "Bones" has the appeal of other forensic dramas, a tight logical story punctuated with the excitement of discovery, but sets itself apart with its humor and strong characters.

Our lead is Dr. Temperance Brennan, a.k.a. Bones, a world-class forensic anthropologist employed by the Jeffersonian Institute, a fictional analogue to the Smithsonian Institute. Dr. Brennan and her team run a forensics lab specializing in identifying bodies when they are so badly decomposed that there is nothing much left but the bones. Her lab's services are frequently contracted out by federal agencies, most notably the FBI.

The television show kicks off when FBI special agent Seeley Booth tries to employ Dr. Brennan for a case, but she refuses to work with him, or even accept his calls. We learn that they had worked together once before: Dr. Brennan had used bones to identify both the weapon and the crime scene for Booth's case, but he did not trust her methods and so ignored her conclusions. He later learned that her identifications were correct, and that by ignoring her he had wasted valuable time in his case. He was extremely impressed, and slightly mystified, by her ability to learn so much from just bones. In a character defining moment, special agent Booth recognizes the value of Dr. Brennan's skills and resolves to build a working relationship with her.

At the show's start, Brennan's team consists of her graduate student Zack Addy, a entomologist/geologist Dr. Jack Hodgins and a forensic reconstruction artist Angela Montenegro. In the second season, a pathologist is added, Dr. Camille Saroyan and Zack Addy finishes his degree and is given a job as a second forensic anthropologist at the Jeffersonian Institute.

The show is infused with the joy of science, the delight of solving puzzles and figuring out how things happened, and also the eccentric joys of experimentation. In one episode, they learn that a partial set of bones they have found came from a corpse that was dispersed by a wood chipper. In order to find the remaining bones they must recreate the dispersal pattern by putting a frozen pig through a wood chipper. Hodgins and Zack are delighted, life does not often offer legitimate work reasons to experiment with wood chippers. In another episode they attempt to recreate the face of an otherwise intact head that has had the skull removed, they insert a balloon into the skulless head and inflate, this experiment is an abject failure.

The forensic anthropologist premise yields a gruesome show, the team of Bones is brought in to deal with bodies in the worst states of decomposition. The disgusting corpses are borne by our scientists with professional nonchalance (mostly), expressions of squeamishness are primarily reserved for the non-scientists.

However, the real fuel of the show is the snappy chemistry between our leads: Brennan and Booth (played by Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz). In these two we have alpha personalities but disparate styles: Brennan is a committed rationalist and Booth is an emotional intuitive. Experiences have taught them that they should value one another's contribution, but they find this much more difficult in practice than in principle. The result is a constant vying for control that plays out as continual questioning and bickering, very much like sibling rivalry. Their mutual admiration (bordering on adoration) shines through the quarreling, and most episodes end with a moment of bonding between our leads.

Our duo takes its place within a tradition of complementary male/female detective teams such as David and Maddy (the rogue and the class act) from Moonlighting, Scully and Mulder (the skeptic and the dreamer) from X-files, and Nick and Nora (the worldly gentleman and the sheltered lady) from the Thin Man. Each of these duos struggle to share control, and ultimately find success through mutual trust.

"Bones" offers us the fantasy of supreme competence, they are impossibly good at their jobs. But it also offers us the fantasy of the ideal working relationships. The characters of "Bones" are surrounded by people both worthy of and capable of complete trust. They find themselves so completely known by their colleagues that they can find help past their human failings towards a more complete realization of themselves. Those of us at home can only pine for such a rewarding workplace.