Saturday, July 30, 2011

No Bones About it

I recently started watching the television show Bones. I had watched a few episodes here and there, but I decided to start from the beginning and watch the series in order. Here are some of my impressions.

The show has some obvious parallels to the X-Files, a series I followed quite closely at one point. Besides being broadcast on the same network, the shows are also similar in that the subject of each series is a man and a woman who work for the FBI in various capacities. While Bones isn’t about aliens like X-Files often was (at least the first two episodes I watched were not), Bones and Booth do have discussions about their cases in a fashion similar to the way Mulder and Scully did on X-Files. The woman in the pair is even the forensic scientist, much as Scully was. The nature of the discussions even seem to be similar, with one character basing her opinions on scientific facts (Scully and Bones) and the other character basing assumptions on “gut feelings” (Mulder and Booth). The sexual tension is even there, though Bones seems to hit the ground running, where as X-Files kept viewers on the edge of their seats for years concerning Mulder and Scully’s relationship, or rather their lack of one.

In the pilot episode and “The Man in the S.U.V.,” Bones is seemingly already interested in Booth. The writers waste no time setting up Bones and Booth as sexual foils of each other. To compare the series to X-Files again, while Mulder and Scully certainly had their sexual tension in the beginning, initially the title characters were rarely shown dating anyone, much less each other. In the second episode, Bone’s friend Angela is already spying on Booth for her, though without her permission. (Incidentally, I don’t mind admitting I have a slight crush on Michaela Conlin already, the actress who portrays Angela.)

Bones succeeds where other shows about crime do not in sustaining my interest: It’s not boring. As I have mentioned, I loved watching X-Files, but what I liked about that show wasn’t the criminal investigations as much as the interaction between the characters. Watching a man and a woman interact in an intelligent and respectful discussion about a situation was intellectually engaging, and this is the experience I am getting discovering Bones. From these early episodes, it seems the title characters are at odds on some key issues, but so were Mulder and Scully. I see parallels with Bones and Mulder as well. Both of them have lost family members and are driven to law enforcement as a result.

To sum up my early impressions of Bones, I have to say my opinion is very positive at this point. I wonder if the series can maintain its progression, as some shows lose some steam after several seasons. (I don’t need to go further than my own mention of X-Files for an example.) Also, I often lament that television shows currently running are either reality shows or crime dramas, neither of which (with a few exceptions) I am particularly interested in, but I could see myself tuning in to watch this show on a weekly basis.