I Read A Book On Body Language: Bones, Seasons One and Two
Bones is not a great show. It's engaging, sometimes clever, pretty uniformly well acted, usually pretty well written, and has a somewhat kookier premise than the average modern criminal procedural. It's also, to go with the kookier premise, a kookier show, which is the sort of things producers say about their projects all the time: "Well, I think what sets us apart from all the other procedurals on TV right now...is our sense of humor, and the focus on the characters." In the case of Bones that's actually true. (The character thing is also true, or at least it used to be, of Without a Trace, hands down my favorite of the CBS procedurals back when I was watching it. It's not funny, but the writing and the performances were usually top notch and Bones doesn't have anything to match Anthony LaPaglia's weekly acting clinic.) The show has goofy Christmas episodes and two of the characters do silly experiments to prove hypotheses (sending a frozen pig through a wood chipper, or blowing up a wall, or letting sea monkeys loose on a chunk of SPAM), and one of the characters has, for no particular reason, Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top as a father.
I have a weird fascination with TV shows that don't quite make it or cut it, which is why I slogged through all three seasons of Millennium: not affection for Lance Henrikson's skeletal mug, but because it was interesting to me how each season was essentially a new TV show with the same characters and it just never found its footing no matter how many times they tried to revamp it. (Well, it also had to do with my personal theories about Chris Carter's creative frustration, but.) What kept me going with Bones through the first few discs of Season One was David Boreanaz, which in itself was enough to make me take notice. Boreanaz' growth as an actor in the ten years or so since he showed up in the pilot episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is pretty astounding. Simply put, he wasn't very good; by the time he was headlining Angel he'd grown into the character and kept improving as the series went on. Now, playing a completely different character - and one that I suspect is probably more like Boreanaz himself - he's engaging, funny, subtle when he needs to be but always good for some broad mugging, and downright interesting to watch. Whoever Boreanaz's acting coach is should give him- or herself a pat on the back. (As should, I often point out, Chuck Norris'. Back in crap like The Octagon Norris is unwatchable, basically a glitchily animated wood carving, and you shouldn't underestimate the work and progress involved in going from being THAT BAD to the sturdy mediocrity of his performance in Walker, Texas Ranger.)
So while the show was frustrating me I kept watching because Boreanaz kept making me giggle, and the rest of the show kind of grew up around him, although the elemental problems I first had with it are still hanging around. (I haven't seen any of Season Three, and won't until DVD. Incidentally, the first half-season or so has some horrifically bad ADR, but either they got better at it or started being happier with the shooting scripts.) The main issue is that (and this is ultimately why I thought I'd have something to say in this post) I don't think the writers on the show are nearly as smart as the characters. I'm sure the writers on Bones are by and large intelligent people, but with the exception of Booth, who's a clever but fairly average guy, they're dealing with characters who are supposed to be brilliant, and the show's portrayal of brilliance, particularly scientific brilliance, is frustrating to the point of being moronic. Not that I'm a scientific genius, so it's possible that I'm wrong here, but being a forensic anthropologist doesn't actually imply that you have Asperger's. Originally all three of the brilliant scientist characters (Temperance "Bones" Brennan herself, Zack Addy, and Jack Hodgins) were written like hyperintelligent assholes who didn't comprehend the lives of us mere mortals who didn't reduce everything to testable hypotheses. Eventually I think the writers figured out this was a problem and the character of Jack, who was the most assholish of the troika, was changed significantly to the point where it's not a mystery how he can successfully interact with other human beings. Both Bones and Zack, her protege, are just too out of touch for this world, and the show's early and kneejerk deployment of its abortive catchphrase - Bones saying "I don't know what that means" when somebody drops a cultural reference - was a consistent loser that, thankfully, has been largely abandoned. For one thing there was no logic to what Bones did and didn't know: she doesn't know who Hannibal Lecter is, but she's also supposed to be a highly successful author of ooky crime and mystery thrillers, and we're supposed to believe that her publishers, at the least, have never mentioned the work of Thomas Harris? In another episode the character Angela says, while lost in the desert, "We're about 100 miles from where Jesus lost his sandals," and Bones is predictably clueless. Well, I'd never heard that one before either, Dr. Brennan, but unlike really smart scientists I've actually encountered a fucking metaphor in the past, can recognize one when I hear it, and have the logical and intuitive and contextual skills to work out roughly what the metaphor is supposed to indicate. Jesus. Incidentally, Emily "my sister has a well-received new album out but I'm on a successful TV show!" Deschanel has commented on discussing the Asperger's-y nature of her character with the show's creator, and for one character it's a valid if inconsistently written choice, but having Zack Addy be essentially the same way, except he's seen lots of science fiction movies, runs back into the weird stereotyping which for all the world looks like some people sat around a table and tried to imagine what it would be like to be really, really smart. I suppose this is a recurring problem with any fictional world - the writer can only travel so far outside his own experience and capabilities to create a character, and the presentation of people who are exceptional in ways the writer is not can often ring false. I'm not as smart as Dr. Brennan, but I'm smart enough to know that people as smart as she is (and it's not like she graduated from MIT at seventeen or anything) aren't necessarily socially maladjusted headcases who struggle with any communication that isn't hyperliteral.
But but but: some of the episode premises are really clever, and Stephen Fry made a multi-episode guest appearance as a psychiatrist that was, for me, one of the series' high points, and the chemistry between Boreanaz and Deschanel has evolved into something that does approximate, in terms of onscreen spark, the Mulder/Scully dynamic the show self-consciously was shooting for (and namechecked, to Brennan's predictable cluelessness, in the pilot episode). And also there's Ryan O'Neal as Brennan's father, in a story arc that I understand may or may not have resolved in Season Three but provided some of the show's best and most engaging acting as well as ultimately my favorite single scene thus far. Should it be telling that my favorite scene doesn't involve any of the regular actors, or any dialogue? Probably, but I haven't yet seen another network TV show aestheticize horrific violence in a way so memorably and captivatingly creepy and compelling. Fun fact: the episode this came from was directed by David Duchovny.
I have a weird fascination with TV shows that don't quite make it or cut it, which is why I slogged through all three seasons of Millennium: not affection for Lance Henrikson's skeletal mug, but because it was interesting to me how each season was essentially a new TV show with the same characters and it just never found its footing no matter how many times they tried to revamp it. (Well, it also had to do with my personal theories about Chris Carter's creative frustration, but.) What kept me going with Bones through the first few discs of Season One was David Boreanaz, which in itself was enough to make me take notice. Boreanaz' growth as an actor in the ten years or so since he showed up in the pilot episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is pretty astounding. Simply put, he wasn't very good; by the time he was headlining Angel he'd grown into the character and kept improving as the series went on. Now, playing a completely different character - and one that I suspect is probably more like Boreanaz himself - he's engaging, funny, subtle when he needs to be but always good for some broad mugging, and downright interesting to watch. Whoever Boreanaz's acting coach is should give him- or herself a pat on the back. (As should, I often point out, Chuck Norris'. Back in crap like The Octagon Norris is unwatchable, basically a glitchily animated wood carving, and you shouldn't underestimate the work and progress involved in going from being THAT BAD to the sturdy mediocrity of his performance in Walker, Texas Ranger.)
So while the show was frustrating me I kept watching because Boreanaz kept making me giggle, and the rest of the show kind of grew up around him, although the elemental problems I first had with it are still hanging around. (I haven't seen any of Season Three, and won't until DVD. Incidentally, the first half-season or so has some horrifically bad ADR, but either they got better at it or started being happier with the shooting scripts.) The main issue is that (and this is ultimately why I thought I'd have something to say in this post) I don't think the writers on the show are nearly as smart as the characters. I'm sure the writers on Bones are by and large intelligent people, but with the exception of Booth, who's a clever but fairly average guy, they're dealing with characters who are supposed to be brilliant, and the show's portrayal of brilliance, particularly scientific brilliance, is frustrating to the point of being moronic. Not that I'm a scientific genius, so it's possible that I'm wrong here, but being a forensic anthropologist doesn't actually imply that you have Asperger's. Originally all three of the brilliant scientist characters (Temperance "Bones" Brennan herself, Zack Addy, and Jack Hodgins) were written like hyperintelligent assholes who didn't comprehend the lives of us mere mortals who didn't reduce everything to testable hypotheses. Eventually I think the writers figured out this was a problem and the character of Jack, who was the most assholish of the troika, was changed significantly to the point where it's not a mystery how he can successfully interact with other human beings. Both Bones and Zack, her protege, are just too out of touch for this world, and the show's early and kneejerk deployment of its abortive catchphrase - Bones saying "I don't know what that means" when somebody drops a cultural reference - was a consistent loser that, thankfully, has been largely abandoned. For one thing there was no logic to what Bones did and didn't know: she doesn't know who Hannibal Lecter is, but she's also supposed to be a highly successful author of ooky crime and mystery thrillers, and we're supposed to believe that her publishers, at the least, have never mentioned the work of Thomas Harris? In another episode the character Angela says, while lost in the desert, "We're about 100 miles from where Jesus lost his sandals," and Bones is predictably clueless. Well, I'd never heard that one before either, Dr. Brennan, but unlike really smart scientists I've actually encountered a fucking metaphor in the past, can recognize one when I hear it, and have the logical and intuitive and contextual skills to work out roughly what the metaphor is supposed to indicate. Jesus. Incidentally, Emily "my sister has a well-received new album out but I'm on a successful TV show!" Deschanel has commented on discussing the Asperger's-y nature of her character with the show's creator, and for one character it's a valid if inconsistently written choice, but having Zack Addy be essentially the same way, except he's seen lots of science fiction movies, runs back into the weird stereotyping which for all the world looks like some people sat around a table and tried to imagine what it would be like to be really, really smart. I suppose this is a recurring problem with any fictional world - the writer can only travel so far outside his own experience and capabilities to create a character, and the presentation of people who are exceptional in ways the writer is not can often ring false. I'm not as smart as Dr. Brennan, but I'm smart enough to know that people as smart as she is (and it's not like she graduated from MIT at seventeen or anything) aren't necessarily socially maladjusted headcases who struggle with any communication that isn't hyperliteral.
But but but: some of the episode premises are really clever, and Stephen Fry made a multi-episode guest appearance as a psychiatrist that was, for me, one of the series' high points, and the chemistry between Boreanaz and Deschanel has evolved into something that does approximate, in terms of onscreen spark, the Mulder/Scully dynamic the show self-consciously was shooting for (and namechecked, to Brennan's predictable cluelessness, in the pilot episode). And also there's Ryan O'Neal as Brennan's father, in a story arc that I understand may or may not have resolved in Season Three but provided some of the show's best and most engaging acting as well as ultimately my favorite single scene thus far. Should it be telling that my favorite scene doesn't involve any of the regular actors, or any dialogue? Probably, but I haven't yet seen another network TV show aestheticize horrific violence in a way so memorably and captivatingly creepy and compelling. Fun fact: the episode this came from was directed by David Duchovny.
Labels: TV
posted by medrawt at
11:23
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