'Bones' joins Thursday's Battle

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Remember the days of "Must-See TV," when NBC dominated Thursday night and all the TV competition ran for cover?

Well, those days are long gone. In fact, given how Thursday is one of the top nights of the week for TV viewership - and one of the top advertising nights with Hollywood movie studios trying to hype their weekend new releases - it's become a real donnybrook, not just "Survivor" and "CSI" battling "Ugly Betty" and "Grey's Anatomy" and NBC's comedies and "ER," but cable dramas like "The Beast" mixing it up as well.

Now Fox is rejoining the battle by moving the popular, if determinedly slight "Bones" to Thursdays, starting with back-to-back episodes at 7 p.m. today on WFLD Channel 32. And USA gets back in the mix as well with the return of the second season of the lightly lively "Burn Notice" at 9 tonight.

What "Bones" and "Burn Notice" share is an offhand ease, as if nothing could be simpler than making an entertaining, successful TV show. Can they compete with shows trying as hard to please as "CSI," "Grey's Anatomy" and "The Beast?" Well, nothing has succeeded in killing them yet.

Not even being moved at one point or another to just about every night of the week, where "Bones" is concerned. The wonderful chemistry and ever-simmering sexual tension between Emily Deschanel's title character, Dr. Temperance Brennan, and David Boreanaz's hunky FBI agent Seeley Booth have made this series a semi-hit wherever Fox puts it. And now it's being sent into the breach on one of the toughest nights of the week (Sunday being the other).

How indestructible is "Bones?" It doesn't just "jump the shark" - that is, dare itself to decay with predictable, cliched plots - it jumps a series of sharks and just keeps on going. Having already gone on one travel episode, to London, the show's time-slot premiere tonight, "Double Trouble in the Panhandle," finds Bones and Booth joining a Texas carnival to solve the double murder of conjoined twins. No matter how many times popular TV characters have run off to join the circus or carnival, only once has it been carried off well, in the Darin Morgan's "Humbug" episode of "The X-Files."

"Double Trouble" isn't quite up to that comparison, but it finds "Bones'" charms on ample display, starting with Deschanel donning a revealing circus outfit to play the lady target in a knife-throwing act with Boreanaz's Booth, who considers himself able thanks to his FBI training. See, they have to trick the notoriously insular circus folk (including a ringmaster-manager played by Andy Richter) into trusting them before they start asking questions, but hey, if you start asking questions at all about "Bones" it has a tendency to unravel, not that that ever matters. As long as Deschanel and Boreanaz are onscreen, just sit back and enjoy; that's the "Bones" way, and it figures to work as well on Thursday as it did on any other night.

Yes!! Ratings justify this article! I loved it! Thanks, a2b, for posting it!

I definitely gave up the Office to see the second episode of Bones thursday night. Me and another friend of mine forced it on our other 3 friends.

lol Lo! You're a genuine BONES fan!! *giggles* Yay for you!!

Great article! Thanks for the post!

Yeah, my friend was talking about Grey's last Thursday, but there was no way I wanted to miss that second episode of Bones.

Cool article. Hopefully we'll do really well on Thursdays and Fox can take that as a sign and...I don't know...keep it there for more than half a season?