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Esprit de corpse
The crime drama Bones brings heart to the police procedural
Last Updated: Friday, May 16, 2008 | 1:49 PM ET
By Sarah Liss, CBC News

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The prime-time crime drama Bones is a show about parsing the arcane language of the body. Secrets are revealed through the minute fissures in a skull, or the levels of toxic chemicals contained in decaying human tissue. But on last week’s episode, body language of a different kind led to a terrifying crisis.

A female stalker obsessed with Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) snuck into a karaoke club where his crime-fighting partner, Temperance “Bones” Brennan (Emily Deschanel), was getting her song on. As Brennan belted out Girls Just Wanna Have Fun — an ironic choice for a character that rarely lets loose — a transfixed Booth gazed on lovingly. His overt appreciation didn’t sit well with his jealous suitor, who sent a bullet hurtling into Booth’s chest. I watched (possibly even gasped) in abject horror when he saw the blinding white light. The camera blurred as he lost consciousness, the fade-out setting up the sweaty-palmed cliffhanger to the season finale on May 19.

Despite all that drama, the question of Booth’s survival is a non-issue. Even if I didn’t know that Deschanel and Boreanaz had signed on for another season (which kicks off in August), I’d feel safe in prognosticating Booth’s recovery. See, the key to Bones is the dynamic between Brennan and Booth; the producers know the show wouldn’t survive the departure of either. (I slept better noting that the bullet entered the right side of his chest; while dangerous, it seemed to miss his heart.)

Bones, on the other hand, succeeds because of its investment in credible characters. Deschanel’s role, as a forensic anthropologist commissioned by the FBI to help solve crimes, is the best thing about the show. Named after the protagonist of Kathy Reichs’s popular series of novels, Temperance Brennan is based less on the fictional character than on Reichs herself (who continues to teach the trade). Like FBI agent Fox Mulder on The X-Files, Brennan is insanely driven, motivated to seek out The Truth because of familial tragedy: her parents vanished when she was 15.

The Law & Order and CSI franchises base many of their cases on gruesome tales ripped straight from the headlines. The difference with the crimes on Bones is that they actually reveal something about the folks who solve them. While the addition of a quirky shrink (John Francis Daley) this season has forced Brennan to confront her intimacy and abandonment issues, she has been getting in touch with her demons since the series began. Casework has gradually allowed her to put together the pieces of her own puzzle. She discovered her mother’s remains in the first season, met her estranged father in the second and more recently watched dad stand trial for a murder he committed trying to protect his brood.

Square-jawed, tall and rangy, the raspy-voiced Deschanel has a commanding presence. Yet she seems awkward in her femininity; though attractive, she lacks the doll-like aura of most TV starlets. (Deschanel’s the type of woman designed for an epithet like “handsome.”) The actor has a BFA in theatre and a Hollywood pedigree; she and actor-slash-singer sister Zooey are the spawn of a cinematographer-director and an actress. But prior to Bones, Emily Deschanel’s acting credits were limited (a bit part in Cold Mountain and the wife in the 2006 basketball flick Glory Road), likely because she doesn’t fit comfortably into an ingénue mould.

Brennan boasts savant-like skills: she has mind-blowing focus and a remarkable ability to retain facts. But she is ignorant when it comes to less rational pursuits: she has little in the way of emotional perception, and to her, pop culture is like indecipherable cuneiform. (These traits suggest a mild form of Asperger Syndrome; in interviews, Deschanel and her producer have discussed the character’s potential pathology.)

Brennan’s guarded engagement with the world makes for a fascinating study. She mistrusts most people and doesn’t suffer fools gladly. (That said, she is nowhere near as misanthropic as the title character on House.) By and large, her most intimate relationships are with cadavers, which have detailed life stories encrypted in their ossified remains. It’s no surprise she became a forensic anthropologist — the posthumous body has a tough time telling a lie, a quality that appeals to a woman wrestling with betrayal.

And what’s Booth’s deal? Haunted by the body count he racked up as a professional sniper, Booth seeks redemption through fighting crime. He and Bones have conflicting approaches to solving crime: he reads people; she reads people’s parts. A spiritual guy who relies on intuition, Booth digs Bones for her confidence in facts. Unlike the whimsical soapiness of Grey’s Anatomy, where characters routinely humiliate themselves in their pursuit of their One True Love, Bones is about folks whose infatuation with each other plays out through their crush on knowledge. Brennan and Booth’s relationship hinges on intellectual one-upmanship, playful bickering and sexual tension; they’re like a more comedic version of Mulder and Scully.

Brennan’s colleagues at the Jeffersonian Institution — a massive museum and science facility in Washington, D.C., that’s clearly a fictionalized version of the Smithsonian — are a mixed bag of misfits. They range from the fragile boy genius to the facial reconstruction expert whose bombshell exterior belies her prodigious skills in computer manipulation and artistry. Somehow, under the roof of the Jeffersonian, amidst the detritus and bone fragments, these individuals have formed a club of kindred spirits. Bones has explored the personalities of its cabal of oddballs over the course of its three seasons, and the more we discover about these individuals, the more we understand their motivations for choosing such an esoteric (or morbid) line of work.

I gleefully soak up the nifty bits of anthropological, archeological and entomological trivia Bones provides; perhaps due to Reichs’s continued influence as a producer, the show puts a strong emphasis on pure science. But it’s the chemistry between Deschanel and Boreanaz that keeps me coming back. Their relationship is captivating, a meeting of equals whose love is founded on a professional respect. They certainly aren’t your run-of-the-mill odd couple.

The season finale of Bones airs May 19.

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