BONES IN EXCERPT FROM VANITY FAIR

by suzyquzy Sun Oct 05, 2008 4:57 am

Television series can ill afford an intense solar ego around which everything else is side dressing. Networks have learned their lesson from being at the mercy of Roseanne’s ax-like mood swings, of draping too many hopes on even so prodigious a talent as Bette Midler (whose CBS sitcom lasted one dribbly season). TV is less hierarchical than Hollywood, more willing to share. The intimacy of television offers an ideal frame for the sort of teamwork at which Hollywood once excelled, from Nick and Nora in the Thin Man series to the Hope and Crosby “road” pictures to Rock and Doris to Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Them days are gone. It’s difficult to think of more negative chemistry than that created by Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx as Crockett and Tubbs in the Miami Vice movie, a marriage of sullen dispositions and defiant stubble. Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in The Bucket List were like two bank statements sharing a bittersweet sunset. The rapport and banter have migrated to television, whose matched sets include Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock on Star Trek, Jerry Orbach and Chris Noth in the classic years of Law & Order, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson on The X-Files,, David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanelon Bones (the dynamic between Boreanaz’s James Garner aplomb and exasperation and Deschanel’s Gene Tierney–ish fine-etched beauty makes for the most interesting evolving relationship on TV), Larry David and Jeff Garlin on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert lobbing it back and forth from their respective Comedy Central fake newsers.