Image used under a Creative Commons license, courtesy of RavenU.
I didn't watch Bones from the beginning (but then we've established that I'm never present at the creation). But I fell in love with in in reruns and started watching in earnest in the third season. We've all heard the comparisons to Moonlighting. But while I do love the sexual chemistry between Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz, and the fact that someone figured out the Boreanaz is not at his best as a brooder, the real reason I adore Bones is that it's the best network show on the air about the adults life of successful nerds.
The scientists on the show are undeniably brilliant, whether they're anthropologists, entymologists, or forensic artists. They've been able to make careers--and to find a true home at work--by pursuing their passions and intellect. But they're not socially under-developed geeks, surrounded by a corona of patheticness despite their professional success. This is no Big Bang Theory. Bones is about attractive people with active romantic lives, good wardrobes, and friends, who also happen to be extraordinarily intelligent and talented in a set of very rarified fields.
They're not perfect, of course. They have flaws, and substantial ones, but the show has done a very good job of watching the characters struggle with those weaknesses. Bones' (Deschanel, in the title role as a brilliant forensic anthropologist) initial coldness has consequences: she walked away from what could have been a great love, and has kept another at considerable length for years. Angela's (Michaela Conlin, as the lab's artist) flightiness, which she's long disguised as bohemianism, has had terrible consequences for her relationships with Hodgins (T.J. Thyne, the entymologist) and Roxie (Angela's girlfriend in Season 4): while Bones mostly hurts herself, Angela's actually hurt other people. Hodgins' conspiracy theories helped doom one of his best friends. And while Zach's (Eric Millegan, who played another anthropologist in the first three seasons) fate was controversial among the show's fans at the time, I actually think it was an interesting read on the danger of failing to adapt socially, and to cling too hard to the tools of nerddom. Sweets (John Francis Daley, the FBI psychologist and profiler) may have started out using Bones and Booth (Boreanaz, as Bones' FBI partner), but he ends up needing them. The show also sets up a realistic set of encounters between these recovered nerds and people who were popular in high school, like Cam (Tamara Taylor, the head of the lab) and Booth, playing with the ghosts of unpopularity and insecurity without having those memories dominate the characters.
The show also frequently does a good job of dealing with subcultures, and treating people with understanding. Even when it misfires, Bones' intentions usually seem good. The show's spent time with hardcore comics and sci-fi fans, Black Metal bands, the homeless, runaways and foster children and former leftist radicals; condemned plastic surgery and child beauty pageants; investigated the death of a transgendered minister, Chinese burial rites, and therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorders; and had characters debate S&M. It's pop anthropology with a warm heart.
Bones succeeds because of a combination of rare and deft balances, and because of that, I was surprised by how uneven the show was last season. There were quite a few good episodes (and anyone who gives Deirdre Lovejoy work is permanently on my good side), but there were also substantial missteps. An episode where members of the lab showed substantial disrespect for a new Muslim employee at the lab left a particularly sorry taste in my mouth, as did an episode where some of them treated an androgynous Japanese scientist as a curiosity rather than as a colleague. A major plot developed hinged on an exceedingly lame series of poorly-executed hallucinations that seemed to demand substantial contortions in episodes. There was a lot of unwarranted and overhyped romantic drama that did little to advance character development. And perhaps worst of all, the series finale was a badly-written surreal mishmash that was meant to be an homage to serious fans that felt slapdash and generally unfunny, and required the folks who run the show and act in it to lie to a lot of news outlets. You can do crazy season finales if it's Joss Whedon and it's "Restless." And though I love Bones, it's more purely pop, without the artistic credibility or writing strength to pull off a comparable feat.
And so Bones faces substantial challenges in plot and execution this season. There are two major potential romances that need to develop in a plausible, sincere way. One character needs to deal with her still-new role as a mother, while another needs to cope with her desire to have a child. Last season, the show relied on a rotation of guest actors to fill a vacant slot in the laboratory, but it's a gimmick with an expiration date. As a related issue, Zach's character, and the consequences of his downfall, were at best marginally addressed last season, and substantial questions about that downfall really need to be resolved. That's a lot of plot to deal with, and to fit in around the rotting bodies.
But much more importantly, Bones needs to restore its credibility. The show pushes its fans, and that's a good thing. But it shows no respect for your fans to feed them something poorly written and to call it a gift to them, and it shows no respect for your characters to leave them with a lot of raveled threads, and to abruptly make them behave in ways that have little to do with the personas you've established for them. The show has had an unpleasant history of odd inconsistencies, whether making Booth and Bones smooch only to never mention it again; dropping a gripping story about a serial kidnapper for a season and a half only to pick it up again and subvert it to a dopey plot device; implying that a character convicted of a heinous crime is innocent and inexplicably failing to follow up on it. Doing this once or twice might be all right, but as a repeat problem, it feels like sloppiness. I'd hate to think the show is irretrievably broken. But I am concerned with that increasing carelessness, and with the misuse of strong characters. Bones has struggled with its pop reputation, and I've always been pleased to see serious outlets like Vanity Fair giving it deserved recognition. Throwing away the work that got the show there would be crime.