Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Day Ninety-nine - BONES: Season 1, Pilot, "Yet another procedural... but LOOK, quirky characters!"

Full disclosure, I have a complicated mental history when it comes to Bones.

You'd think, given how much of a fan I am of Boreanaz from his days on Buffy and Angel, that I would've jumped on the Bones bandwagon almost immediately. Unfortunately for the show, when it debuted in the mid-2000's, I didn't have good broadcast television... or cable... or home internet.

I also was in a strange sort of on and off again pseudo-relationship with a woman obsessed with the show. Due to how poisonous my relationship with her was (she also put me off True Blood and never gave back my Firefly box set), I always associated Bones with negative emotions.

As such, I was never really interested in the show... and certainly didn't go out of my way to put it in my queue.

That said, the thing that changed my mind was an off-handed reference to Stephen Fry guesting for an episode or two. Oddly enough, that simple fact allowed me to overcome my negative associations and give it a try. I have no idea which episode(s) he shows up in and don't aim to look it up so I will be forced to eventually watch it in its entirety.

Wouldn't do to have me cheat, would it?

To be honest, the pilot went pretty much as expected. Why? Because I figured it was a simple crime procedural... something that exists in dozens of examples across network and cable television at this very moment. And, to my eye, I was right.

That's not to say that Bones' pilot doesn't try and pull the average viewer in as quickly as possible. In the first minute, we are treated to co-star Michaela Conlin's lingerie as she attempts to extort arrival information from a rude gate jockey.

Yowza... and also cheap.

And that pretty much sums up the entirety of my thoughts concerning Bones.

Based on Kathy Reichs' novels, it's a stereotypical crime drama whose only appeal are its individual idiosyncrasies and hooks. With NCIS its Pauly Perrette and her eternally moe goth gal. With Criminal Minds, it's the Hannibal angle as the profilers inhabit the mindsets of their "unsubs."

For Bones' Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel), it's yet another lead with a weird personality who clashes with her everyman partner Booth (David Boreanaz). She's a genius scientist, and author, and a bit of a sex bomb... which makes a trifecta both for women to emulate and men to salivate over... while her opposite number does the same in reverse.

The fact that its ratings have generally been strong are of no surprise to me... but I'm not really inspired by anything save my creeping libido from the constant bevy of shots with Brennan in revealing tops (though, to be honest, I was more taken with Conlin's pink bustier).

This series will no doubt inhabit the darker recesses of my queue for quite some time, never really being watched, but never shoved away and removed, either. It still reminds me of those painful bits years ago and isn't all that thrilling a series, but sometimes you just want to rub salt in your own wounds.

Yes, that's it, I think... Bones brings out my inner masochist. Huh. Never would've considered that if not for the blog.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

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