Day One Hundred and Forty - BONES: Season 1, Episode 17, "Someone, please make the hurting stop."

Alright, I admit that I'm thoroughly Bones-hostile at this point... but, despite my quest for Fry, I am all but ready to throw in the towel with this episode.

First of all, it's set in New Mexico and written by someone who obviously hasn't spent any amount of time here. Second, it features a white-man hocking imitation native silverwork overseas, several hip-chic ranch houses and trailers, an anglo sheriff with a native half-sister who doubles as a model, and... to cap it all off, a vision quest in the desert.

You have GOT to be kidding me.

It would be one thing if they didn't traverse the state in ridiculous fashion, flying into Santa Fe to get to the "remote" county where Michaela Conlin's Angela is vacationing, driving for hours only to end up "Five days from the Highway and three days from Mexico."

Really? Three days walking will get you to Mexico? From the High Desert around Santa Fe?

Even if we consider that they drove for five hours, on back country roads, all around the wilderness, they managed to get so far out into the Southern Desert that they're closer to Mexico than the Highway? "Oh, Albuquerque and Santa Fe are in the same state? Let's just name drop those places as proof that we're in New Mexico."

Lord, save me from writers who have no earthly idea what they are talking about.

As far as mystery goes, I've long since given up any hope that Bones will present a smart case. That's not the end of the world, though, as I love Castle to death and it's the same way. Fortunately for Castle, it has much more in the way of witty banter and actor chemistry. Unfortunately for Bones, it's just more of the same "awkward smart girl with her everyman FBI partner."

Even with Michaela Conlin along for the ride, doing her best impression of an Urban Outfitters model in their Indian Chic line, it's hard to swallow pretty much everything about this episode.

This is especially true since it's supposed to be an Angela-centric plot that not only introduces and immediately murders the boyfriend she's supposedly had for THREE YEARS without ever touching on it in any previous episodes (so, literally NO background), but we're expected to swallow all of that AND the fact that they were totally in love, but she wasn't ready for a commitment.

It's like throwing several different lifetime movie plots into the supporting background of an episode's A-story (the B-story being some weird thing where the Jeffersonian people are trying to goad the awkward one into moving on with his life). Well, now that I think about it... it could totally be just a single lifetime movie plot.

I think the worst thing about the entire episode was when Angela had a ghost vision of the walking cliche, the missing native-american-trail-guide/super-hot-model, pointing Bones & Co. in the direction of where to find the still alive magic-injun girl... with not a spot of dirt on her clothes when they find her... after spending almost a week in the desert, sleeping rough and hiking towards civilization.

I'm starting to reach Dr.Who:First Season levels of hurt... the only thing, and I mean ONLY thing, keeping me going in this series is the freaking Stephen Fry guest spot that STILL HASN'T HAPPENED YET.

*sob*

Somebody, please... please, make this hurting stop.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~