Day One Hundred and Eighty-eight - BONES: Season 2, Episode 9, "Occasionally, hate-watching pays off."

It should come as no surprise to most of my regular readers that I hate BONES... and that I hate-watch BONES... and that my mission is to get at least to the Stephen Fry guest spots.

Well, that hasn't happened yet, but I still soldier on, coming back to the series for some pain-binging every once in a while.

Today, I was actually surprised... not by the blah mystery or the leads (Deschanel and Boreanaz), but by the performance of nominal support character TJ Thyne, who plays Hodgins on the show.

A lot of the fandom for the show, when it doesn't orbit the Moonlighting Syndrome of Booth and Brennan, revolves around Hodgins and his courtship with the emotive and sensual Angela (Michaela Conlin). At this point in the series the two have gone on a date that was "too good" and Angela has rejected him. It's obvious, though, that he can never go back to just friends.

While I'm not a fan of the instant "you're alive!" kiss at the end of the episode, which feels like a cheat to throw the two together via near-death experience (Hello? Speed, anyone?), I do really like the cathartic moments that Hodgins has while buried alive with Temperance.

His emotes, his painful screams, his tears and sobs... very well acted by TJ Thyne. Honestly, his performance during the entirety of those segments of the episode are the best acting that I've seen in this entire... freaking... series.

Yes, it's a far too easy and convenient way to wrap up the tension between Angela and Hodgins, but I'll take any small victories that I can get from this series at this point.

So, nothing left to do but keep putting one metaphorical foot in front of the other, step by step, episode by episode, until I reach my cut off point. Well, that and hope that Pushing Daisies joins Netflix sometime in the near future. I'd much rather that quirky procedural to this one.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~