TV Review: Bones

Cybill Shephard and Bruce Willis made it look so easy. Ditto Stefanie Powers and Robert Wagner. The investigative team that bantered with sparks going off repeatedly, so much so that you honestly didn't care what the case was about, you just sat back and enjoyed the sparks. The energy crisis has expanded to the point that even sexual heat is being effected.

"There's a reason I get all the guys and you don't," slurs a busty blond in the middle of Fox's Bones. It's a moment of truth directed at "Bones" (Emily Deschanel), the foresenic anthropoligist who also writes novels when not working at a Smithsonian type institute or solving crimes with the FBI. She's a busy gal.

Maybe that explains Deschanel's flat affect? It's as though she's suffering from a personal energy crisis. While all the problems with this show can't be pinned solely on Deschanel, the fact that she's supposed to be creating and receiving sparks from co-star David Boreanaz but never seems to get her fuse lit is a signifcant issue.

Looking at her moon face and stringy hair while she moves slow and speaks slow, you realize it's as though you're watching Shelly Long on Lithium. When she goes into profile, you notice that her gut sticks out almost as far as her breasts. It must be someone's idea of a no-nonsense career woman. And who has time for nonsense when they're holding down three careers (author, anthropo, and FBI crime solver)? She's like Wonder Woman suffering from multiple personalites and iron poor blood.

So who has time for the sexual banter?

Or maybe it's just that she's supposed to batner with David Boreanaz? At one point, he's shown outside, walking down the street while the camera takes great to spotlight and frame his butt. There's wiggle and there's jiggle. Has such a flat ass ever had so much loose flab on it? It was like he stuck a plate of jello down the back of his pants.

Or maybe his ass, like his hands, nostrils and eyebrows, just doesn't know how to stay still? Even parking it on a bar stool, he's gesturing so wildly and wiggling those eyebrows so crazed, it's as though he's up for the Anthony Quinn role in a remake of Zorba the Greek.

Boreanaz shot to fame as Angel on Buffy the Vampire Slayer where he spent most of his time in brooding silence. Then he got his own spin-off and Angel became a huge chatterbox (largely due to Boreanaz's fondness for adlibbing and a lack of restraint from anyone behind the camera). Boreanaz's character is called "Booth" but it's Angel's bad-side (Angelus) that he's playing. You get the same smirk, the same teasing of words.

Author and anthropologist Kathy Reichs assures her readers that this show will honor law enforcement. She obviously hasn't watched an episode. While Bones stakes her life on science, Booth doesn't trust forsenics. Which is a bit like teaming Jack Webb on Dragnet with a partner who doesn't believe in finger prints. But it's conflict, people, con-flict.

She thinks he's an airhead and spends far too much time obsessing over "the gun" he's packing.
He thinks she's full of it and can't stop trying to deflate her. (Note to Booth, she arrived deflated.)

Maybe Booth's apparent ADD was an acting choice after Boreanaz noted what no one casting or producing had: working opposite Deschanel, is working opposite a wall, a very plain wall. So Boreanaz ups the ampage at the risk of, if not a personal blackout, grave personal embarrassment. He risks looking like a hormonal adolescent humping a pillow.

Give him a passing grade for at least trying. The writers appear to be trying as well. They have Deschanel talking about her ass, talking about men's hips and legs and even using the term "scat" (did you ever think you'd hear that in the "family hour"?) so Bones should come off equal parts Mae West and Suzie Bright. Instead, she's a black hole sucking up all the energy around her.

We're not big on David Boreanaz but everything that works onscreen usually can be traced to his performance. Take the overly long dialogue, when it's all technical jargon that no one's going to follow, Boreanaz plows through it at a clipped pace only to slow down when a sexual taunt comes up.

He realizes what everyone else fails to, the writers don't care about the cases being investigated. If they did, when Bones and Booth catch the cannibal (yes, the episode revolves around a cannibal), they'd let the cannibal speak. Instead, as he's about to explain his motives, Bones hit him over the head with a bed pan and knocks him out. As he collapses, she explains that no one needs to hear another wack job explaining their motives.

A show that's not interested in the why's of a crime, that rushes through the hows, isn't interested in crime. Foresnics is used to dress up a romantic comedy. To update it. Hart to Hart revolved around a jet set couple with millions and was embraced in the go-go greed decade of the eighties. Moonlighting revolved around two people wounded by economics and cultural upheaval and was embraced in the lead up to the nineties.

Bones? Well maybe Deschanel's character is some commentary on the empty economy and Bones' multiple jobs are meant to suggest the struggle to stay afloat in our current climate? We think that's stretching it but we'll give them that back story. The trouble is there's no front story. There are no sparks between Bones and Booth and there's nothing to hold your interest. We feel they misnamed the lead character.

Bones? They should have called her "Thread Bare."