FOX

Why did I slow down and stare as I drove past an overturned SUV on I-70 a few months ago, where bodies were lying face up on the pavement? Why do I wish a Feardotcom copycat would execute people and broadcast it in a live webcast? And why the hell do I watch FOX so much? I don't know... Wait, I do -- I'm messed up.

Fox provides us all with yet another crime scene investigation series that not only solves crimes and explains forensic science in mind-numbing detail, but probes the humanity behind the pigs that do the sleuthing. Bones features Emily Deschanel as Dr. Temperance Brennan, an anthropologist with an uncanny ability to analyze bones when they are too decomposed or burned for the bumbling police to rely on usual identification methods. She can take a quick look at a "soaker" or a "crispy critter" and determine the victim's age, sex, race and even the sports he played (I call bullshit). But looking at her, all I know is that she can analyze my bone any day of the week. Get it? I like fucking hot chicks...

The series premier was the typical pilot episode. We learn that she is a sassy wise-ass redhead who does things her own way; that she has trouble with relationships; that her rigid scientific approach to crime solving clashes with her partner's more intuitive, traditional methods; that her parents disappeared without a trace when she was 15; and that instead of celebrating this like a normal teenager, she mourns. Also, in Topeka, Kansas there's this one viewer who watched the first episode and didn't figure out that Temperance's missing parents will be an intricate plot detail.

Within the first five minutes, she is analyzing a female skeleton the FBI pulled out of a lake near Arlington National Cemetery. Fast-forward through 15 minutes of bullshit and they create a holographic image of her from her skull. Thousands of people disappear every year but that doesn't prevent her partner, Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz, best known as the dopey hunk from Angel) from immediately recognizing the image as a woman who disappeared two years ago, spouting off her name, the day she disappeared, and her parents' names. Fast-forward through more boring plot development, and Temperance determines that a certain Senator (that the victim happened to intern for) impregnated and killed this woman. Insert Gary Condit/Joe Scarborough joke here.

I wonder if I'm the only person concerned that the ability of our congressmen to impregnate and then kill interns without consequence is treated as a matter of course in pop culture. Anyway, Temperance casually confronts this senator at Capitol Hill, asking if he will submit to a DNA test. He refuses, so she steals his chewing gum from the ash tray he threw it in. She would need a warrant to do this in real life, but we just watched her create a holographic image of a dead person from their skull so whatever. The senator's lawyer tries to wrestle it from her so she knees him in the nuts and barrels for the door... and the DC Police/Homeland Security don't descend on the scene and beat the living shit out of her???

I think you'll like the show... if you like the idea of watching entire scenes where Temperance does nothing but analyze bones while crappy "alternative" music plays in the background. Don't forget the fake forensic science, the way they reveal the inner emotions of the characters by smacking you in the nose, or the way the investigation dead-ends with only 5 minutes left in the show until a sudden insight leads the cops to some stalker that actually killed the woman. In the end, it takes a union of Temperance's scientific methods and Booth's Sherlock Holmes-style investigations to catch the culprit, which just goes to show that... I think I was supposed to learn a lesson there but I stopped caring long before the final credits rolled. I am Joe Newhard.

Review Posted: 9.27.05