Bones is a procedural crime drama that is loosely based on the life of Kathy Reichs. It is about a woman named Temperance Brennan who is a forensic anthropologist and crime novelist who works at the Jeffersonian Institute identifying human remains and is requested to work with the FBI and help aid in their investigations. She works with an agent named Seeley Booth. When Booth finds the remains of a possible murder victim he calls up Dr. Brennan who he refers to as “Bones” and it becomes her job to study the remains, discern cause of death and help Booth find the killer. The process in which they gather evidence will be familiar to any who has watched crime dramas before; they get the call to go to a crime scene where Dr. Brennan collects evidence then takes it back to the lab, analyses it and discovers clues which Booth uses along with his years of experience to conduct his investigation and find the murderer. Luckily there is much more to the show than that basic outline. For instance most of the characters in the show work at the Jeffersonian as scientists and sometimes the lack of social skills exhibited by Bones and her colleges lead to interesting quarrels with Booth and this sort of clash between two very different types of people one social and the other intellectual is very entertaining to watch.
One of the things that set this show apart from others in the genre is that rather than drawing viewers in by trying to make evidence collecting seem cool with all kinds of flashy camera angles quickly spinning around the room it focuses on the characters. That way you actually care about and connect with all of the people on the show which gets you invested in it and keeps you coming back for more. Each character is interesting and entertaining to watch in their own unique way, not just the main character like we see in most cop shows. Another good thing is that in order to contrast the dark and depressing things they investigate on the show there is a lot of humour in place but unlike others that put one line zingers in now and again that just feel weird the jokes here are well timed (not at crime scenes) and genuinely funny. Now this isn’t to say that they don’t take their work seriously because all of the characters do, especially Dr. Brennan and agent Booth who sometimes get very emotionally involved in the cases they are trying to solve. The passion that Bones and Booth bring to the investigation brings a great deal of life and importance to the show.
The acting in the show is great, like I wrote above each character is interesting and much of that comes the performances given by each cast member. The best performance is given by Emily Deschanel who plays Bones and gives a complex and compelling performance. She does a great job portraying all of the emotions that Dr. Brennan goes through when dealing with dead bodies and the families that miss them. It is a hard performance because of the fact that Dr. Brennan is a very strong female character who is very rational but at times becomes overwhelmed by her work, the things she has to face when solving a case occasionally leads to some very vulnerable scenes. Despite the challenge of conveying such different emotional ranges Emily Deschanel does a great job. David Boreanaz, who some of you might recognize from his role in Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, plays Seeley Booth and while most of the time his character is very laid back and cool just like with Dr. Brennan there is a lot of emotional depth to him. He also does a great job, so much so that he has made Booth my favourite character on the show despite the fact that Dr. Brennan is the central character. Michaela Conlin, T. J. Thyne and Eric Millegan play colleagues of Dr. Brennan along with Jonathan Adams who plays their boss. All of them give solid performances in their supporting roles and while all are interesting characters especially Angela played by Conlin and Hodgins played by Thyne, not much time is spent on them since the show focuses on Bones and Booth.
In this season we are introduced to all of the characters and start to find out more about them and why they do what they do. For instance we learn that the reason Dr. Brennan works so hard to identify dead bodies is that she feels that when someone is killed and dumped in a ditch they are taken not only from this world but from their families who are still alive and deserve closure. Something that she was never given after both of her parents disappeared when she was fifteen.
The first season of Bones is very entertaining and a promising indicator of where the show is going. With a great cast solid writing and compelling characters Bones is easily one of the best crime dramas on TV and believe me, I would know because I have definitely seen my fare share of them.
