There was a time when BONES was a breath of fresh TV air. When it arrived in 2005, the networks were deep into Peak Grim Procedural mode, as shows like CSI, Criminal Minds and NCIS thrived and spawned seemingly endless spin-offs. Bones pumped some changes into the format, adding rom-com, screwball comedy, warmth and even sentimentality to the grisly murders that needed to be solved each week. As the killers were identified and apprehended, straight-arrow FBI agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) gradually found himself falling for Dr. Temperance Brennan, aka Bones (Emily Deschanel), a “squint” genius forensic anthropologist and novelist at Washington’s Jeffersonian Institute with a mien somewhere between eccentric and Aspergian.
The seasons went by, Booth and Bones willed their will-they-or-won’t-they, and gradually Bones‘s innovations became tropes. Just as Booth and Bones had hooked up, so did Hodgins (T.J. Thyme) and Angela (Michaela Conlin), and Cam (Tamara Taylor) and Arastoo (Pej Vahdat), and Sweets (John Francis Daley) and Daisy (Carla Gallo), and Aubrey (John Boyd) and Warren (Laura Spencer). The characters had children, and we came to meet their extended families (Bones’s dad was played by Ryan O’Neal, and Angela’s was in ZZ Top). Zack (Eric Millegan) was a killer, and then turned out several seasons later not to be guilty (more or less) after all. Poor Hodgins, revealed to be secretly rich, lost his fortune, got some of it back, and ended up in a wheelchair.
Unlike shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Dick Wolf’s stable of procedurals, Bones wasn’t built for constant cast churn, and as the series reached a second decade on the air, the tires became noticeably bald and the engine puttered along, passed by snazzier vehicles. If FOX hadn’t needed its ratings, steadily dropping but still relatively decent, Bones could have gone respectably to pasture several seasons ago, but instead it hung around, leaking appeal with every year, until this season was finally announced as its last.
The show tried to do some “final season” things this year, but with little verve. O’Neal’s character was killed off, and so was Aldo (Mather Zickel), an old friend of Booth’s, both victims of the season’s half-hearted continuing killer, who was after Booth because as an Army sniper he’d killed the man’s father. Tonight’s season finale, directed by Boreanaz and with a script credited to a portmanteau of writer/producers (EPs Michael Peterson and Jonathan Collier with Co-EP Karine Rosenthal, from a story by showrunner Stephen Nathan), completed the story with equal off-handedness, barely even showing the villain during the final confrontation. The hour provided one final mystery and twist (the villain’s supposed wife was really his sister!), and played briefly with the potentially disturbing idea of a brain injury to Bones affecting her capacity for complex thought–defused when she was instantaneously cured exactly when she needed to fix Booth’s dislocated arm. The final 10 minutes were devoted entirely to nostalgia and fan service, as the need to relocate from the bombed-out Jeffersonian during repairs allowed all the characters to say goodbye at length as they packed up their keepsakes.
Bones was likable even when it stopped being particularly good, and that’s largely due to the charm of the core cast, particularly Deschanel and Boreanaz, who had to play countless variations on their characters’ limited number of traits. But they, along with everyone else–ncluding the viewers–have earned a rest.
How long that rest will be is anyone’s guess. An increasingly desperate FOX has leaped on the reboot train more than anyone, with 24, The X-Files, and now Prison Break (which is taking over Bones‘s timeslot) barely allowed to grow cold before being defrosted. It’s only a matter of time until some kind of Bones “special event” is unveiled, and all one can hope is that when it comes, it recaptures just a bit of what made the series feel special in the first place.
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