Television: Bones

We all know I love Bones; I generally count it as my favorite television show. I like the characters--their interactions, their chemistry. The ensemble cast is fantastic.

This is not to say, however, that this show doesn't sometimes go off the rails. Why do the Christmas episodes always play out like bad fan fiction, for example? Daring the two leads to kiss? Finding reasons to strip Booth down and create tension? It's just dumb. I feel like I'm being pandered to in those situations. As in, We know you want them to kiss, but we can't mess up their relationship, so here's how we do it: we get the D.A. to dare them to kiss. See?! Um, thanks, but an overly contrived situation is not what I want at all.

This season--at least at the start of it--was about how Booth had sort of "fake" fallen in love with Brennan while in a coma. His brain had created some parallel life in which he and Brennan were married and were expecting a baby. They owned a night club together! All the best buds were there! Again, can anyone say "fan fiction fodder" three times fast?

And the origin of this fantastic voyage? Brennan's own Mary Sue story, a book which she wrote, read aloud to Booth while he was in his coma, and then deleted.

Of late they've seemed to drop this particular plot point. They've also dropped the whole Booth-can't-remember-basic-stuff subplot as well. For a while there, Booth couldn't remember what kinds of clothes he liked to wear, how to fix plumbing . . . Stuff he evidently knew before. He'd come out of the coma a changed man; Brennan found him distinctly different in a variety of ways. That served a purpose for a handful of episodes then abruptly disappeared, as best I can tell. I'm not sorry that it did, but I can only suppose it'll have to come back sooner or later. I'm just having a hard time visualizing the context, seeing as how they've ignored the situation for so long now.

I still love Bones, of course, and I'm not going to stop watching. Yet. We'll see where this season ends.