I picked up the first season of Bones on DVD for perhaps obvious reasons—though, since I haven't dropped any clues to these reason in my blog thus far, I will have to explicate. A few years back, thanks to my good friend Dr. Di, I became a Buffy: the Vampire Slayer fan somewhat after the fact. I never quite "got" Buffy when it was on TV, having caught only the random episode. But Dr. Di was a devotee of the highest order, so when I found myself in the position of needing some new DVD entertainment (this was before I discovered the Carnegie Library's DVD extravaganza), I knew where to turn to borrow all seven seasons on DVD. Suffice to say, I became a Buffy fan, and so when I saw that David Boreanaz (famed for his role as Buffy's erstwhile beau) was on a new show, I took note—but did not take enough interest to watch it. When I saw earlier this year, however, that it was among the library's DVD offerings, I decided... heck! Let's give it a try.

Bones Season 1

Bones is a member of the CSI genre of crime shows. It's loosely based on the fictional novels that are authored by and in turn loosely based on the life of Kathy Reichs, a real life anthropologist who specializes in the examination of skeletal remains. Likewise, the story centers on main character Temperance Brennan, a brilliant anthropologist who team up with FBI agent Seeley Booth—played by the notorious David Boreanaz—to solve crimes by analyzing the bones of victims found in a number of peculiar and suspicious circumstances. At this juncture, it should be noted that Bones is not a particularly good popcorn and soda type of show—or at least wait until after the body is discovered before you grab for the snacks. These aren't the sprawled-across-the-bed hookers you're used to on CSI; nearly all the dead bodies are found are in an advanced stage of decomposition—the show is called Bones after all. After the requisite finding of the body, it's off to the lab for deep analysis by Brennan's steadfast team of scientists, and sometimes it's off to the field for Brennan and Booth.

Before you start to think that Bones is just another CSI rip-off, let me give some credit where credit is due. Bones makes a much more heroic effort to develop the characters. There's much more focus on the personal interaction among the members of the lab team, Brennan and Booth than you would expect from your average crime show. From banter to sorrow, the interplay among these characters is given much more air-time than on CSI and its clones. As a result the characters are much better developed and more... well more unique. Brennan is at once intellectual karate-kicking badass and self-sequestered anthropology geek who struggles with her new role in the field while maintaining her authority without blemish in the lab. She's one of the better female characters I've seen in fiction lately, lacking any of the stereotypical trappings of most TV gals. Booth is dashing, passionate and a bit irascible, not quite escaping all the detective clichés but holding his own as characters go. The added character development is all well and good—certainly a welcome change to the investigative crime show norm—but the fact remains that it is a crime show. The novelty of the cases, the intrigue and the character ensemble carry it for several episodes, but as the season wore on, the show did not become as closely tied to the characters as I would have liked. Toward the end of the season, I even found that when certain episodes were interrupted in my watching, I simply did not care how they ended, and thus skipped to the next episode. Of course, some episodes contained a sufficiently intriguing mystery to keep me watching, and the final episode shows some character-driven promise as Brennan begins to unravel the secrets of her childhood, leaving audiences with a steep cliffhanger until season 2. Despite the questions this season leaves unanswered, I will probably not rush to grab season 2, but rather check it out as time permits. Bones is certainly an improvement on most crime show fare, but it is ultimately about each episode's mystery and not about the characters they make such effort to elucidate.