I’ve been visiting my mom for the last couple weeks, which means I’ve been exposed to the full array of what passes for primetime scripted TV these days. It’s mostly various flavors of garbage copaganda, but yesterday I realized that, well, I think I enjoy watching a nice rerun of Bones.
I’ve been trying to sort through why Bones feels like the Platonic ideal of this sort of show, with mixed success.
- The two leads are (imo) attractive and generally likeable.
- Most of the characters are scientists and don’t inexplicably carry guns like on CSI, which makes it feel less like a “cop show”.
- The procedural elements of the A plot frequently feel secondary to the character beats that go along with them. House used to occasionally creep close to this balance, but frequently devolved into people sitting in a conference room yelling out increasingly obscure diseases.
- It is genuinely funny sometimes.
I don’t think I’m gonna start watching through the full Bones catalog or anything (there are, like, 250 episodes), but it’s been nice to get the occasional break from the brutal procession of shows glorifying the FBI.