Brennan and Booth leave the building

“Bones” (8 p.m., WHBQ-TV Channel 13) wraps up after 12 seasons, leaving the air as Fox’s longest-running scripted drama.

The series finale begins in the aftermath of a bombing at the Jeffersonian. The scenes of the team scrambling to survive in the bombed-out wreckage of a federal facility remind viewers that “Bones,” like the “CSI” franchise that inspired it, is a product of the post-9/11 era, a time when entertainment blended an acceptance of high-tech forensics with a casual, tongue-in-cheek morbidity.

The Fox publicity team has catalogued the number of bones on the Jeffersonian set (76,000), the number of feet of intestines used by makeup artists (400) and the number of dead bodies seen by viewers over the course of a dozen seasons (370).

As Brennan comes to, she realizes that the force of the explosion has damaged her brain, keeping her from the lightning-fast insights that helped her cajole 150 confessions from killers over the course of the show.

She freaks out, but in her own fashion, devoid of overt emotions. Brennan rather logically and sadly concludes that if she were robbed of her powers of deduction, then she would no longer be herself. There are worse ways to write a character out of a series — if that’s the way things end up.

Without giving too much away, this is not a series finale for the history books. It basically goes through the motions of wrapping things up. The destruction of the lab and the retrieval of old keepsakes offer up some misty montage moments, but don’t expect much more.

We get one last chance to see Brennan react in an obtuse fashion to Booth’s pop culture references. Seeing her upset, he assures her that “we’re way better than Mulder and Scully.” Brennan may not get the allusion, but Fox viewers will.

And they’ll remember that “The X-Files” has also returned from the dead to appear on a Fox schedule that includes reboots of “24” and “Prison Break.” And that’s just this year. For all the best reasons, I hope that never happens to “Bones.” Its time has passed.

» Criminal forensics loom large on “Dead Reckoning” (7 p.m., WKNO-TV Channel 10) as it explores efforts to bring war criminals to justice in the 70 years since the end of World War II. “Dead” devotes an hour to the trials of Nazi and Japanese war criminals (7 p.m.), the effects of Cold War proxy conflicts on millions of civilians (8 p.m.), and the use of international courts to contend with war crimes since the 1990s (9 p.m.).

» TV-themed DVDs available today include “Planet Earth II.”

Other highlights

» Battles continue on “The Voice” (7 p.m., WMC-TV Channel 5).

» The season finale of “People Icons” (9 p.m., WATN-TV Channel 24) glances back at past “Sexiest Man Alive” winners.

» Philip and Elizabeth embark on a new mission on “The Americans” (9 p.m., FX).

» “Jungletown” (9 p.m., Viceland) follows idealists who hope to create “the world’s greatest sustainable modern town” in Panama.

Kevin McDonough can be reached at kevin.tvguy@gmail.com.