‘Bones’ gave Fox a dependable spine
After 12 years of loyal fans but few awards, series says goodbye
There’s something to be said for those who do what’s fairly asked of them, and do it very well.
Granted, competence and reliability, even on a sterling level, seldom win you critical acclaim and high-profile awards. Or at least they didn’t for
Bones, Fox’s longest-running drama, ending Tuesday (9 ET/PT). But those qualities can earn you devoted fans — the kind who stick by a show through 246 episodes, 12 seasons and almost that many time slots — and a reputation for being a series that never let its fans down.
Dismiss Bones as a workmanlike “meat-and-potatoes” series if you like. But there isn’t a TV outlet in existence that couldn’t use — or shouldn’t want to have — a show whose dependability never wavered and popularity held steady until near its end.
Odds are that no one would have guessed when the show premiered that we’d be having this conversation now. Fox’s biggest hit back in 2005 was
House, and its next big hit was expected to be Prison Break — two shows that signaled the network’s shift to more challenging dramas. Bones was an anomaly: a procedural that seemed far more suited to CBS than to Fox.
So how did Bones survive on a network that often seemed either to take it for granted or forget it was there? Start with the basic strength of the source material — the book series by Kathy Reichs about a crime-solving forensic anthropologist — and the appeal of stars Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz in roles that were a twist on TV’s standard gender norms. From The Thin Man on, detective dramas have usually paired an emotional, intuitive woman with a more rational, thoughtful man. But here, Deschanel’s Dr. Temperance Brennan was the rational one, while Boreanaz’s FBI special agent Seeley Booth was the one who led with his gut and his heart.
The series didn’t waste much time turning them into partners — and then, wisely, took its time turning them into romantic ones. Unlike so many TV pairings, Bones and Booth’s relationship was never based on sexual combustibility; it was based on friendship and mutual respect.
That’s one reason Bones was able to outlast series that faltered when their will-they/won’t-they tension was resolved. But there’s another reason: Bones never forgot that it was a weekly murder mystery, and that its main job was to tell a decent story every week. Yes, it featured continuing plots, but it never got lost in the weeds.
It helps that in addition to two likable stars, the show had a strong and relatively stable supporting cast. T.J. Thyne and Michaela Conlin have been with
Bones from the start; Tamara Taylor joined in the second season. As is inevitable with long-running series, some actors came and went, but you never got the feeling Bones was a revolving door or, near the end, a sinking ship.
Fans probably will find it fitting, then, that Tuesday’s finale focuses on those core characters and their attempt to capture the man who killed Bones’ father. Not to mention their attempt to survive the bomb blast that ended last week’s outing.
For all its success, did Bones advance the medium artistically or change the industry in some way? No. But in its presentation of a happily diverse workplace, with an African-American woman in charge and other equally strong women in positions of authority, it spread a subtle social message that can’t be discounted. And unlike some more acclaimed series, it spread it to millions of viewers.
In my book, that counts as a job well done.