Adventures In Writing

Bones -- a TV series review

Wednesdays at 7 p.m. Central time

Last year I fell in love with this series. Sharp writing. Engaging characters. Good, solid mysteries with off-beat science and always a tug at emotion. If you want to know how good storytelling is done, check this series out. The first season is coming out on DVD in November. I've got my set pre-ordered. Looking forward to watching it again.

The series features Emily Deschanel as Temperance Brennan (if the name sounds familiar, that's the name of Kathy Reichs's main character in her bestselling novels). She's an ex-foster kid who struggles with understanding anything that isn't science and matter-of-fact.

David Boreanaz stars as Special Agent-In-Charge Seely Booth, an ex-special forces warrior turned FBI agent. He's got heart and can read people the way Brennan reads bones.

They're aided and abetted by Dr. Jack Hodgins (T. J. Thyme) who specializes in soil, bugs, and plants, Zach Addy (Eric Millegan) who is Brennan's graduate assistant, and Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin) who is an artist and can reconstruct a face from a skull.

The series is deftly written, always a mixture of emotion, science, humor, and relationships. I learn something with every episode, and I always feel emotionally drained and buoyed at the same time. Always get the good with the bad.

The team works out of the Washington Smithsonian and only deals with cases involving bones that can't be identified anywhere else. Although that seems to be a little more lax this season. Still, the fantastic layman's science (this year's Hodgins and Zach Mr. Wizard moment with an artificial skeleton made of sediment and covered in SPAM and burned in a high-intensity fire rivals last year's frozen pig shot through a woodchipper!) and the quick pacing moves the stories along.

If you haven't seen this series before, check it out. Booth and Bones (Brennan's nickname by way of Booth) are still looking for her father -- who may have killed her mother, and the romance between Hodgins and Angela is heating up. Even more exciting is the antagonistic relationship between Bones and her new boss, Dr. Camilla Saroyan -- who just happens to be one of Booth's ex-lovers.

This is TV worth staying up for!