#anglea

Last week we saw the end of one of my personal favorite shows. Bones wrapped up its twelfth and final season on Tuesday night and I found it bitter sweet. I always have a hard time picturing a series like this ending, but I couldn’t have asked for a better ending (but maybe a longer season). The fact that this show has been on for twelve years says a lot for the quality it gave us. It’s nearly unheard of now for shows to make it past five or six years, but while Bones grew and adapted to the times, it never lost what had drawn me so many years ago: beautiful stories surrounding colorful characters.

I’ll admit that I didn’t start watching this show from the beginning. I’d see it on TV occasionally and I don’t think I ever turned it off, but I didn’t really become a fan until I sat down and watched it beginning to end one summer. At the time, they had just finished the fifth season and I thought why not. I’m forever glad that I decided to watch it, because it gave me hope and high expectations for long term storytelling that I’m not sure I would have without it.

Bones is first and foremost a story centering on the dashing and chivalric FBI agent, Seely Booth, and his relationship with his partner, clinical and literal Dr. Temperance Brennan. From the get go, this show took gendered stereotypes and turned them on its head. Sure Booth is the strong, heroic, almost knight like man who swoops in to save the day. He also has moments of hyper masculinity where he gets very defensive if someone suggests that he is behaving in a feminine fashion. But he is compassionate, he is intuitive, he is empathetic, all qualities normally attributed to women. Not only that, but we see repeatedly through the series (especially early on) that Booth in all his relationships is looking for something lasting and permanent. Stereotypically, men are almost commitment-phobic and actively avoid them like the plague until they find the right one.

Brennan on the other hand doesn’t seem to be the typical heroine at all. She extremely intelligent to the point of being Vulcan-like. For years she has relied on what her eyes see and what logic tells her. But how do they add to this and set her apart from characters with that almost robotic need to refer to logic? For one thing her temper is wicked. Wouldn’t think that she would as, like her name suggests, she has incredible restraint with her emotions, but you’d be surprised. She doesn’t lash out emotionally (at least not in early seasons), but if you threaten her, her friends, or her intelligence, she will quickly acquaint you with the floor. And in later seasons (when the writers realize she doesn’t have to throw people to express her anger), she uses her intelligence to put you in your place. Another thing is the writers allow her to be vulnerable and emotionally distant. She doesn’t instantly go running to her best friend complaining about Booth. While she approaches Angela for advice, she never does it for her own validation. She is rational and logical, which means she recognizes when she is out of her depth. While she recognizes Sweets as an expert in psychology (though it would be like pulling teeth getting her to admit such a thing), she trusts only Angela with advice on how to interact with people.

Character boundaries aren’t the only ones challenged. While most episodes adhered to a (loose) formula, every once in a while the mold was broken and those were some of my favorites, an alternate universe dream that Brennan writes while Booth is in a coma, an Alfred Hitchcock-ess episode, the entire episode told from the point of view of the skull. They took risks and while not every risk paid off, I enjoyed seeing the directors and writers decide that they were willing to try new things.