Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Gonna, Walk Around Tuesdays On FOX

I've always liked David Boreanaz. I'm glad he has another series that can shoot exteriors in the day. That must be a nice change for him. Unless they shot Day for Night a lot on Angel. But that's neither here nor there.

So, onto BONES, Fox's attempt to cross pollinate some character development into the CSI genre. I found the pilot solid and workmanlike, if not really too inspired. Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel do well in their roles. There's very snappy dialogue.

But on the whole I thought the first act was great, and then it settled down into a plot that was way more conventional than I would have liked.

You can see why they paired this with HOUSE. Same irascible kind of lead character. The problem with that is whenever they have an irascible female lead character, she's always, I don't know, leaving out saucers of milk for kittens by episode four.

I mean, Samantha from Sex & The City was a right bitch when that show started. It was bracing. By the end she was about as threatening as that cougar you met down at 2.99 shooters night at Stuckey's on the interstate. And don't even get me started on what they did to Murphy Brown.

In the end, I will give this the rule of three... I try to give any new show I watch at least three eps to find its feet - which is a lot more than some networks do. But BONES has got a lot to overcome to make a permanent dent in my viewing schedule. Now I know nobody asked, nor should they, but having already worked one show where the brief was to come on in and do triage on a sickly show, I kind of like to think that way to keep the engines humming. So my prescription for BONES would be:

Let people in.

I hate being outside that CSI stuff. HOUSE does a very good job of keeping you up to date with what's going on. BONES keeps you at a distance.

Prune the ensemble

Leads are good, but there's like one-too-many Scooby gang characters around Deschanel. The assistant is forgettable, the female researcher is fabulous (though, to be fair, they did introduce her with her flashing an inattentive airline dude: great intro) and both Boreanaz and Deschanel have forgettable boss characters.

(It's also telling that I'm calling the characters by the actors' names. When you can't remember the characters names, that should tell you something.)

Get Weird

It's FOX. I want less JAG, Navy NCIS more Jump Street or X-Files.

I do, however, want this show to succeed brilliantly and run five years since the creator is a very nice formerly Canadian fellow named Hart Hanson, who once toiled on a show up here called Traders, and who years ago saw the genius of the Piven in a short series called Cupid.

As for HOUSE, pretty good premiere, but someone needs to declare a moratorium of end-of-episode montages set to Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah. I mean, The OC did it twice, for Godsake. And I think I've seen it in at least four other series. One of them might have been the Rufus version they used in Shrek. Whatever. It's done. Find another weeper. I suggest David Gray or James Blunt.