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So I and Cam just went through and mainlined all 3.5 seasons of Bones. By the end of season one we went from "This is ok and might be fun to watch" to "This is awesome" and while the start of season 4 was terrible it's gotten fairly good again and I find myself fangirling it embarrassingly.
I'm pretty sure that it's not, objectively, that good of a show, but it somehow manages to short-circuit my brain into liking things I normally wouldn't.
In short:
Unfortunately I think they sometimes have filler episodes written by CSI writers so this stuff isn't always true :/
Warning: written at like 5am with insomnia because it seemed a fairly safe subject to ramble about
For example, I am not a very sentimental person, and while I don't mind Christmas episodes of shows tend not to be very heartwarmed.
One of the episodes of Bones has a cliche that normally bugs the hell out of me, the cheery man who dresses and acts like santa, and everyone loves him and it's all a bit mysterious and teehee maybe it's him. Blech. The thing is? By the time we encounter this guy he's a disgustingly decomposed corpse. So, you know, if he is Santa he's dead, and the grossness undercuts any sentiment. By the end of the episode (which does have some actual nice things happen, beyond finding "Santa"'s killer :)) I was feeling a little teary eyed.
Cam and I agree the one thing that really makes the show stand out above CSI etc is sympathy with all it's characters including the murders. Most murder mystery shows, even (if not especially) fairly fluffy ones like "Midsommer Murders" posit a world which is ultimately fair and where the heroes are doing the right thing. Thus, murderers are abnormal and deserve no sympath, victims brought their fate upon themselves (often with sexual immorality), and anyone who questions the main characters (complaining about police invasiveness etc) is always a bad guy. Sometimes authors admit the world is flawed by making everyone a bit morally grey, but they keep the sense of satisfaction at the end by making the murderers completely inhuman and horrible.
But on Bones a lot of the time you can actually understand why the murderers did what they did, sometimes it's even condoned. People are difficult and do morally dubious things without needing to be punished or neatly dividing into "good guys" and "bad guys". In the most recent episode, they meet a friend of the victim who is an ex drug addict in a wheelchair who irrationally rants about how the police should just go away, it was a suicide..and he's never seen again. On CSI he would turn out to be Up To Something and his wheelchair would be an important plot point. (He does serve a purpose, in establishing how people in general feel about the victim) There is the odd exception to this, and while there's much less of a "extramarital/wierd sex leads to murder" subtext I'm sure I've noticed a "Chronic illness leads to murder" subtext which is just odd.
On the whole the show has both a left liberal bias (woot!) and tries to be evenhanded. Characters disagree about politics, religion, sexuality etc and while sometimes there's a moral I don't 100% like (there's a definite subtext that polyamoury and sexual kink etc is all well and good but really what everyone needs is a nice conventional marriage) on the whole there's space for differing opinions.
There is the odd "Wow chinese people have some wacky customs!" etc episode but on the whole it avoids following the CSI "Lets meet some weird subculture and exoticise them in a dehumanising way" formula too closely.
Oh, and the female victims don't get sexualised because they're disgusting skeletons :)
And then we come to the main character Bones. She's a socially awkward, kick-ass, unapologetically intelligent, rational scientist. She's a woman who thinks she's smarter than everyone and is usually right. She's strongly atheist but has more respect for non-christian religions than her catholic partner because she thinks they have social value (leading to the line "Jesus was not a zombie!" :)) and is completely comfortable with her sexuality.
And then we have the intense UST between Bones and Booth, played by the very pretty Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz (who I have to say is much better suited to good natured cop than angsty vampire) Normally UST which lasts this long irritates me but they've established such a strong bond between them it almost feels like they are together.
Overall I'm a sucker for the "Season long somewhat soap opera-y arcs kept from being over wrought by monster-of-the-week plots" format of Buffy etc which the show does pretty well, with the odd descent into unnecessary drama.
Speaking of which: CANON FEMSLASH. Not done extra specially well, but more in a normal "Shoe-horned in relationship" way than a "Woo! Lesbians!" way.
There's a nice amount of racial and gender diversity, though I get the feeling there may be weird American racial stereotypes going on I'm missing(*) (with the main characters, it's hard not to notice it in general. Even I know South America has more to it than death camps!) Oddly heteronormative given one of the main characters is canonically bi: noone is ever secretly LGB (and the only secretly trans person we meet is dead) nor suspected to be, if they are they mention it fairly openly and it's never relevant to the investigation except as a reason not to have slept with someone. It's like they're worried if they have any of the victims/murders/suspects in a gay/lesbian relationship it'll come across as sordid. Which I guess is better than all the stories where they do and it is.
I'm sure there's LOTS of innaccuracies etc. Bones is a forensic anthropologist, and even I know some of her "Anthropologically speaking.."'s are dodgy, I think![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nico_wolfwood might find it annoying :) They're very willing to do implausible things for the sake of entertainment/drama etc.
Sometimes it gets a bit "Boys are silly teehee". Bah to that. OPh, and if I didn't make it clear, LOTS of gross decomposing bodies.
Ohm and in my personal canon this is how Bones and Angela met, and Sweets spent most of season 3 with a giant crush on Bones and Booth, hoping deep down they'd get together and invite him along, something they were kind of aware of and found amusing. Just saying.
(*)Well, apart from Angela being both the Cool Arty Asian Chick and the Asian Computer Nerd at the same time :)
I'm pretty sure that it's not, objectively, that good of a show, but it somehow manages to short-circuit my brain into liking things I normally wouldn't.
In short:
- Short circuits to my squee mode, possibly thanks to very dark humour
- Compassion for murderers and victims
- Ambiguity and open mindness (and what bias there is matches my own :))
- Kick-ass female lead
- Character continuity/soap opera elements
- Sexy UST
Unfortunately I think they sometimes have filler episodes written by CSI writers so this stuff isn't always true :/
Warning: written at like 5am with insomnia because it seemed a fairly safe subject to ramble about
For example, I am not a very sentimental person, and while I don't mind Christmas episodes of shows tend not to be very heartwarmed.
One of the episodes of Bones has a cliche that normally bugs the hell out of me, the cheery man who dresses and acts like santa, and everyone loves him and it's all a bit mysterious and teehee maybe it's him. Blech. The thing is? By the time we encounter this guy he's a disgustingly decomposed corpse. So, you know, if he is Santa he's dead, and the grossness undercuts any sentiment. By the end of the episode (which does have some actual nice things happen, beyond finding "Santa"'s killer :)) I was feeling a little teary eyed.
Cam and I agree the one thing that really makes the show stand out above CSI etc is sympathy with all it's characters including the murders. Most murder mystery shows, even (if not especially) fairly fluffy ones like "Midsommer Murders" posit a world which is ultimately fair and where the heroes are doing the right thing. Thus, murderers are abnormal and deserve no sympath, victims brought their fate upon themselves (often with sexual immorality), and anyone who questions the main characters (complaining about police invasiveness etc) is always a bad guy. Sometimes authors admit the world is flawed by making everyone a bit morally grey, but they keep the sense of satisfaction at the end by making the murderers completely inhuman and horrible.
But on Bones a lot of the time you can actually understand why the murderers did what they did, sometimes it's even condoned. People are difficult and do morally dubious things without needing to be punished or neatly dividing into "good guys" and "bad guys". In the most recent episode, they meet a friend of the victim who is an ex drug addict in a wheelchair who irrationally rants about how the police should just go away, it was a suicide..and he's never seen again. On CSI he would turn out to be Up To Something and his wheelchair would be an important plot point. (He does serve a purpose, in establishing how people in general feel about the victim) There is the odd exception to this, and while there's much less of a "extramarital/wierd sex leads to murder" subtext I'm sure I've noticed a "Chronic illness leads to murder" subtext which is just odd.
On the whole the show has both a left liberal bias (woot!) and tries to be evenhanded. Characters disagree about politics, religion, sexuality etc and while sometimes there's a moral I don't 100% like (there's a definite subtext that polyamoury and sexual kink etc is all well and good but really what everyone needs is a nice conventional marriage) on the whole there's space for differing opinions.
There is the odd "Wow chinese people have some wacky customs!" etc episode but on the whole it avoids following the CSI "Lets meet some weird subculture and exoticise them in a dehumanising way" formula too closely.
Oh, and the female victims don't get sexualised because they're disgusting skeletons :)
And then we come to the main character Bones. She's a socially awkward, kick-ass, unapologetically intelligent, rational scientist. She's a woman who thinks she's smarter than everyone and is usually right. She's strongly atheist but has more respect for non-christian religions than her catholic partner because she thinks they have social value (leading to the line "Jesus was not a zombie!" :)) and is completely comfortable with her sexuality.
And then we have the intense UST between Bones and Booth, played by the very pretty Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz (who I have to say is much better suited to good natured cop than angsty vampire) Normally UST which lasts this long irritates me but they've established such a strong bond between them it almost feels like they are together.
Overall I'm a sucker for the "Season long somewhat soap opera-y arcs kept from being over wrought by monster-of-the-week plots" format of Buffy etc which the show does pretty well, with the odd descent into unnecessary drama.
Speaking of which: CANON FEMSLASH. Not done extra specially well, but more in a normal "Shoe-horned in relationship" way than a "Woo! Lesbians!" way.
There's a nice amount of racial and gender diversity, though I get the feeling there may be weird American racial stereotypes going on I'm missing(*) (with the main characters, it's hard not to notice it in general. Even I know South America has more to it than death camps!) Oddly heteronormative given one of the main characters is canonically bi: noone is ever secretly LGB (and the only secretly trans person we meet is dead) nor suspected to be, if they are they mention it fairly openly and it's never relevant to the investigation except as a reason not to have slept with someone. It's like they're worried if they have any of the victims/murders/suspects in a gay/lesbian relationship it'll come across as sordid. Which I guess is better than all the stories where they do and it is.
I'm sure there's LOTS of innaccuracies etc. Bones is a forensic anthropologist, and even I know some of her "Anthropologically speaking.."'s are dodgy, I think
nico_wolfwood might find it annoying :) They're very willing to do implausible things for the sake of entertainment/drama etc.Sometimes it gets a bit "Boys are silly teehee". Bah to that. OPh, and if I didn't make it clear, LOTS of gross decomposing bodies.
Ohm and in my personal canon this is how Bones and Angela met, and Sweets spent most of season 3 with a giant crush on Bones and Booth, hoping deep down they'd get together and invite him along, something they were kind of aware of and found amusing. Just saying.
(*)Well, apart from Angela being both the Cool Arty Asian Chick and the Asian Computer Nerd at the same time :)
