Bones

Just when I thought there couldn't be another boring police procedural TV show... a ha ha ha ha! I never actually thought that. Of course there are going to be more police procedurals, because we, as a television-watching nation, never tire of watching cops figure out twisted little mysteries of who did what to whom. If television execs could figure out how to do away with the detectives and just show criminals doing reprehensible things to innocent people without losing their advertisers, you can bet they'd do it.

Where was I? Oh, yes, Bones. The series returns us to the bosom of the FBI (there's even a Mulder/Scully reference in the first episode), this time with dark, handsome, former-vampire agent Seeley Booth (David "Angel" Boreanaz) and his forensic-anthropologist ace-in-the-hole Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel, sister to Zooey). Dr. Brennan and her team of young slacker-scientists can do all sorts of amazing things with a long dead corpse, from reconstructing its face from a bashed-in skull to creating the next installment of Grand Theft Auto while re-enacting the victim's death based on the wound patterns. This all happens at a highly-photogenic museum in Washington D.C. called the Jeffersonian Institute. (I'm guessing the Smithsonian wouldn't sign on, because the real-life Jeffersonian Institute is an environmental and cultural preservation organization in Texas.)

You would think a well-paid scientist with access to glamorous FBI crime scenes would be pretty satisfied with her lot in life, but Temperance (c'mon. . . Temperance?) wants more. She wants to work in the field with Booth despite her lack of experience dealing with, well, live people. Sure, she can kick ass pretty good (she biffs an annoying Homeland Security airport agent in the opening scenes, one of the few sentiments in the episode I could get behind) and she knows how to handle a gun, but Booth makes sure she knows she's a "squint" (a nerd with special qualifications but no other investigative experience) and just along for the ride so long as she keeps making with the osteological pronouncements.

And blah blah blah I can't believe I got through that much of the synopsis, because it was even more boring to watch. Boreanaz and Deschanel have zero chemistry, romantically or as crime-solving partners. Brennan's team of teenaged brainiacs are supposed to be snarky but end up just being, well, nerdy. And not in a good way. Temperance's running gag is that she doesn't understand pop culture references because she threw herself into her work and is so, y'know, serious all the damn time. This sort of thing worked occasionally in Buffy the Vampire Slayer with stuffy librarian Giles, but on a main character it wears thin on the second or third repetition.

There are a lot of new shows with a lot of promise this season, but I can't recommend wasting any time on this one. Let's hope it gets cancelled quickly so Boreanaz can move on to something more interesting.