The Good

The procedural nature of this show mixed with the acting chops of the leads makes this show extremely entertaining.

The Bad

It gets a little tough seeing cases that can’t be solved constantly get solved.

The chemistry between FBI Special Agent Seely Booth (David Boreanaz) and Dr. Temperance ‘Bones’ Brennan (Emily Deschanel) plays out very strongly in Bones: Season 2. These two characters set about solving some of the toughest cases on the dockets. They play a sort of good cop/bad cop team, or sometimes it’s just bad cop/worse cop. Booth leads the charge with his down to business approach to his job, while ‘Bones’ comes to the scene and upon examining the remains of the deceased (hence her name), she is able to put together what might have happened prior.

Whether the murder took place on a train “The Titan on the Tracks,” or in the home of a 10 year old beauty queen “The Girl With the Curl,” or at the hands of a serial killer “Aliens In A Spaceship,” Bones continues to flip the script on the procedural formula, even though it does get a bit weird that Brennan and Booth are able to solve so many crimes. While Brennan does have her fair share of “I can’t figure this out” moments, for the most part she and Booth get the job done. What I liked was these characters go up against familiar foils like Howard Epps in “The Man In the Cell.” It was also interesting seeing these characters have personal problems like when Booth was forced to talk with counselor in “The Girl in the Gator.”

Playing a lot of interesting hands is what mainly keeps Bones: Season 2 so fresh. Some shows talk about having flawed characters but if you’re really flawed you let those things effect your work. It was interesting seeing the characters in this show really be effected.

Features

They have put commentary tracks on here for the episodes “The Glowing Bones House” and “Stargazer In A Puddle.” I listened to the track for “Stargazer In A Puddle” which features Hart Hanson, Executive Producers Barry Josephson and Stephen Nathan. They open this track by discussing how they cheated Los Angeles for Baltimore (in terms of location) and then, sadly, they seem to spend the majority of this track telling us everything we can already see on screen. The most interesting part was hearing about how Patricia Belcher originally came on to do one scene and they liked her so much they kept writing parts for the actress to do. Big fans of this show might really like this commentary track, personally I think it was a little too redundant and I wish I would have chosen “The Glowing Bones In the Old Stone House” to listen to.

The Memories of the Season and Visceral Effects: The Digital Illusions of Bones Featurettes

Gag Reel

We open with the skeleton of an editor working on this show. Normally, I would think that this was pretty cheesy however considering the title of this show it makes all the sense in the world. We are then treated to scenes of the actors messing up lines, not knowing how to say certain lines and basically everything else these gag reels usually offer us.

Considering my experience with the other commentary track, I decided to not listen to the commentary for these scenes. Edited together in one chunk I was surprised to find that some of the scenes were in widescreen and other scenes were simply in a black box on the screen. The scenes that were cut seem like they were extraneously focusing on the co-stars and thus might have gotten in the way of the story. While I know that people like to see more character development, I think that these scenes made an already thickly layered show too layered.

Video

Widescreen - 1.78:1. For some reason the exterior shots for this show are all lit very soft and almost look like a sitcom. The only differences come when we see shots at night, then those sort of take on an orange flair. Where all this is going is when we get to headquarters it seems like the the FBI, or whoever is in charge, forgot to pay the electric bill. It is that dark, friends. This was obviously an aesthetic decision that is meant to play into the morbid nature that pervades certain aspects of this show. While I think it works, I couldn’t help but wonder if the set designers couldn’t have lightened things up (literally) a bit.

Audio

Dolby Digital. English - 5.1 Surround. Spanish - Dolby Surround. Subtitled in English, Spanish and French. Close Captioned. For some reason when Booth and Brennan were bantering back and forth in the car, on the street or anywhere outside, they seemed to talk normally. This sounded fine and I think it helped the relationship play very real between these characters. Now, when things were taken inside suddenly the characters began to speak in whispery tones. Aside from this, I found that I didn’t need to turn the audio that loud and the sound still had a decent amount of punch.

Package

David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel are shown on the front of this muted color slipcase laying on slabs. The back cover gives us another shot of these two together, there is a well written description, Bonus Features and technical specs. The 6 discs that make up this set are all stored in 3 cases, each of which has a different cover showcasing various cast members from this show. That back covers offer up episode listings, descriptions, airdates and where to find the DVD features.

Final Word

What has always impressed me about this show is that David Boreanaz is presented as the star but Emily Deschanel is really ruling he roost. There’s something about her portrayal that seems to have all the other characters following after her as they try and keep up. She is smart, sassy and very much her own person. All of this seems to play well into her relationship with Boreanaz who is obviously dealing with issues of his own. I thought that it was a little bit of a stretch they way they sort of just threw in Brennan’s relationship with her mother who was killed. I mean, can’t a character be damaged simply because they’re damaged? That was a small problem that I had with this show. Overall, it was the writing and strong characterizations on the part of all the actors that really makes Bones: Season 2 stand out.

If smartly done TV with interesting characters is something you like then I would highly suggest picking up this show.