Bones: Season 6

Warning: spoilers and ranting off the port bow!

So.

OK.

So. 

My devotion to Bones has been firmly established for some time now. Which isn’t to say that there haven’t been any ups and downs to the relationship: not so long ago, there was a dethroning moment of suck so heinous as to constitute the Worst Crossover Ever. Even so, Season 5 went a long way towards repairing the wounds of Season 4 and its oh-so-lamentable attempts at novelty murder, unbelievably shitty characterisation and wacky hijinks via a judicious application of episodes that actually made sense. Look: I am sympathetic to the bestial nature of television writing, which demands increasingly higher stakes and exotic scenarios the longer a show stays on the air. I understand that, past a certain point, They Fight Crime inevitably becomes less the motive and more the background, such that the imaginative slack needs must be picked up elsewhere. (Or at least, that it’s perceived to be needed to be picked up, but that’s a whole ‘nother argument.) So even as I roll my eyes at the proliferation of bizarre and improbable crimes with which the Jeffersonian team are increasingly presented – and by this I mean, crimes which either:

(a) require the investigation and simultaneous deconstruction of a subculture;

(b) have been executed in a bizarre fashion using mysterious props; or

(c) whose discovery and solving involve under-cover dressups of any kind

– I have nonetheless been willing to tolerate their presence, on the sole condition that these episodes otherwise meet the criteria of consistent characterisation, good writing and eventual solutions which do not cause me to go all squinty and swear at my laptop. Of course I make exceptions for the odd dud episode. I can deal with that, because sooner or later, even in the best shows, it’s inevitable. What I don’t want to see is a pattern of laziness, obviousness and bad scripting such that I start to grind my teeth at the sheer tackiness of it all.

Possibly you see where I’m going with this.

I tolerated the devil thing. I was even willing to overlook the whole naked witch fiasco despite the hideous product placement – that is to say, the centering of an entire plotline around something the Toyota Prius does – because it’s also the episode where Angela and Hodgins tie the knot. God help me, I was even amused by the Avatar worship episode, on the grounds that a little meta never hurt anyone, no matter how much free advertising it gives to James Cameron. And it’s not like Season 6 hasn’t delivered some of the best episodes – if not the single best episode ever – to help balance things out. But the negativity has been building, too: a subtle pattern of increased product placement (hello, cars and computer software!), lowest common denominator gags (“Canadian, or afraid?”, Hart Hanson? REALLY?), a backsliding on previously established (and, crucially, left-wing) characterisation and – again – ludicrous plot elements. Even so, I’ve been coping: this is, after all, a favourite show of mine, and despite all my bitching and moaning, I have a high pain threshold for narrative.

And then came The Finder.

I just.

I don’t even.

So, we all know what a spinoff series is, yes? Where one or more of the primary supporting characters from an existing show get upgraded to protagonists elsewhere? Like Angel from Buffy, Torchwood from Doctor Who, Joey from Friends, Frasier from Cheers? We are all familiar with this concept. It is sort of a big thing! SO WHY THE HELL HAS HART HANSON SUDDENLY INTRODUCED THREE ENTIRELY NEW CHARACTERS ADAPTED FROM A DIFFERENT SET OF NOVELS FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF HAVING THEM APPEAR ONCE – JUST ONCE! – SO HE CAN CALL THEIR NEW SHOW A BONES SPINOFF?

Deep breaths, Foz. It’s just a TV show. I shouldn’t care this much.

And yet, I DO care. I am actually furious – not because forty minutes of my evening was stolen away by a trio of characters I’ve never met before and don’t give a shit about under the guise of watching Bones, or even because Hart Hanson is apparently unfamiliar with the universally established definition of what constitutes a spinoff series. No: I am furious because the show I watched was clunky, badly scripted, sexist and unoriginal, comprised of cast members whose entry into the Bones-verse was so forced and unnecessary that it was like watching the writers prise open their own continuity with a crowbar and dump in a sackload of Awful.

Cases In Point:

1. Our new lead, Walter Sherman, is an imitation Booth. Iraq veteran with brain damage? Check. A Catholic whose beliefs are challenged by his line of work but who otherwise keeps faith? Check. Sexually interested in Temperance Brennan? Check. Works on intuition rather than science? Check. Surrounded by people who owe him their lives? Check, check and check.

2. Clunky exposition-laden dialogue. OH MY GOD THE CLUNKY. Such that Ike and Leo, Walter’s offsiders, actually have a conversation with each other about how they’ve been put with Walter (by God or destiny) to help him use his gift, and how they both owe him their lives, and how they fear what will happen on the terrible and inevitable day that Walter can’t find what he’s looking for, until which time they’d better just stick right by him, quirks and all. In the first ten minutes.

3. Oh, and we wrap with Ike, a prime candidate for the inevitable UST, actually saying how ironic it is that the one thing Walter can’t find is lasting love. You guys, SHE ACTUALLY SAYS THIS.

4. Presumably so as to demonstrate his quirkiness, Walter breaks into the house of the dead guy and snoops around for clues. OK, fine: but is it really necessary for him to strip down to his boxers, too? Well, duh: how ELSE would we get those lovingly executed panning shots of his perfectly sculpted abs? Or, better yet, the coup de gras, wherein he sits naked on the toilet and chats on the phone, with only a strategically-angled sink to shield his genitals from the cruel gaze of the public? (Excuse me while I facepalm and strangle Hart Hanson in effigy.)

5. The sexism. By which I mean, Walter goes to a tattoo shop and describes a girl with ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ tattooed on her chest, and is instantly told by the owner (after a lengthy exposition about how of course he owes Walter everything because of the rare tattooing needles he found for him that one time) that the girl in question is self-loathing, has daddy issues, and is probably a lesbian. Because OBVIOUSLY, these are three related problems! Never mind he’s going off the tattoo alone when he says this; never mind that I actually wanted to reach through the screen and strangle him. No, it’s cool. Daddy issues + self loathing = lesbianism. BRILLIANT. Which sets up an in-joke in the next scene, where Walter tries to get Ike, played by Saffron Burrows, to go and distract the suspected lesbian with her feminine wiles. To which Ike replies, “I’m not a lesbian! I just have a confident demeaniour!” – the in-joke being that Saffron Burrows actually is a lesbian. And before you’re wondering: yes, I misspelled ‘demeanour’ on purpose, in keeping with the fact that Ike’s character, in addition to being possessed of a glaringly fake chav accent, apparently mispronounces words of more than two syllables. You know, to balance out her intelligence and make her less threatening. LOVELY.

6. And yet more sexism! Such as: Walter propositions Bones within moments of being introduced to her. Later, on meeting Angela and Hodgins and being told that the pair are married, he asks whether Hodgins is rich. His reasoning? Angela rates an eleven on a scale of one to ten, whereas Hodgins is only a seven: his being rich, however, would “explain the disparity.” (Because intelligence and personality couldn’t possibly enter into it.) Later still, the Do Not Resuscitate girl – whose character, Brittany, is played by model Mini Anden – abases herself in conversation, claiming she can’t understand why Walter would want to talk to her because she isn’t pretty enough. And then he tells her no, she’s beautiful, which simple statement is apparently so gratifying and unprecedented that she kisses him right there and then. (She is, of course, murdered in the next scene, the better to Add To Our Hero’s Emotional Angst while painting him as a Sensitive Soul Who Falls Right In Love With Troubled Women, even though he says at the end of the episode that Tempe could really be The One And Only For Him. Riiiight.)

And so on.

The whole time I was watching, my jaw was literally tense with anger. I tried to calm down – it’s why I waited before writing this up – but my temper hasn’t abated. Because in the end, it’s not the prospect of a new and crappy spinoff hitting the air which bothers me, or the fact that my regularly scheduled viewing was interrupted to make way for a half-assed pilot of same. It’s that the people who write Bones – a show I have hitherto associated with good female characters, intelligent scripting and believable ensemble quirkiness – have not only produced a piece of television which shares none of those characteristics, but one which they’ve presented as being equal in theme and content to their previous, better, output. And so I’m angry, because more and more, it feels like the things I love about Bones are showing up only by habit, or worse yet, accident: that the product placement, bad characterisation, shitty plots and offensive logic aren’t just the unfortunate consequences of season fatigue, but the result of deliberate planning on behalf of the creators. That this is one more example of intelligent, fun television sliding into the tainted Gutter Of Crap.

And now, because I’m exhausted and cranky and can’t think of anything else to say that’s relevant, I’m off to bed.

A Gendered Affair

Imagine this image: a human brain in a vat. The brain has been removed from a real, live person and painstakingly wired into a machine which keeps it alive, utterly duplicating the necessary processes of organic flesh. Sight, sound and smell are simulated by clever contraptions, emotional surges provoke the correct chemical and hormonal reactions. To all intents and purposes, the being – the brain – is real, their sense of self intact: they are simply no longer housed in a body.

Which begs the question: do they still have a gender?

It’s an interesting problem. Socially, gender is assumed through assessment of a person’s physical body, their voice, mannerisms, clothes and so on: but strip away all these things – remove even their possibility – and what is left? Is the brain (we’ll call it Sam, a neatly androgynous handle) gendered depending on the sex of its original body? Is it possible for a ‘female’ brain to wind up ensconced in male flesh, or vice versa? If one accepts that homosexuality is more often an innate predeliction than a conscious choice (certainly, I believe, it can be both or either), what role does the physical wiring of our brain play? Is it the only factor? Does nurture always prevail over nature in matters of sexuality, or vice versa? Is it a mixture? If so, does the ratio vary from person to person? Why? And so on.

Let’s lay some cards on the table. When it comes to sexual orientation, my two rules of thumb are: 

(a) mutual, intelligent consent; and

(b) the prevention of harm to others.

In a nutshell: all parties have to agree to what’s happening, and no bystanders can be hurt or unwillingly drawn in. While this doesn’t rule out BDSM (provided, of course, it keeps within the bounds of said rules), it definitively excludes rape and paedophilia, which, really, is common sense. Anything relating to homosexuality and transexuality, however, is fair game.

A few more points, in no particular order:

1. Life is often unfair.

2. Life is often weird.

3. Insofar as evidence is concerned, human beings are still shaky on the definitive origins of personhood (souls v. genes, or possibly a blend of both), but most people will agree that brains and gender play a more important role in this than, say, knees and elbows.

4. Original notions of gender roles developed in the context of reproduction and childrearing, but provided both these things still occur in sufficient numbers to ensure the survival of the species, there is little harm in broadening or questioning their parameters.

5. People have, or should have, a basic right to assert their identity. Reasonably, there must be some limits of credulity – there was only ever one Napoleon,  mankind are distinct from dolphins – but within the recognised sphere of human gender and sexual orientation, it seems counter-intuitive that appearance should dictate black and white rules for what is, quite evidently, an internal and subtle determination.

Witness, then, the idea of transgender couples, in which one partner may undergo a sex change without ending the relationship. Witness, then, the case of Aurora Lipscomb, born Zachary, who identified as a girl from the age of two and was removed from her parents when they refused to forcibly contradict her. These are just two examples that buck the trend of traditional gender ideas, and rather than making us squirm, they should make us think. When and why did certain socio-cultural ideas of gender develop, and how do they change? Consider, for instance, the well-documented and widespread instances of winkte, berdache and two-spirit people in Native American culture, compared to the deep-seated fear of these concepts in western traditions. Look at the long-standing tradition of male homosexuality in Japan, particularly among samurais, and the role of Sappho in ancient Greek lesbianism. Think of hermaphrodites.

Point being, there’s a wealth of diverse and fascinating history surrounding the ideas of gender, sexuality and male/female roles, to the extent that many legal restrictions now placed on non-heterosexual couples and individuals are faintly ridiculous. Throw in the question of child-rearing, and there’s a tendency to reach for the nearest pitchfork. Personally, I find debating my views in this matter difficult, if only because debate is meaningless without a modicum of mutually accepted middleground, and where my opponents object to homosexuality and transsexuality as an opening gambit, it’s well-nigh impossible to discuss the matter of non-heteros breeding, adopting and/or applying for surrogacy without both sides resorting to instant moral veto of the contrary position.

Still, it’s always worth trying, and the whole issue fascinates me. Socially, I marvel at where the next hundred years could take us, and cringe at how far we might also fall. But in the interim, I return to the question of brains in vats, and how, within the parameters of such a hypothetical, gender is determined. Is it innate, biological, genetic, spiritual, chosen consciously, chosen unconsciously, socially conditioned, random, nurtured, culturally selected; or can the glorious gamut of human existence countenance the possibility that these options simultaneouly coexist as true, contributing on an individual basis, in individual ratios? Or is that too confronting a thought?