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Bones – Giveaway!

This giveaway is over – check out my latest giveaway here!

This month, I’m giving away a season of Bones! Winner will receive his or her choice of either a season DVD set of the show (any season from 1 to 6) or a $15 Amazon gift card! See rules below for how to enter by leaving comments, sharing on Facebook, linking on Twitter, and more!

I discovered Bones less than 7 months ago, but it quickly grew to be one of my favorite shows. I caught up on the first 6 seasons perhaps a little too quickly (watching every episode between April 19 and July 19, 2011), so I joined the other fans in waiting months for the season 7 premiere. But now the long wait is over, since Bones returns tomorrow!

Bones is what happens when an FBI agent (David Boreanaz from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel) who relies on his gut teams up with a forensic anthropologist (Emily Deschanel) who prefers science and rational thinking. Agent Seeley Booth dubs Dr. Temperance Brennan “Bones,” partly because of her ability to glean clues from a victim’s skeleton. Assisting Brennan are Dr. Jack Hodgins (T. J. Thyne), Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin), Dr. Camille Saroyan (Tamara Taylor), Dr. Lance Sweets (John Francis Daley), and a variety of interns.

Bones season 7 premieres November 3rd, 2011 at 9PM EST/10 Central on Fox.

The winner of last month’s Psych giveaway was Esther Kim! She chose the Psych Season 2 DVD set as her prize.

To enter this month’s giveaway:

Leave a comment on any blog post on this website. Your comment should add to the discussion (at least several sentences is good), and be relevant to the post’s subject. For example, you can comment on this post about what you love about Bones, what sort of giveaways you’d enjoy in the future, or what you think will happen in the season premiere. Any posts flagged as spam will not qualify (though I plan to scan through them to make sure all real comments get through). Every post you leave a comment on will count as one entry. If you leave relevant comments on 50 posts, you will get 50 entries.

Tweeting about the contest with a link back to this page will give you 5 extra entries the first time you tweet, and 1 extra entry per day for any tweets after that.

Linking to this contest on your blog, Facebook, or Google+ will give you 10 extra entries the first time, and 1 extra entry per day after that.

If you have other ideas for promoting this giveaway, feel free to use them, and I’ll award entries accordingly. The more creative/effecting the promotion, the more entries, you’ll receive!

To receive your additional entries for promoting this contest, email me at katie at tvbreakroom dot com to let me know what promotion you did.

The Rules:

Contest begins November 1, 2011 at 12:01AM EDT and ends November 30, 2011, at 11:59PM EDT. All entries received outside that time period are invalid.

Winner will be chosen at random (using Random.org) from all eligible entries received.

Open to everyone 16 or older with a valid email and mailing address. A winner residing outside the US may have to pay an additional fee for shipping. (Feel free to select an e-gift card instead!)

Winner must provide a way to contact (email or website with some means of contact) and respond to winning notification within 3 days or prize may be awarded to someone else.

What counts as a relevant comment will be at my sole discretion. Comments should be made in English. You may leave as many comments per day as you wish, but only one comment per blog post will be counted as an entry for the contest.

These rules may change at my discretion.

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Bones – The Parts in the Sum of the Whole

Spoilers ahead!

This special 100th episode of Bones provides a fun look back at Booth and Brennan’s first case together, but a sad look forward.

I love how the episode provides a logical reason for telling the story in the first place – Dr. Sweets assuming that the pilot episode’s case was their first, and Booth and Brennan correcting him. Since all the other major characters lived through the story (even Cam, in a different job), he was the only one who needed to hear the full story.

My favorite part of this episode was the origin of many things we accept as a natural part of the Bones universe: Booth wearing crazy ties and socks, Hodgins’ experiments, Angela working for the Jeffersonian, why they have the fancy computer-generated scenarios, Brennan working with bodies that haven’t been dead for centuries, and Booth correcting Brennan’s misuse of colloquialisms.

I didn’t like that the flashback case doesn’t match up with the pilot episode’s description of it. Booth says, “The last case we worked, she provided a description of the murder weapon and the murderer, but I didn’t give her much credence. Because she did it by looking at the victim’s autopsy X-rays.” But I like that this version makes their falling-out more personal. And while Cam’s interaction was minimal enough that Brennan wouldn’t remember her years later, the same can’t be said for Caroline Julian’s.

The ending of the episode is heartbreakingly sad. At first, I couldn’t understand Brennan’s reaction. The final episode of season 4 made it clear she’s in love with Booth. Why on earth would she turn him down, when even her most rational side would conclude they would be happy dating? But her telling Booth she doesn’t have his kind of open heart doesn’t mean she’s not in love with him – it means she’s scared. Scared to risk everything on a relationship that might not work out. What they have now – their working relationship and friendship – means everything to her. That’s why she mentions the FBI not letting them work together, and why there’s vulnerability in her eyes when she asks Booth if they can still work together. The closeness they share as partners is all she will let herself risk. It’s more than she’ll share with anyone else, but she knows it’s not enough for Booth. So she’ll keep loving him as much as she feels she can while they work together, and leave him free to find someone who will love him back in a way she believes she never can (though I’m fairly certain she’s wrong about that – she has grown a lot over the past years, and I believe that will continue until she’s able to love Booth back fully).

Wow, I didn’t intend to go all Dr. Sweets on the ending. But that’s far better than me hating the ending because I didn’t understand Brennan’s motivations.

Have you seen this episode? What do you think of it?

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Bones – Chemistry and Crime

The last time I wrote about Bones on this blog, I had only watched two episodes. Now, two and a half months later, I’m on season 5. I think it’s high time I posted an update.

If you did the math and gathered that I’m watching an average of one episode plus a day, you could assume the truth – Bones has lost none of its initial charm. I love this show.

Most fans of crime drama would agree – it’s not the crimes that keep us watching these shows; it’s watching the characters interact as they solve the crimes. If the team has great chemistry, the show will soar.

Dr. Temperance Brennan and FBI Agent Seeley Booth had chemistry from the first five minutes they were together in episode one. Over the years, their relationship has grown and deepened, but it still remains the core of the show.

Brennan’s knowledge of emotions and intuitive leaps is greater than when the show began, but her preference for rational answers still provides much conflict and humor. It took me a while to realize that Emily Deschanel is the sister of Zooey Deschanel, who I’ve seen as the quirky love interest in many movies.

I like David Boreanaz as Seeley Booth far more than him as Angel. The lionhearted protector role suits him best, and far too often on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel he had to play the angst-ridden dark hero hiding in the shadows and brooding. (Pondering this, Booth reminds me a bit of a grown-up Xander, and Brennan and Booth’s head and heart relationship recalls Xander and Anya.)

Another thing I like about this show is how openly faith vs. science is discussed, especially in the first season. It’s not often you see a Christian (Booth is Catholic) portrayed in a good light on network TV.

Initially, I didn’t like the idea of Hodgins and Angela as a couple – they just didn’t seem to fit right. But by their first date I had completely changed my mind. I’m hopeful they’ll get back together, and meanwhile I enjoy Angela in the role of Brennan’s best friend and the person who can still be shocked by decomposing bodies, and Hodgin with his crazy experiments.

It took me a while to warm up to Cam (Dr. Saroyan) after she “replaced” Dr. Goodman, and she still is my least favorite of the main characters. But I really enjoyed a recent episode that focused on her, so it may just be that the writers haven’t given her enough flaws and backstory to make her as easy to relate to as the others.

I have a huge interest in psychology stemming from my love of personality types, so it’s fun to watch Dr. Sweets analyze Booth and Brennan. And John Francis Daley plays an adorable dork perfectly.

With Zack’s abrupt departure at the end of season 3 (from reviews I’ve gathered that many fans were outraged), the show took what I consider a brilliant approach to filling his role. Every episode rotates in a different one of Dr. Brennan’s grad students, each with their quirks. That way, none of them has to “live up” to Zack, and viewers can enjoy everything from Fisher’s gloomy outlook to Nigel-Murray’s compulsive fact-reciting (in a lovable British accent).

As I typed “Dr.” so many times in this post, it reminded me of another aspect I enjoy about this show – its intelligence. Shows about smart people just tend to be better. I’ve never been a fan of Three Stooges-type humor, or shows that try to be as raunchy as possible for laughs. But I love shows where humor arises naturally from the personalities of the characters, or when hyper-intelligence grates against social norms and moderate intelligence (in addition to Temperance Brennan, Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory and Sherlock Holmes on BBC’s Sherlock come to mind).

I’m trying to avoid spoilers as I hurry to catch up before season 7 starts in September. Unfortunately, I already uncovered two big ones accidentally.

(And just as a note, other than House, this is the only Fox show I’ve watched since Dollhouse was cancelled. Plus, there have been a score of Whedonverse guest appearances throughout the seasons of Bones.)

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Bones vs. Smallville – Initial Thoughts

I know two episodes isn’t always enough to find out whether you’ll like a show, but since pilots often differ from typical episodes, I think most shows should be given at least two chances to hook a viewer’s interest (of course, some shows are so terrible they don’t deserve even one full episode, but I’m more talking about a “meh” reaction to a pilot). I know I wish I’d given Buffy more episodes to grow on me, though the fact that I sought out other Joss Whedon shows right afterward hints that it simply was vampires creeping me out.

With my supernaturally-inclined shows all over for good or for the season (The Cape, Merlin, V, No Ordinary Family, and Being Human), and having finished my Buffy/Angel marathon, it seemed like a good time to try out Smallville. So I watched the first two episodes. And yawned.

To be fair, it probably wasn’t a good idea to watch Smallville so soon after falling in love with the Buffyverse. Smallville had big shoes to fill, and true to its name, it didn’t measure up. It didn’t have humor. Or suspense. The dialog was stilted and predictable. Good characters had no flaws and bad ones, no virtues. The country setting didn’t appeal to me either.

Since I’d watched one Superman movie, I was able to pick up on the hints of mythic origin, and thought they were rather well done – until they decided to paint them bolder as if screaming “Get it?” at me. And since I didn’t really care about the elements that would make up Superman’s future (unlike the elements in the Star Wars prequels that made me enjoy them – R2D2, C-3PO, Palpatine’s rise to power, meeting Lars and Beru), I lacked a sense of wonder at their arrival.

I liked the music. Lex and Chloe seemed like they could become interesting characters. But that was it. I may try to make it to a third episode, if only for the fact that James Marsters (aka Spike) will eventually show up on the show. But considering that won’t happen until season 5, and he’s only in there for 14 episodes, I doubt it. Maybe if I’m really, really bored.

To make up for the disappointment of Smallville, I decided to try watching Bones instead. Yes, I already was watching eight other crime dramas, but only one of them focused on the FBI. I’d heard Bones was good several times. It starred David Boreanaz (aka Angel). And Netflix had every past season on watch instantly.

A few minutes into the pilot, I knew I had found a gem. The chemistry and arguments between Brennan and Booth reminded me of Castle and Beckett. The humor and camaraderie of Brennan’s team made me think of NCIS. (And Castle and NCIS just happen to be my two favorite crime dramas.) I watched the second episode just to make sure this show wasn’t too good to be true.

Already, with her brilliance, beauty, and social awkwardness, Dr. Temperance Brennan seems to have so many layers waiting to be uncovered. I love her “I don’t know what that means” line. And she’s a writer!

Seeing David Boreanaz in a different role is nice (since as Angel he tended to live in a perpetual state of angst, with brief periods of dorkiness and pure evil). Many shows tend to paint FBI agents as “by the book,” so it’s refreshing to have the cop being the one who goes by gut instinct.

Four episodes. Two shows. One clear winner.

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