House and Bones – the Best of Primetime Television
Well, not really. When matched up with other primetime fare, they’re quite similar. Both use forensics, medicine and science as investigative tools and involve an ensemble of characters to tell their stories. No different than CSI and Law & Order. And the programs also remind me of the X-Files (particularly Bones with its Scully and Mulderesque characters FBI agent Seeley Booth and Temperance Brennan) with their approach to investigating and solving mysteries. Yet each show has a unique quality that sets it apart from the rest of primetime fare.
For House, it is in the form of Dr. Gregory House, an irascible but fiercely intelligent infectious disease specialist who works with a group of young experts to solve the show’s weekly medical mysteries. Played by Hugh Laurie, House is the kind of character that we haven’t seen since All in the Family went off the air. He lacks self-censorship and says exactly what’s on his mind – -and most of it tends to be unflattering, caustic, dead-on and funny. He insults with equal opportunity, be it his boss, Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein), the hospital administrator, his colleagues, friends, and patients alike. And yet there is something enigmatic about this character. Beneath all that ill-tempered snarkiness lurks a deeply wounded and lonely figure.
The second season finale touched on those aspects when House, after being shot, went through a Dantean trip through his own psyche. I sense that deep down inside, House is ambivalent about his own attitudes on life and his health (House suffers from a bum leg thanks to a surgery gone wrong), which has in many ways isolated him from the rest of the world. If it were not for his work, and Dr. James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), an oncologist at the hospital and the one person he would consider a friend, I doubt he could stand anyone for any long period of time.
But the finale revealed that perhaps he longs for something more (the oddly erotic scene in which he uses a surgical robot to remove a button from Dr. Alison Cameron’s [Jennifer Morrison] blouse proves this guy could use some more tender loving care). By the end of the episode, he’s requesting the same drug treatment that apparently cured him of his pain during his hallucination. Will life without pain be the cure he’s searching for? Will it make him a better man, doctor? These are the questions the show leaves us with for the summer hiatus and they’re intesting questions, because they delve into the greatest mystery the show has created: House himself.
House is an engaging character and Hugh Laurie plays him with all the right notes, never making him meaner than is necessary but giving him the right dose of “get-over-yourselfness” in dealing with his colleagues and patients. But the entire cast – -Edelstein, Leonard, Morrison, Omar Epps, Jesse Spencer (Dr. Robert Chase) – -are all good, creating the kind of chemistry a show like this desperately needs. Laurie is like the actor’s equivalent of a great tennis player (John McEnroe anyone?), lobbing balls across the net with elaborate speed and control, and his castmates do a wonderful job keeping up with him with each volley.
Like House, Bones also has an enigmatic character in the form of Dr. Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel), a forensic anthropologist who teams up with FBI agent Seeley Booth to solve crimes. Brennan, who works at the Jeffersonian Institute and writes novels on the side, is an emotional cypher who hides her true self behind her work and her single-minded obsession to investigate the deaths of victims through their decomposed bones. Yet, like House, there’s a lot lurking beneath that cool, scientific exterior. Bones’ aloofness is due to a tragic childhood circumstance: her parents disappeared when she was a teen. In the show’s finale, her mother’s bones were recovered and the murderer arrested.
It also teased at the possibility that her father, who, along with her mother, was involved in a number of bank robberies, and went underground, is still out there somewhere. Bones (Booth’s nickname for her) reminds me a lot of Fox Mulder, who was likewise haunted by a past family mystery. Mulder also experienced an identity crisis (who was his real father after all?) and Bones, who learned her real name is Joy, will no doubt experience the same next season. Because of her auspicious family background, Bones retreats into her work as a way to isolate herself from others, but unlike House, who needed to be shot to understand his desire to move beyond his caustic nature and reach out to others (that is if he’ll even learn that lesson next season), Bones is well aware of how emotionally stunted she is as witnessed in her friendship with fellow scientist at the Jeffersonian Institute and friend Dr. Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin).
Angela, who has created a computer program to create 3-D images of the reconstructed bones of murder victims, is funnier and less rigid than Bones. She is Bones’ role model, the person she would most like to be. Bones also has a role model in Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz), a smart, sexy, and funny FBI agent who turns to Bones for help in searching forensic clues in FBI investigations. He seems to enjoy ruffling Bones’ deadpan exterior, playing the comic to Bones’ straight man. But Booth is much more than that, as well. The basic tension between the two defines their characters. Bones solves murders by talking to the dead, while Booth prefers to deal with the living. I suspect, by series end, Booth will have brought Bones back to the land of the living, even as she helps him respect science. There is of course an underlying sexual tension between the two, but one that is as much based on mutual respect and friendship as it is on their attraction to one another.
Both Deschanel and Boreanaz have a charming chemistry, one that can believably play off the respect, friendship and repressed sexual attraction these two characters possess toward one another. In the hands of any other actress, Bones could easily be a boring and unengaging character, but Deschanel undercuts her character’s aloofness with vulnerability, teasing the viewer with possibilities that there’s more to her (the season finale more than proved Deschanel is up to the task of bringing the character’s vulnerabilities to the surface). Boreanaz likewise creates a likeable character in Booth, lending him a dry sense of humor that works well opposite Deschanel’s deadpan seriousness. But he also displays a quiet tenderness in the way he deals with Bones and the victims of his investigations that is a departure from the usual crime drama fare. The show works because of these two actors and I’m interested in seeing how far they’ll take the relationship.
While the show is balanced on Deschanel and Boreanaz’ characters, it also includes: Montenegro, Zack Addy (Eric Millegan), Bones’ young prodigal assistant, Dr. Jack Hodgins (TJ Thyne), an entomologist and spore expert, and lab director Dr. Daniel Goodman (Jonathan Adams). In a way, the supporting cast reminds me of the Lone Gunman on The X-files (one of the characters is even a conspiracist).
What I find appealing about both shows is that the mysteries the characters are involved in solving, whether infectious diseases or murder, are really metaphors in exploring the deepest mystery of them all: the desire to connect to another human being in a profound way and the angst involved. I’ve come to greatly enjoy both shows and can’t wait to catch up on episodes I’ve missed during the season over the summer. If you haven’t already caught either show before, I suggest you do the same.
