The Hard Easy—Review

The Hard Easy is a direct-to-DVD movie starring David Boreanaz, which was released this week. Of course I had my copy preordered, just waiting for the long weekend so I could pop it in and watch it in a leisurely fashion. Well, as much of a leisurely fashion as I can manage, anyway.

The plot goes thusly: Down on his luck gambler Paul (Henry Thomas) needs money--a lot of it--because, well, he's down on his luck, and owes people a ton of money. Stockbroker Roger (David Boreanaz) needs money--a lot of it--because a scheme concocted by his marginally insane boss Buckaroo Banzai Ed (Peter Weller) went sideways. Both of them end up involved in a plan to rob a jewelry store of a shipment of diamonds. Unfortunately, it's the same jewelry store, and the same diamonds. Hilarity Chaos ensues.

In spite of a few rather annoying (and unsuccessful) attempts to make itself look like a Guy Ritchie movie, The Hard Easy is a fairly solid caper movie, with plenty of plot twists, most of which actually even make sense--always a plus. The last act is almost absurdly violent, although that's pretty common for this type of movie, but it never quite veers dark enough to jar the slightly smirky tone established from the beginning. Overall, not a bad movie, and well worth a watch.

For Boreanaz fans, there's a long expository scene between Boreanaz and Peter Weller which is conducted with Boreanaz shirtless throughout for no really good reason. Kudos to the screenwriters for gratuitous Boreanaz shirtlessness. It makes any movie better.

Rated R for pervasive naughty words and lots of people getting shot.

Also starring Vera Farmiga, Bruce Dern, Nick Lachey and Gary Busey.

Bones—Stargazer in a Puddle.

Tonight's season finale of Bones is, coincidentally, airing on David Boreanaz's birthday. Happy birthday, David. Have some cake.

Booth and Brennan's case for the week involves a child's body found in a shopping cart in a drained sewer.

Angela and Hodgins discuss their upcoming nuptials. Max Keenan shows up and Booth arrests him under Brennan's protest. Our favorite lawyer Caroline points out that it'll be hard to charge Max with anything because his concocted identity is practically bulletproof. Booth checks out his prints and attempts to rile him up to justify keeping him in jail, but fails.

Angela's reconstruction of the victim's face is an old woman, rather than the expected ten-year-old girl. It's not entirely clear to me why Angela came to this conclusion, though she said the markers "felt wrong." I think that was just a way to get to the line about art making science her bitch, which was funny, but I could have used a bit more forensics here. Anyway, she asks Brennan to be her Maid of Honor. Brennan agrees. There is hugging.

Max came to bring Brennan a ring that belonged to her grandmother. Brennan invites him to stay at her apartment. Booth is unable to trace Max in any way, not even with his fingerprints. He's apparently been disappeared by the FBI. Caroline says they need DNA to prove his identity.

The victim continues to be mysterious--some markers say she's ten, others say she's 80. Brennan postulates progyria, while Angela has found a 22 year old, Chelsea Cole, on the NCIC database that matches her reconstruction. Hodgins asks Zack to be best man. Booth and Brennan notify Chelsea's mother Cynthia. Chelsea had Werner's disease. She appeared to be elderly, but had the mental capacity of a six-year-old. The mother suspects a man who was Chelsea's caretaker, who had been under investigation when Chelsea disappeared. Booth questions the caretaker, who insists he's innocent. He says things weren't going well for Cynthia at the time of Chelsea's disappearance.

Brennan and her dad have more bonding time. Max says the ring will help Brennan find her mother's three sisters, and that her mother wanted her to have it, but Brennan is still prickly because of that fifteen years of abandonment thing. Booth shows up with an order for a DNA sample.

Hodgins asks Zack to be his best man, but the president has asked Zack to go to Iraq, so Zack declines for various Zack-like reasons related to that. Hodgins asks Booth, instead.

During questioning, Cynthia gets worked up and, while taking her AIDS medication, says stuff she probably shouldn't. This is leading toward the mother as the killer, so I hope it doesn't end up there.

Hodgins suddenly realizes he forgot about Angela's father, and goes to talk to him. I still haven't figured out if he's supposed to really be the guy from ZZ Top, or if it's just a big coincidence. Although they did play a lot of ZZ Top tonight... Either way, he's amusing, and obviously understands his daughter.

Hodgins and Zack use sea chimps and spam to determine the cause of death. Chelsea was killed by an overdose of AIDS medication. Suspicion of course falls on the mother, and she's arrested. If she had AIDS, and the daughter died from a medication overdose, why did she spread her meds all over the table earlier? Not very smart. Booth finds enough evidence to arrest Max, and does so, but not after a bit of fisticuffs. In the end, Max goes willingly, knowing if he leaves Brennan again, she'll never forgive him. As an aside, Boreanaz really knows how to hit people hotly. And the segue from hot to dork who's just been clocked in the nuts can't fail to amuse.

Brennan watches a video from her mom. Good thing she still has a VCR. It's all a bit cheesy, but seems to provide Brennan with some closure regarding her mother. I think it's nice that they closed this season with an episode about Brennan's parents, mirroring last year's finale.

Brennan talks to Cynthia. Cynthia is, indeed, the killer, but her motives weren't quite what we'd assume. The parallel between Brennan's mother's abandonment and Cynthia's decision to kill her daughter rather than leave her a ward of the state after her own impending death is somehow strained and poignant at the same time. While the mother-as-killer is far too obvious, and disappointing in that I once again guessed the killer, this scene made up for it in a lot of ways, because the mother's motive added a twist I wasn't expecting. Also, this episode is really focused more on Brennan's issues with her father and the impending wedding, so a thinner plot for the murder case makes sense.

The wedding commences. Booth shoves his foot down his throat regarding Brennan's dress, but he looks so hot in a tuxedo that nobody cares. Angela's middle name is "Pearly Gates." Zack asks Booth what he should do about going to Iraq, and Booth tells Brennan about Max's decision to allow himself to be arrested.

But at the last minute, the ceremony is interrupted by somebody from the state department. Turns out Angela's first marriage was actually valid. Hey, at least she doesn't have her syphilitic husband hidden in the tower room back at the Grange (literary joke!). Caroline tells them to run away, and they do, after sending everybody off to the reception.

And that's the end of Season Two. Season Three starts... um.... sometime next fall, presumably dependent on the baseball schedule. And hopefully at some point they'll go ahead and air "Player Under Pressure," the episode pulled due to the VA Tech shootings, but the network hasn't released any definite information on that yet.

ZZ Top--Give Me All Your Lovin'



ZZ Top--Blue Jean Blues

The Hard Easy Available for Pre-Order

The Hard Easy, a direct-to-DVD movie starring David Boreanaz, Nick Lachey, Peter Weller and Henry Thomas, is available for pre-order at amazon.com.

From imdb:
Two separate teams of jewel thieves, one low-rent and one upscale, both desperate, converge on the same score at the exact same time, and a simple job turns out very complicated and very bloody.

Of Interest to Bones/Boreanaz Fans

David Boreanaz is apparently writing a blog on the NHL site about the Buffalo Sabres. Which I find odd because I really thought he'd said multiple times that he was a Flyers fan. Either team makes sense though, given his background. Anyway, the link is here:

http://fans.nhl.com/david_boreanaz/home/

Also, as advertised during Bones tonight, Fox is doing an online mystery thing in conjunction with the May 9th episode. Info on that can be found here:

http://fox.com/bones/mystery/index.htm

I haven't looked yet other than to grab the link. Honestly, it looks like something I could get all obsessy with and then I wouldn't get enough sleep and I'd be all cranky...

Enjoy!!

Bones—The Killer in the Concrete

Ryan O'Neal returns as a guest star tonight, as Brennan's estranged criminal father, last seen in "Judas on a Pole."

Booth and Brennan are called in on a case where a body has been found encased in concrete. And Booth has a toothache so he's cranky, but he doesn't want to go to the dentist.

Angela goes with Brennan to Christine Brennan's grave to mark the anniversary of her burial. Her father arrives. Brennan refuses to speak to him and instead calls the cops. Later he breaks into her house to see her, and remains persistent, trying to reconnect with her.

The concrete body, aka Cement Head per Booth, turns out to be a known criminal with a long and heinous rap sheet. Booth makes up fun names for the folks involved in the case. The body is Cement Head (although it's really concrete), and the suspected killer is Ice Pick. Their boss, though, is just Gallagher, as Booth doesn't seem to see the point in a nickname there. Ice Pick died in a car accident, but Booth wants some evidence from that case re-examined--namely Ice Pick's severed leg from the car accident. Booth interrogates the bounty hunter who saw Ice Pick burn in the crash. She comes on to him, then scats when Brennan calls to report evidence the bounty hunter was involved in a cover-up regarding Ice Pick's death. For the record, Booth seems to have a thing for sassy women of color. And blondes. He's a man of varied tastes. I wonder if he likes short brunettes? Ahem.

Ice Pick apparently amputated his own leg and killed somebody else in the car crash to throw the cops off, and has been retired and playing with model airplanes ever since. Booth tracks him down, but is outwitted, tied up, and smacked around. By a guy with one leg. I think the toothache has put Booth off his game. Gallagher then arrives, dragging Booth off to torture him for information about Ice Pick. He also does Booth the favor of knocking out his infected tooth. Of course Brennan, Brennan and Co. come through to rescue him, but not until he's been through rather a hard time.

The case this week was pretty straightforward, with few surprises, but there was a lot of good character interaction to balance it out. Brennan's gradual acceptance of her persistent father was nicely done. I like Booth's attitude toward Max Keenan--"In the Old West, they would have called him a hero." This is consistent with his comments from "Judas on a Pole," when he said he'd rather deal with a straight criminal than a crooked cop. At the same time, he's perfectly willing to arrest the man, and acts a bit miffed when Brennan lets Max go. Booth had some great comedic moments tonight, too. I loved the scene where Brennan was looking at his tooth. Once again, David Boreanaz is fearless when it comes to looking like an idiot on camera, to hysterical effect. And on the other side of the acting equation came the torture scene, also very well played. It reminded me a lot of the torture scene from "In the Dark," when Spike's torturer-for-hire pokes Angel through with hot pokers. It also reminded me a bit of the torture scene from Casino Royale, though Boreanaz was, unfortunately, not nearly as naked as Daniel Craig was.

One quibble--while the repetition of the Poco song made for a nice bonding bit between Brennan and her father, and later Brennan and Booth, I don't think it worked very well as a backdrop for the scene where it was used. It seemed a bit too perky to accompany Booth being stabbed with hot screwdrivers.

Bones on iTunes:



Keep on Tryin'--Poco

Bones—The Boneless Bride in the River

Although Brennan is attempting to be on vacation with Sully, Booth calls her in on a case--a body that was boiled, and its entire skeleton removed, before being dumped in a river. Yes, this is as gross as it sounds and why am I still trying to eat ice cream? I should know better by now. Zack and Hodgins try to inflate the skull-less head to reconstruct the woman's face--also gross but funny, too.

Angela manages to ID the body as an Asian woman who's in the country to visit her fiance. He claims they had called off the wedding, and then flees from the scene. Nice way to not look suspicious. The victim proves to be a mail order bride. Brennan suspects the body was treated as it was as part of a traditional Chinese ritual in which the bones of a woman are buried with a man to provide company for the man in the afterlife, although generally the woman isn't murdered to provide the bones. While suspicion of course focuses on the fiance, the final resolution leads the investigation in another direction.

In the meantime, Sully buys a boat and invites Brennan to take a year off to cruise to the Caribbean with him. Angela encourages her to go. Surprisingly, so does Booth, although most of his other behavior indicates he's not crazy about the idea.

This episode had an interesting premise, although my google-fu failed as far as verifying the supposed Chinese tradition that drove the plot. Not that it doesn't exist--I just wasn't able to confirm it. The writers certainly seem to be coming up with crazier and crazier ways for people to die. The humor in this episode was good, as well--I particularly liked the scenes contrasting Harper's graceful martial arts gymnastics with Booth's clumsy barreling along and falling over himself. I've always liked the way David Boreanaz doesn't seem to worry about humiliating himself on camera, and this was no exception. Of course, it led up to that great fist-in-the-face moment--we can't have our stalwart FBI hero humiliated for the entire episode, after all. His mixed reactions to Brennan's dilemma with Sully were equally well-played. While I rather enjoyed the addition of Sully to the cast, I'm kind of glad they didn't drag it out too long, because it could have gotten tiresome. This handful of episodes was just about right.

Bones on iTunes:

Bones—The Bodies in the Book

Yay!! Bones is back. It's been off the air a whole month because of American Idol. Have I mentioned I deeply dislike American Idol?

Anyway.

We open with Brennan having a lot of fun with Sully, then getting a call from her publicist. She needs to do interviews and signings for her new book. But somebody else has a publicity plan--he's reenacting the murders she wrote about. The killer is shooting his victims, then wrapping them up in red tape and feeding them to animals--crabs, then rats, then fire ants. There seems to be no connection between the victims, and each case seems to have a different major suspect. The only thing tying them together, apparently, is Brennan's book.

On the romance side of the story, while things look peachy between Hodgins and Angela, Brennan and Sully have hit some bumpy terrain. Sully seems to be getting pretty serious. Brennan is concerned about this--she's seeing their relationship as a fling, and is disconcerted by the idea of anything more than that. Booth counsels them both, seeming to help them move toward each other. Booth is by turns smug, sweet, and charming, as David Boreanaz pulls off the shifting moods with aplomb.

The case proves convoluted enough to be entertaining, but not too convoluted to make sense. I liked the slightly-different-than-usual resolution. The character interplay in this episode is superb--even more fun than usual, if that's possible. The bodies, however, were particularly gross. I'm glad I wasn't eating dinner. All in all, a great return from hiatus...again.

Some notes:
Cam mentions the name of Tempe's fictional heroine--it's Kathy Reichs. Although they've talked about this since the show premiered, this is the first time it's been said on-air. Kathy Reichs is, of course, the author of the books featuring Temperance Brennan. She appeared briefly in "Judas on a Pole."

Featured songs:
Fault Line--Black Rebel Motorcycle Club


Jesse Harris and the Ferdinandos--The Secret Sun

Bones—The Man in the Mansion

Back on the job, but still undergoing therapy (no, it's not therapy, it's an official evaluation--sorry, Seeley), Booth is trying to suppress his bad impulses by wearing boring ties and socks. Everybody razzes him. I think he should not suppress his bad impulses, personally. But the razzing is hysterical. Apparently everyone is aware of Booth's crazy sock, tie and belt buckle wearing habit. As his "evaluation" with Wyatt continues, the crazy socks become a representation of Booth's need to rebel and express his inner rage against the entitled. Except for the belt buckle, which is the modern version of the medieval codpiece, designed to draw attention to his groin.

I do love this show.

Oh, right, and aside from Booth's clothing issues, there's a case to be solved, complete with gross putrid corpses. Tonight's victim is a millionaire who's been found dead in his mansion. Jack hides evidence that he had a previous relationship with the victim's wife, knowing that if this comes out, he'll get thrown off the case. This leads to all kinds of trouble for Jack, and ultimately endangers the case when the suspect is brought to trial.

In other subplots, Sully and Brennan have been dating, but Sully hasn't made a move, other than to ask her to come to his basketball game so she can ogle his buttcrack (damn, he's such a romantic), so Brennan's confused. In the meantime, Sully goes to Seeley for advice on how to approach Brennan, which doesn't go well at all. Sully accuses Seeley of having the hots for his partner. Brennan does go to the basketball game, where she falls upon rumors that her new boyfriend is--how does one say this delicately?--lacking in the filling up of the codpiece department.

The case progresses a bit differently than usual, with a sharply written courtroom scene. I really liked the way this was put together--it moved along quickly, with neat dialogue transitions from witness to witness. The case, though, nearly falls apart when Jack's tampering is revealed, leading to some nice scenes between him and Booth. Booth has a very clear-cut sense of right and wrong. Jack violates this, but then he fixes it later, in another nice scene between the two of them. They're not girls, per Booth, so Jack gets pie for doing the right thing so they don't have to actually talk.

Another nice tidbit tonight was the return of Caroline the Prosecutor, always a welcome addition. She was spunky and sassy and usual, and her lecture to them all at the end was hysterical, especially her proposal that if they win the case, Jack gets his job back. If they lose, Booth shoots him.

In the end, all is well as the verdict comes in as guilty when Angela saves the day by identifying a strain of aspergillis on the body. Brennan gets some nookie from Sully and discovers the truth about what he hides in his codpiece, then tells Booth all about it, somewhat to his annoyance. As for Booth, he switches to the trademark stripey socks (I'd put money down that these came out of Boreanaz's actual sock drawer) and feels he needs perhaps a flashier tie to deal with all his suppressed issues.

Overall, great fun. But now the dreaded behemoth that is American Idol puts us on hiatus again until March.

Bones—The Girl in the Gator

Okay. First.

In this article at TVGuide.com, Eddie McClintock, our guest for tonight and apparently several other nights, claims he gets mistaken for David Boreanaz. "I've actually signed a few autographs as him." Dude. You look nothing like The David. Plus isn't that fraud? Does the FBI investigate autograph fraud? I'm appalled.

Okay, seriously, although this wasn't the greatest Bones episode by far, I like the addition of Eddie to the cast, because it looks like it's destined to bring some fun tension into the show. It's a bummer to have David Boreanaz absent, but I hope he's getting a good break from the shift in the plotline. He deserves it. Put your feet up, Dave. Have some tea.

Anyway.

Seeley Booth is having a bad day. Apparently going from reglar nookie to no nookie has made him really tense, because he shoots a clown on an ice cream truck because it's being too noisy and annoying. As a result, he has to see a shrink before he can get his gun back, leaving Brennan to meet up with Agent Tim Sullivan (who does not look like Agent Booth, although he seems to be trying to act like him), to investigate a body found inside Eugene, an alligator. I felt kind of bad that they shot the alligator. I mean, he was eating a dead body, not a live human. It seems unfair. Poor Eugene.

Booth is sent to see Gordon Wyatt (Stephen Fry of Fry and Laurie, as in Hugh Laurie as in House) and is told to cogitate and they'll have some tea. Booth tries to get him to just sign the papers so he can go back to work, but instead Wyatt has Booth build him a brick barbecue, which leads to Booth modeling some seriously hot wardrobe and getting scruffy. I have to wonder at Wyatt's motives, but I highly approve.

Sully (Seeley? Sully? Did you catch that subtle juxtaposition?) and Brennan investigate the murder. Brennan identifies the parts in the gator as Judy, a missing college student. She also was apparently involved in a porn website called Hotty Student Body. Hodgins knows about it--he clicked on a pop-up and got caught in a pornado. I like that. Pornado. They find footage of Judy on the website, and suspicion builds toward the website's owner, Monte Gold. While they're interrogating him, they run across Isaac, a fundamentalist minister type who follows Monte around trying to save wandering souls.

The story continues from here in the usual fashion, with plot twists to divert from one suspect to another. Ultimately I found the main plotline less than satisfying. Monte and Isaac were sterotypical in the easy-way-out way, much like Howard Epps' mother in last week's episode, and the fallen minister as murderer "twist" was far too obvious. Monte's death wasn't a bad addition, although I saw it coming the minute Judy's father approached Angela in the diner. I did, however, enjoy the interplay between Sully and Brennan, as they began to warm to each other. And the scenes with Dr. Wyatt and Booth really made the episode. Booth's issues with the clown stem from his uncertainty about what happened with Epps in "The Man in the Cell"--he's genuinely uncertain whether Epps' death was accidental, or if he should count it as his fiftieth kill. The interplay here was by turns funny, as Booth tries to pressure Wyatt to sign his papers, and touching, when Booth finally breaks down and gets to the root of his problem. Boreanaz wasn't in the episode a lot, but when he was, he really delivered. And boy, can he wear a denim shirt...

Bones—The Man in the Cell

New Bones tonight!! It seems like it's been forever. I have missed Mr. Boreanaz and his giganamous shoulders. And this episode was a great way to start things up again after the hiatus. Edge-of-your-seat time, people...

Tonight's episode again featured Howard Epps, the serial killer introduced in "The Man on Death Row" who returned to torment Booth and Brennan in "The Blonde in the Game." Epps has been burned to death in his cell in a prison fire. But it's not Epps. The body in the cell is actually a firefighter, and Epps has escaped.

Booth goes Alpha Male on everyone (I'll be in my bunk), telling Brennan to not go out by herself, ever, and ordering Cam to double security on the lab. In the meantime, Brennan gets herself a big honkin' gun, which she uses to threaten Booth's masculinity. Epps plays his usual mind games, leaving obscure clues, but turning up the heat now that he's free from prison. He murders his wife and leaves her head in the fridge, then threatens both Angela and Parker. Completely wigged by the threat to Parker, Booth pressures Cam to hurry her work on the severed head. Cam, slicing open the head, is poisoned by a powder that explodes out of the incision.

With Cam dying, the stakes are ratcheted up. Brennan works to get more clues from Epps. Booth suffers extreme angst, blaming himself for Cam's poisoning. I alternate between chewing off my fingernails and sliding off the chaise into a puddle of Booth-angst induced goo. His scenes by Cam's hospital bed are lovely, as are his scenes with Parker, showing us a vulnerability we don't often get to see. The third act break, with the booby-trapped body of Epps' wife, makes me flail, and the beginning of the fourth act, with the planted news story, doesn't help, as I have not read spoilers and for a couple of seconds they almost have me fooled. Darn them...

In any case, in the end Cam is snatched back from the brink of death, and Brennan outsmarts Epps. Epps takes a dive off Brennan's balcony, though Booth tries to save him. Shaken by what happened to Cam, Booth decides to end their relationship. Which, though not unexpected, is kind of too bad, because I thought she was a good match for him.

It's also too bad that this episode proved to be Epps' swan song. "The Man on Death Row" and "The Blonde in the Game" were both very well-done episodes, and tonight's installment was one of the best this show has produced so far. With that track record, Epps will be missed as a nemesis. On the other hand, dragging his storyline out too much longer might have seemed forced.

With all that said--and yes, this was a really good episode--there were a couple of bobbles. I was particularly underwhelmed by the portrayal of Epps' mother. I mean, come on--serial killer has an obese, overly fundamentalist mother? Could we be more of a sterotype? She was a drop-in character--it wouldn't have taken much to tweak her short scene enough to push it out of the oh-so-very-obvious. Also, with Zack suggesting an X-ray of the head only a few lines before Cam makes the decision to go ahead and slice it open, this plot point is undermined a bit. Even with Booth pressuring her because of the threat to Parker, it seems unrealistic that she wouldn't go ahead and use the X-ray. It wouldn't have slowed them down much, and could have still led to her slicing it open and catching the faceful of poison.

Did I mention I've really missed this show?

Neat Interview with Hart Hanson (Bones)

Found this via the Bone Yard--Hart Hanson Interview. Go check it out! There's a picture of David Boreanaz smooching his boss... totally worth the click. But read the interview, too.

Bones Return Bumped Again—and Why I Don't Like American Idol

Well, it's official. Bones, which for a while appeared to be returning next Wednesday, 1/24, is not not coming back to grace our screens with Boreanaz shoulders until 1/31. Excuse me while I go weep into my oatmeal.

Okay, I'm back.

All this shuffling, of course, has to do with the premiere of this year's American Idol. I do not like American Idol. I probably should in some way, because it's probably helped Bones pull decent ratings. But as a show, I don't like it. And yes, before you take me to task, I have watched it a few times. My kids like it, so I'm forced to, much as I was forced to endure nearly 18 straight hours of Hannah Montana over New Year's.

Why do I not like it? First and foremost, Simon. He's mean. I fail to understand why watching somebody verbally abuse another person is entertaining. Maybe we should just go back to the old Roman gladiator days and have people literally flayed with knives on TV. I think it'd be easier to watch. And Simon's recent dissing of Bob Dylan makes me respect him even less. Not only is he nasty for no good reason, he has no real concept of musical genius. Poor Bob would be viciously mocked right out of the audition room.

Which leads me to the second reason I don't like AI. When I was in college, my sister belonged to a theater troupe (a really good one, by the way). They did a lot of musicals, and all their folks were coached by the same voice trainer. He got some fantastic results out of a lot of people who hadn't ever sung before, but in the end everybody came out sounding kind of alike. Same use of head versus chest voice, same applications of vibrato, same kind of tonality and vocal quality. That's what seems to me to happen on AI. You start out with some people with some nicely distinctive voices, then by the end, after they've run the gauntlet of vocal coaching with the AI team, you can barely tell Fantasia from Clay Aiken. I can't identify Kelly Clarkson on the radio by her voice—she sounds just like any number of full-voiced female crooners currently cluttering our airwaves. (In fact, the only way I know it's Kelly is that my daughter will start singing along, cause she LOVES Kelly Clarkson.) And she's not bad, really. She's just...generic. The same goes for Carrie Underwood. Although I do like "Before He Cheats." Go, Carrie! Key that car!

Anyway, that's why I don't like American Idol—because Simon is a not-nice person, and because the show contributes to the overall genericizing (genericization? Is that a word?) of American pop culture. That, plus it's making me have to wait another week to see Boreanaz shoulders, and that makes me cranky.

Mr. Fix It

This isn't technically TV, but it's a direct-to-DVD movie starring David Boreanaz, so I think I'll talk about it, anyway.

Between the cancellation of Angel and the pick-up of Bones, David Boreanaz was a busy man. During that time period, he worked on These Girls, The Hard Easy, and Mr. Fix It. These Girls saw theatrical release in Canada and a DVD release in the US, The Hard Easy, with Nick Lachey, has yet to surface, and Mr. Fix It came out just after Christmas as a direct-to-DVD release.

I truthfully wasn't expecting a great deal from this movie, and as a result I was pleasantly surprised. Boreanaz plays Lance Valenteen, aka Mr. Fix It. Convinced he's incapable of true love himself, Valenteen helps mend broken relationships by dating women who've dumped pining men and behaving so obnoxiously that the women rush back to their exes, realizing they weren't so bad after all (the opening sequence, showcasing several of Valenteen's targets, is quite amusing). But after the manner of the romantic comedy, Valenteen finally faces a case he can't bring himself to close because, contrary to all his expectations, he's fallen for the woman in question.

Boreanaz puts in a decent, if sometimes over the top, performance here, very different from what we're used to seeing in his TV roles. The story itself is fun, if predictable, and moves along at a good pace. Some of the jokes are a bit strained, and the ending is a bit pat, but no more so than in many other recent romantic comedies I've seen. And the sub-plot with Valenteen's retiree friends is charming. Overall, I found Mr. Fix It to be an enjoyable romp.

One thing I don't understand is the R rating. While several of the jokes are off color, there's almost no bad language in this movie, and the single sex scene features no nudity at all, more's the pity. (Boreanaz should have a clause in every contract requiring gratuitous nudity. Just sayin'.) It almost seems to me that the MPAA rates direct-to-DVD movies more strictly than theatrical releases.

Some personal favorite moments:
The promotional cartoons of Valenteen, pointy hair and all, are hysterical. The blue shirt he wears in the live-action portions of the promotional video is the opposite of hysterical, in that it made me nearly slide off my chaise lounge in amazement at Boreanaz's gigantic shoulders.

The dance scene, in which Sophia (Alana De La Garza) divests Valenteen of his shirt. Yes, I am shallow. Did you want to make something of it?

Rated R for horny dog action, fully clothed sex, and some crude jokes.

Happy New Year

It's January 1, so I guess I'll jump on the bandwagon and list my favorites of 2006.

Favorite New Show:
Dexter

Favorite "New to Me" Show:
Supernatural . I picked this up right before the season finale in May.

Favorite Fandom Collision:
David Duchovny directs David Boreanaz in Bones.

Favorite TV Trend:
Episodes being made available online.

Favorite Show Overall:
Supernatural by a hair over Bones. Though it's always hard to choose between Jensen Ackles' freckles and David Boreanaz's big shoulders.

For 2007 I'm looking forward to:

Discovering Sam's Big Scary Secret on Supernatural.

More of David Boreanaz's big shoulders on Bones.

The Dresden Files.

Season Two of Rome.

Wishing everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous 2007.

Bones--Judas on a Pole

Tonight's recap/review is a bit shorter than usual. Boy, it's a hectic time of year...

I've been looking forward to this episode, largely because of David Duchovny's turn as director, but also because the story sounded promising, furthering the plot involving Brennan's parents, which hasn't been touched on much since the first episode of this season. And I thought this episode really delivered. Duchovny's direction was solid, with individual touches that put his fingerprints on the episode without being distracting, and the plot had a nice array of twists and turns, without being overly obvious.

With a bit of a departure from the norm, this week's episode opens with a depiction of the actual murder that will make up the case. A man is killed, hung on a pole, and set on fire in grisly fashion. As the evidence comes together, it appears that the murderer was none other than Brennan's father, Max.

The victim proves to be an FBI agent who was involved in a frame-up twenty years ago. Evidence is planted on his body in the form of a handwritten note inside his mouth, and it turns out Max robbed the bank where the evidence about the frame-up was being held in a safe deposit box. Max murdered Delaney because the FBI knows he knew about the frame, and have been threatening Brennan and her brother to keep him in line. He delivers a message to back off via an old friend, a Father Coulter (Ryan O'Neal).

Booth's sense of justice leads him to jump right on the case, which leads him to the conspiracy within the FBI. He is suspended for going over the heads of his bosses, and things get pretty hairy for him and Russ before it's all over. Turns out the Deputy Director who suspended Booth was also part of the conspiracy. It also turns out Father Coulter is not what he seems to be. The plot is nicely convoluted, with the twist not depending on the identity of the killer this time, but on other elements of the story.

In the B plot, Zack defends his dissertation to a panel of forensics folk, one of whom is played by Kathy Reichs. He wants to continue working at the Jeffersonian if he gets his doctorate, but Cam tells him his appearance doesn't make him a credible witness if he has to appear in court. Enter Angela, who performs a makeover. Of course, we knew Zack wouldn't be leaving the Squint Squad, but the way this plays out is charming without being overwrought or treacly, and gives Zack a nice little spotlight.

The Brennan plotline here is interesting, with Booth and Brennan taking unexpected but very in character stances toward Max. Brennan has softened a great deal toward her brother, and the growth in their relationship is nice to see. It was also nice to see Caroline again, from last season's "The Man in the Morgue." She's fun, and I love the way she makes Booth all twitchy.

One thing I really have to wonder about, though, is why didn't Brennan recognize her father's voice?

Highlights:
Booth: "I'll take a stand-up crook over a crooked cop any day."
Booth being more concerned about losing his car than about losing his job.
Placebo singing Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill at the end. Great song, great use of it in this ep.

Bones—Season One

Since there's a rerun on Bones tonight, I've contented myself with mainlining Season One on DVD. I watched the entire series straight through from last Wednesday evening through Saturday afternoon, and I enjoyed every bit of it. The show stands up well to repeat viewing, moreso than most procedurals, because the point of the show isn't so much the crime as the characters. If the only reason to watch were to find out whodunnit, there'd be no point in watching again. But Bones offers so much more for your entertainment dollar than the Forensic Mystery of the Week. It's not a particularly deep show, but it's fun, with likeable characters and clever writing.

The show itself is great, but the extras on this set are sparse. There are two episode commentaries--Hart Hanson and Barry Josephson supply commentary for the Pilot, while series stars David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel expound on "Two Bodies in the Lab." (This commentary doesn't enlighten us much about the episode, but it's worth a listen just to hear Boreanaz make jokes about his own hair.) The three short featurettes don't really add much, but the show itself is worth the price.

Highly recommended.

Bones—The Headless Witch in the Woods

Tonight's case offers a fun homage to The Blair Witch Project. Except in this case, the filmmaker didn't become famous--he became dead and decapitated in the middle of the woods. I hate when that happens.

The episode starts off on a spooky note, with a headless body found deep in a forest supposedly haunted by a supposed witch, Maggie Cinders, who was killed there in 1783. As it turns out, the victim, Graham Hastings, was making a documentary about the Maggie Cinders legend. His videotape, recovered by Angela via digital restoration, seems to show the victim's death at the hands of the witch.

The case maintains a nicely paranormal air almost to the bitter end, when the pieces finally come together and the killer is revealed to be Graham's non-ghostly brother, Will. It turns out to be a well- played twist, with several plausible red herrings dropped along the way. Will claims to have been possessed by the witch, which of course is ridiculous. Or is it? Because then there's that eerie, inexplicable video image Angela discovers right at the end...

To really enjoy the case here, you have to assume Bones exists in an alternate universe where The Blair Witch Project never happened, but that's okay, because I've seen that kind of thing done before, and in this case I think it worked. In fact, I don't think it would have worked as well if they'd made it less obvious they were riffing Blair Witch. If you're going to go there, might as well go all the way there.

The rest of the episode is solid, too. Brennan busts Booth on his relationship with Cam when a spooked Cam grabs Booth's hand for comfort during the initial viewing of the video tape. Then Brennan, finding common ground with Will, who also lost his parents as a teenager, tentatively pursues a possible relationship. All this leads to an awkward but heartfelt--and funny--conversation in which Booth and Brennan dissect their own relationship. In other relationship developments, Hodgins reaps the benefits of the oh so scary video tape when Angela insists he stay with her while she watches it, so he can comfort her. Hodgins gets just a bit too smirky about that, but I think Angela is tough enough to smack him down if she has to. I think these two are fun together, and I hope they can continue to be fun together, since by TV rules Booth and Brennan can never get together, and by those same rules Booth and Cam are doomed eventually.

I also liked the little spotight Cam got in this episode, talking about her supernatural encounter with her mother. It added some depth to her character, and made her a bit more accessible. I'm undoubtedly in the minority in that I like Booth and Cam together. She's a strong woman who has proven herself capable of taking him down a notch or two when he engages in his occasional macho posturing. So is Brennan, but again, see TV rules.

I thought it was kind of too bad that Will turned out to be the killer. He could have made a good temporary romance for Brennan, over a few episodes, given their similar backgrounds. He also played a good foil to her perceptions of her brother, making her give some thought to what Russ went through for her, and how things might have been if both she and Russ had made different decisions. But unfortunately psycho killers make lousy boyfriends, so I guess that's not going to work out.

Favorite Line:
Booth: I'd prefer not to be a woman, if you don't mind.

No Bones next week--weh--but in two weeks comes a new episode directed by David Duchovny. This makes me happy, as I'm a big Duchovny fan, and I thought his directorial work on The X-Files was solid. Can't wait to see what he does with Bones.

And can I just air a gripe? I'm getting really tired of Fox showing bits in the previews that are cut out of the final episode.

Bones News

Hart Hanson, the creator of Bones, has an interview at TV Guide.com. He discussions some items regarding upcoming shows (spoilers ho!), including some tasty tidbits about Booth. But most importantly, he states that Bones will be retaining its Wednesday night timeslot in January. Since early news had the show being shuffled off to Friday nights, the Timeslot Where Good Shows Go to Die, I was very glad to hear this confirmed.

Bones—Aliens in a Spaceship

I’ve been a devoted Bones viewer since the premiere episode. I came to the show mostly because of David Boreanaz, who is the hottest hottie on TV. I was a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, especially the latter, and was more than happy to see him back on network TV.

Of course, there’s always the fear that the hottest hottie on TV will end up on a crap show, but that’s not the case with Bones. I’ve enjoyed it from the get-go. It’s not a deep show like the Whedonverse shows Boreanaz migrated from, but it’s fun. The characters are great, and I was happy to see the focus of the show more on the whacky, eccentric gang at the Jeffersonian than on the dry details of the case of the week. And while I expected to be interested in Boreanaz’s character, because he’d undoubtedly be looking really hot every week, I’ve also found myself enamored of the rest of the Jeffersonian crew. I even like Cam. (Pauses while the Booth/Brennan fangirls scream and throw rotten vegetables.) She’s a tough chick who gets what she wants.

After getting into Bones, I went on to check out Kathy Reichs’ novels. I enjoy those, too. There’s been a lot of online discussion about book-Tempe versus TV-Tempe. The characters are markedly different, and of course serve very different roles. Overall, though, I kind of prefer TV-Tempe. She’s clueless past willing suspension of disbelief, but she’s tough. She doesn’t shirk at conflict, and she rarely displays Too Stupid To Live tendencies. By contrast, in the novels, there is always one point in the book where Tempe does something really stupid and ends up kidnapped and usually locked away in some sort of confined space by the bad guy. (I listen to them on audio book—this usually happens about halfway through Disc 5.) Every single book. You’d think she’d learn.

Anyway… on to tonight’s episode.

As a rule, I’m not crazy about flashback stories. Having the flashback gives away a chunk of the story, to start with, because right away you know Brennan and Hodgins are ending up buried alive (well, we knew this from the previews, but bear with me). But we also know they’re going to get out, because they’re series regulars, so there you’ve just undermined yourself twice as far as being able to build suspense in the story. Maybe I’m being picky, but it seems like the writer’s unnecessarily hamstringing himself to take that tack. In this case, I think it took a little of the edge off the shock when Hodgins and Brennan were abducted so abruptly, because we knew it was coming. The change in mood from the first half to the second half was pretty abrupt, and it could have been moreso without the little preview in the teaser.

With that said, if the story works, it works, regardless of the structure. And this story worked. In fact, I think this was one of the best episodes of the series so far, right up there with The Man in the Fallout Shelter, which has been my favorite episode up to now. This was really well put together, with the parallels between the Ryan/Matt case and the situation with Hodgins and Brennan, and the full-team cooperation that was required to find their way to the buried car. Booth’s assessment at the end was exactly right--without any one of them, they wouldn’t have found the car. Hodgins and Brennan MacGuyvering to the bitter end was completely in character, as was Booth’s insistence that they would, and Brennan’s insistence that Booth would find them. And the twist of them not actually finding the killer at the end put a nice cap on the story. T.J. Thyne put in a tour de force performance, but the core group knocked it out of the park across the board. A stand-out episode. I cried. Did I say that out loud?

Standout moments:

Booth’s expression when he gets the ransom call… Horror, desperation, growing panic… Just perfectly played. Boreanaz just gets better and better. And I love it when Booth goes psycho in defense of Brennan, a la The Woman in the Garden. It’s hot, I tell you. HOT. Plus I keep expecting Booth to grow fangs. Just call him Angelus!Booth.

Booth: I need you to be Dr. Brennan.
Zach: I don’t know what that means.

The return of the Angelator.

“Putting testicles on the outside didn’t seem like such a good idea.”

And of course the end, with Angela taking Jack home, and Booth and Brennan in church.

Did I mention I thought this was really good?