It’s always a sketchy bet when your favorite television show jumps locations. Think Weeds post the Agrestic neighborhood fire. Or how about how much less homey it felt when those Dawson’s kids traded in their angst-filled bedrooms for the booze-soaked halls of a dorm? History shows, swapping locales on the small screen isn’t often the hottest idea, even on a temporary scale. It barely worked for Carrie Bradshaw in Paris, and same goes for FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) and his forensic anthropologist partner Dr. Temperence Brennan (Emily Deschanel) in the England-set season opener of Bones.
The two hopped across the pond for the start of Season Four Wednesday night, and the result was a bit off-kilter, with less intellectual crime solving and more tea vs. coffee stereotypes than the Queen herself could count.
But fortunately for Bones, the misstep is easily forgiven. After months of abscence following a strike-shortened season that ended with a favorite member of the Squint Squad on the chopping block, Bones‘s two-hour return was welcomed to the small screen with open arms, as trite and rhythmically jumbled as it may have been.
Booth and Brennan head to England to give speeches to their British counterparts – he at Scotland Yard and she at Oxford University. During downtime, the two engage in their usual bickering, which in this episode consists mostly of Brennan chiding Booth on his egocentrism (see: Booth maneuvering a Mini Cooper against the flow of traffic in a roundabout, hollering his maverick thanks for the American Revolution.) But both are pulled into a murder investigation after an American heiress’ body is lifted from the Thames.
The two are paired with Detective Cate Pritchard and her scientific cohort Ian Wexler who, incidentally, keeps hitting on Brennan with little more style and charm than American Pie‘s Stifler. But she turns him down so as not to upset Booth, providing an ‘Aww’-worthy moment for fans of the will-they-won’t-they storyline.
When Wexler is found dead from an apartment fire, Booth and Brennan are once again called in to help… because apparently detectives are in short supply in the Mother Country.
But the real shocker happens back in the states, back in that stainless steel lab for which us viewers have been so despondent, where lovebirds Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin) and Dr. Jack Hodgins (T.J. Thyne) get what they’ve long searched for: Angela’s accidental husband makes his long awaited appearance and ultimately signs divorce papers. Cheers to the writers for not going the way of Sweet Home Alabama on this one, though at the end of the episode Hodgela fans are left pouting in disappointment when the two apruptly end their engagement. It’s a tricky test: if Angela and Hodgins ricochet and last season’s Zack remains MIA, the Jeffersonian team could be in dire risk of shattering House-style. Poor Dr. Camille Saroyan (Tamara Taylor) is even adding to the fire, after her tryst with Angela’s hunky ex doesn’t go over with her coworkers as well as she’d hoped.
But breaking up the soapy dramatics, Bones finally leans on the funny physical antics of relatively new cast member John Francis Daley, who plays the wry and goofily invasive Dr. Lance Sweets. Lending a new texture to the show, he offers a few enlightening shrink sessions to the lab techs. He also takes a tumble or two that leave viewers hoping the writers can come up with believable reasons for the character to keep lurking over everyone’s shoulders.
There is one question yet to be answered, one plot facet barely addressed in the season kickoff: Where, oh where, has our favorite robotic and socially inept Zack gone? Last season left many with (you guessed it) a bone to pick with the show’s writers after Eric Millegan’s beloved character was revealed to be evil Gormogon’s apprentice. Though it was made clear Zack only had a hand in one murder, aligning himself wth a serial killing cannibal should leave a serious black mark on his record. Our hopes for him staying in the crime-solving game are in peril, but show creator Hart Hanson has promised the prodigious genius will be back.
Jennifer Morris is a journalist and frequent contributor to the What’s Up Arts and Entertainment movie review column The Screening Room.
