Bones is one of those shows that you turn around and realize that somehow, some way, it’s been on for far longer than you think it has. It doesn’t seem that long ago that the airwaves were nothing but police procedurals had a near 20 year run on major network television. With the current trend seeming to be taking movies from the past 20 years and turning them into shows, ala Training Day and Lethal Weapon among others finding their way into small screen versions, Bones and Criminal Minds find themselves the last of a dying breed. With the police procedural genre evolving from the Homicide and Law & Order types into more science based, following the behind the scenes as well as the investigation proper, Bones finds itself on the threshold of its ending.
Season 11 begins the show’s finale as Season 12 has already been announced as its finale. With only 12 episodes left in the series, a half season to finish off a storyline begun at the end of season 11, it’s interesting to see one of the last procedurals from the Bush era wind itself down. It’s akin to watching King of Queens wrap up as the last of the vaunted Clinton era comedies; part of television history is unfolding as we speak.
Bones has a simple premise. Bones (Emily Deschanel) is a forensic pathologist who solves the murders of corpses who wind up in her lab. With her team and an FBI agent (David Boreanaz) working out of the Jeffersonian, the show is a procedural focusing on uncovering the deaths of those whose bodies have long since decayed. It’s an interesting perspective on it as this isn’t trying to solve a crime that just happened; it’s solving things that are in the rearview, where the murderer thinks they have gotten away with it.
Even without the announcement that the show was going to conclude this season has the feeling of the final lap. There’s a sense that everything the show wanted to explore has been explored and now they’re starting to wrap everything up. It may not be intentional, of course, but this has season has the feeling of “We’re almost done” as opposed to there being more stories to tell. The finale, which brings back a long running character for one final run, feels like the beginning of a final boss in a video game.
Otherwise the show continues to deliver the sort of gristly crime solving it has in the decade plus run it’s managed to find itself on. It’s never great but never awful either; it’s found a nice slightly above mediocre quality level and maintains it throughout.
Deleted scenes and a gag reel that aren’t must watches.
20th Century Fox presents Bones (Season 11). Starring Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz. Running time: 502 minutes Not Rated. Released on: 1.3.17
