The blog on Bones: The Perfect Pieces in the Purple Pond (S4, Ep4)

Photo Credit
Written specially for Prime Time Pulse.

Oh, the unequivocal joy felt when a favorite television character returns to your small screen. It’s as if they never left.
That’s right, Zack (Eric Millegan) is back on Bones, for an episode at least. Until now the former cast regular has been referred to this season like a kind of Harry Potter-esque nemesis: the Squint Squad member who shall not be named. Now we discover most of the others have been paying him visits in his high-security mental institution, to which he was banished after confessing to helping a serial killing cannibal terminate members of a secret society. Both Hogdins and Angela (TJ Thyne and Michaela Conlin) having been paying him visits - separately, of course, since their rather awkward split (see: Zack and Hodgins claiming “King of the Looney Bin” instead of the usual “King of the Lab”) - and Sweets (John Francis Daley) has been acting as his therapist. It’s by stealthily swapping the magnetic strip on his own library card with that of Sweets’ access card that he’s able to escape the institution, running straight to the lab to help with the case that has everyone stumped.
And needless to say, he solves the mystery faster than a chubby kid going downhill on roller skates.
What proves hard to solve is a set of bones discovered in twelve separate pieces, sans the skull, found floating in an industrial, algae-filled pond. Once discovered, it’s to the lab the remains go, where they are scrutinized by new intern Wendell Bray (Michael Terry), a good-looking scholarship kid who’s depending on the job so he can pay back people in his wrong-side-of-the-tracks neighborhood, after they pooled their cash together to send him to school in the first place.
When partners FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) and Dr. Temperence Brennan (Emily Deschanel) discover the bones belong to an obsessive compulsive sci-fi author who was dating an older woman, Brennan asks Wendell what he thinks about May-December relationships. He assumes she’s flirting and worries about losing his job, but Angela quickly sets him straight on the social clumsiness she tends to infuse into conversations. At the end of the episode, we’re left to wonder whether he’ll stay or go. (Let’s hope he stays: he’s cute, Brennan likes him and he’s (gasp!) nearly as smart as Zack, plus he told a great story about his father. I’m won over.)
Meanwhile, Booth and Brennan continue the hunt for the killer, bouncing from his psychologist to his barista, his publisher to his girlfriend’s son. But none of them prove to be the culprit.
Lucky for the team, Zack appears just as straits are becoming dire. He notices the victim’s mother, too, suffers from OCD. It turns out she had a murderous breakdown when her son was becoming free of his disorder but she wasn’t of hers.
But the biggest reveal comes again in the form of Zack: as Sweets is walking him back to the institution, he confesses once again. He didn’t commit the murder he’s convicted of - not literally. He simply told the real killer where the guy could be found. Sweets urges him to make it known, but Zack feels just as guilty for accessorizing murder as if he’d done it himself. This may be a little backpedaling by writers, especially after Zack’s leaving the show went over so poorly with fans. Either way, it’s good to know, and leaves a flickering hope he could, someday, be back in the lab.
And, in this latest installment of the will-they-won’t-they Booth and Brennan storyline, the bickering banter is especially thick and charming. Combined with the gimmick-free case that included lots of cool science-y stuff and Zack‘s triumphant but brief return, it made this episode reminiscent of the best of seasons past.

Burn After Reading is a fiery flop

Photo Credit
Specially written for What's Up.

It’s a pseudo-Darwinian world in Burn After Reading, one in which only the most tenacious — not the most well-intentioned or able-bodied, and certainly not the most intelligent — survive what shakes out to be a vicious circle of happenstance.

From the minds of brothers Joel and Ethan Coen (of Fargo, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and No Country for Old Men fame) comes this Seinfeldian farce about what happens when moronic, self-obsessed citizens get mixed up in quasi-official CIA business.

Really, it’s an arbitrary tale that spirals from the funny to the inane about a bunch of riffraff who, er, ingested too many paint chips, if you catch my drift.

The black comedy begins with the firing of alcoholic CIA agent Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), who plans his retaliation in the form of a tell-all memoir about his sordid career experiences (see: Malkovich’s constant pronunciation of the word memoir as “mem-wah,” which is proof enough how highly this character deems himself despite no one else taking him seriously.)

Cox’s icy wife Katie (Tilda Swinton), meanwhile, is carrying on an affair with Harry (George Clooney), a sex-obsessed federal employee who continually cheats on his own spouse with women he meets online.

But things get interesting when a disc containing Osborne’s “mem-wah” is accidentally left in a Hardbodies Fitness Center, where employees Linda and Chad (Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt) think they’ve discovered Top-Secret ‘stuff’ — referred to constantly and hilariously throughout the film by Chad as another “s” word. The two decide to engage in an info-napping scheme with clownish, sophomoric glee, she pursuing a constant quest to fund cosmetic surgeries her insurance won’t pay for and he, a clueless, twitchy sidekick infatuated with the chance at espionage. McDormand’s and Pitt’s dimwitted banter is the highlight of the film; the pair’s initial call to Osborne in demand of ransom is, in itself, nearly worth the ticket price.

But unfortunately for paying viewers Burn soon deteriorates to a string of sketch comedy-like scenes featuring the out-of-hand actions of blithering idiots. The plot becomes wearing, making its 96 minutes feel longer than they should, and anyone thrown by the off-screen exit of a major No Country character can be sure to be dismantled once again, as most of the leads conclude their journeys only through a summary narrative played out by two bewildered CIA superiors (David Rasche and J.K. Simmons).

“Report back to me when it, I don’t know, makes sense,” says one flustered official to the other.

Perhaps the Coen brothers could do the same.

The blog on Bones: The Finger in the Nest (S4, Ep3)

Photo Credit
Written specially for Prime Time Pulse.

Of all the things to find in a bird’s nest, it had to be a finger. A phalange, actually. A singular, partly flesh-covered phalange, which is usually an indication nineteen other phalanges will be found nearby, attached to a very singular corpse.
That’s the commencement of this week’s Bones, which finds Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) and his dauntless 6-year-old son Parker (Ty Panitz) discovering on a sunny day in the park one of nature’s most special treasures: a dead guy’s finger in a tree.
When the rest of the remains are found the body is identified as Dr. Seth Elliot, a veterinarian with a gambling problem. Close inspection by the Squint Squad reveals the murder weapon to be of the furry, four-legged variety, meaning Booth and his forensic anthropologist partner Dr. Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) must set out in search of the owner of the Fido at fault.
It’s quite the circumstance: If a dog is a man’s best friend, what does he make of that man’s enemy? Kibbles ‘n bits, in this case.
But after determining innocent an ex-con who may have held a grudge against Dr. Elliot, Booth and Brennan head to the home of Robbie, a teenager who worked part-time at the vet clinic and is studying to go to medical school with the encouragement of his down-and-out father. It’s on their property police discover a fighting ring, a pack of chained dogs and lots of canine remains. All Michael Vick jokes aside, it turns out to be Robbie’s tutor, a medical student, who ordered his dog to make a chew toy of Dr. Elliot after the veterinarian happened upon the dog fights and snapped a few photos as proof.
Clues this week came courtesy of Scott, a new-to-the-lab intern and middle-aged jack-of-all-trades who sold Dr. Jack Hodgins (T.J. Thyne) a bum 1950s hotrod when Hodgins was still a gullible, silver spoon-fed kid. Fresh off an awkward run-in with ex-fiance Angela (Michaela Conlin), Hodgins sourly cracks wise about Scott’s unwanted presence while swatting away a hovering Dr. Lance Sweets (John Frances Daley), who later manages to assure him his bad mood is purely a coping mechanism.
Don’t worry, Bones isn’t going the way of Edward Herrmann’s extended stay on Grey’s Anatomy; Scott is headed out to a dig assignment by the episode’s end, leaving a vacant spot on the Jeffersonian roster once again. But with a revolving door of lab techs, Bones continues to lack the center on which it has balanced for the past three seasons. Its infamous, quick-jabbing lab discussions have waned as the core characters spend more time apart than they do as a collective.
The Dog Whisperer’s Cesar Milan also makes an appearance, acting as himself to help solve the case. And lucky for Booth, Parker is more bothered by bully troubles at school than the grisly day-at-the-park souvenir.
Still left to our imaginations are the whereabouts of last season’s Zack, though rumor has it next week he’ll be called onto a case, and perhaps make an appearance at the Jeffersonian. No word either on last week’s Daisy Wick, the short-lasting intern who captured Sweets’ attention (Anyone who enjoyed Carla Gallo’s guest spot should check out her The 40-Year-Old Virgin stint; it’s a riot).
But this episode does, as most usually do, throw a bone to those hoping Booth and Brennan become more than just friends. After the case is solved, Brennan decides to give the at-fault dog a new home, one where he won’t be forced to attack. Booth has to break the news that the dog was put down, as is policy, and the two give him a proper burial.
“Like all dogs, Ripley only saw the good in people. Dogs are like that. People should take a lesson,” says a teary Brennan, leaning down to place the dog’s tags on the ground.
It’s as much as any good dog could hope for, Booth says, but not before swiftly wiping away a tear of his own.

The blog on Bones: The Man in the Outhouse (S4, Ep2)

Photo Credit
Written specially for Prime Time Pulse.

The Hollywood writers strike may have ended after 14 weeks back in February, but there’s no getting around it: ramifications are still rippling through our favorite returning TV shows like pesky little waves on a normally glassy pond. Case in point is this week’s Bones, which seemed like a topsy-turvy turn from the premiere that aired the Wednesday prior.

But unlike its campy season opener set in London, the follow up episode did get back to the basics of the show; there was plenty of witty banter, a fair amount of It’s-Greek-to-me science and loads of that infamous sexual tension, thicker than air à la Moonlighting.

The forces of said tension, FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) and his forensic anthropologist partner Dr. Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel), are called into the field after a thickheaded trucker visits a roadside outhouse to take a simultaneous cigarette and bathroom break, lighting a methane-fueled explosion.

What’s left behind is a seriously Out-of-Service restroom and the discovered remains of what used to be Bill O’Rourke, host of a reality television show that specializes in catching married men mid-affair.

After sifting through suspects (see: a conga line of angry, ousted ex-husbands, a big-wig producer and the tramp stamped assistant with whom Bill was carrying on his own extramarital affair), Brennan and Booth nail the bad guy, a member of the show’s production crew who went a little crazy after discovering Bill’s mistress was a woman he used to date and still, apparently, loves.

The Jeffersonian clue crew sends along their usual assistance, this time with the help of Daisy Wick, an intern replacement supposedly meant to fill the shoes of Zack (beloved, card-carrying Squint Squad member seasons one through three), who as far as we know remains in a mental institution after assisting a serial killing cannibal.

Zack’s whereabouts are just part of a plot that seems more than a little loose-ended; most noticeably missing from the episode was any mention of the split between lab lovebirds Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin) and Dr. Jack Hodgins (T.J. Thyne). The longtime couple called it quits with little warning during the premiere, but no reference has since been made to the sinking of their rather passionate interlude.

The episode did contain one meet cute, when Dr. Lance Sweets (John Francis Daley) gives Daisy a call after she’s fired from the lab (Who can blame them? Nobody likes a suck-up… except maybe Sweets.)

But the real interest is between Brennan and the two (count ‘em, two) men she’s revealed to be seeing. One is a well-built deep sea welder who keeps her occupied in the bedroom, the other is a cheek-kissing, Cold Play-listening botanist she enjoys for intellectual conversation. Booth preaches monogamy to Brennan, who sees the morally restrictive confines of dating to be Jurassic in nature, but when things go south after the welder and botanist find out about one another, Booth takes her side, telling her even she can find someone she’s meant to spend the rest of her life with. Boreanaz delivers the line with the soapiest of lovelorn looks, and the writers could be chided for pulling the sentimental chord on this one, but viewers are left - strings successfully plucked - gooey-eyed over the potential Bones romance.

The scene also goes to prove Sweets’ worth: though at the start of the episode he seems out of place, offering up his opinion on human remains despite Brennan’s strict aversion to non-scientific bias, the episode’s end shows his therapy sessions aren’t just for comic relief. Out of his office the show has created the perfect spotlight to illuminate the Booth and Brennan relationship.

And oh, how they catch the light.

The blog on Bones: Yanks in the U.K. (S4, Ep1)

Photo Credit
Written specially for Prime Time Pulse.

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' 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.

Stiller doesn't quite call down the 'Thunder'

The Screening Room
Written specially for What's Up

Ah, the things an actor will do for a Teen Choice Award.

Like, for example, trek through bug-infested jungles with nary an iPhone for comfort, facing unfathomable perils in the vein of, say, cuddly panda bears.

That’s the premise of “Tropic Thunder,” a Hollywoodland mockery of the entertainment industry that leans on big names and bigger explosions to compensate for comedy that is mostly mediocre.

It’s another R-rated summer attempt at laughs that came oh-so-close, yet is still so far from a hit.

“Thunder” follows the cast and crew of a film about American heroes on a near-suicide rescue mission during the Vietnam War. Heading the cast are fading action flick juggernaut Tugg Speedman (co-writer/director Ben Stiller) and Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), an Australian method actor who underwent a controversial skin-darkening procedure for the role.

They’re spoiled and failing: five days into shooting the project is already a month behind schedule, thanks in part to the prima donna rivalry Kirk and Tugg have developed. These are guys who do, after all, equate having TiVo with clean water and a roof overhead.

Sent off the grid, deep into the jungle where personal assistants holding Evians and Blackberries are nowhere to be found, Tugg and Kirk begin what they think is a gorilla-style shooting of the film, replete with realistic ambushes to heighten their performances as well as those of fellow cast mates Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), Alpa Chino (a very funny Brandon T. Jackson whose presence holds its own even against Downey Jr.’s) and Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel).

But what starts as a movie capturing its actors drooling while crying and pulling Christ-like poses as they’re hole-punched with bullets just to earn that Oscar nod soon becomes a movie-within-a-movie when they find themselves unwitting targets of real-life, gun-weilding drug lords.

From its start “Tropic Thunder” is full of blood, sweat and grime; Jack Black even completes a scene sporting grossly leftover vomit on his face.

It’s also full of cameos — some longer and more hilarious than others — including Tobey Maguire, Tom Cruise and Matthew McConaughey.

But what at times is laugh-out-loud hysterical seems at others to be one large “I guess you had to be there” joke.

The screen is a bit overcrowded, with Cruise’s overweight, cursing studio exec pitted against the over-the-top deliveries by Stiller and Black.

But the comedy, almost in shock jock form, still pulls through on occasion, creating an intermittent gut-buster with shortcomings mitigated by a host of recognizable faces making fun of their own. While most films depend on an actor’s ability to blend into a role, spotting the celebrity becomes — for better or worse — half of “Tropic Thunder’s” fun.

And while Cruise’s booty-shaking dance over the ending credits is so ridiculous you can’t look away, the compensation doesn’t go far enough. The posturing and drollery is

quickly forgotten, as is — whether or not it should be — the soured view of an industry that, like the film depicts, spends millions on a single shot in the name of escapism.

“Tropic Thunder” pulls a few funny punches, but for the most part is a wash out.