Review: Bones episode 1.5: A Boy in a Bush

The interesting thing about Bones is rarely the cases the characters work; it is usually the interaction between the characters - the funny lines, and the feeling you get that all the characters are basically buddies hanging out. This episode both conformed and did not conform to this mould. The episode was not really about the case at all - the actual killer had a grand total of zero lines, and was almost beside the point. The point of the episode was the way in which the characters on the show reacted to the case of a small child being murdered.

And this was sort of the problem with the episode - what's usually fun about the show is that the conversation is zippy and fun - even when the main plot is gruesome and horrendous, there is usually some light and funny B-story there to take your mind off of it. This episode had none of that. There were plenty of B-stories, but they were all just depressing. Angela is depressed because of her job, and thinks she might quit. Hodgens is worried that everyone he works with will find out that he is secretly actually super-rich, and will start treating him differently (this plot certainly could have been played for laughs, but wasn't. It was totally straight. Not even any good quips.) Bones was a foster child.

I don't know why this episode decided to be super-depressing. I mean, yeah, it's about a paedophile, but...

Hmmm... I just realised that I live in a society where I was about to write the sentence, "I mean, yeah, it's about a paedophile, but that doesn't mean it can't have some good jokes in it." And that that seemed like a perfectly normal sentiment, until I decided to think about it. Maybe we just shouldn't be making escapist entertainment about paedophilia. I mean, is our society so desensitised that even paedophilia, the one last thing that is still super-unacceptable in our culture, even that can be churned up and ground out as light entertainment? How did this happen? How did we get to this point? And why is a mediocre episode of Bones making me have these thoughts?