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88Boreanaz and Deschanel stir good chemistry as a crime-fighting duo.
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88Bones isn't the riskiest or most ambitious series coming your way this season. But it may turn out to be one of the most satisfying and entertaining.
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80The show's witty, inventive writing would be fun even in the hands of a less capable cast.
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80You might think you can't possibly fit one more crime-solving procedural onto an overcrowded calendar, but consider giving Bones a break.
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75Deschanel, who's believable either serious or perplexed -- and adorable in her quirkiness -- immediately becomes this series' most important ingredient.
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75Besides the nifty, repressed romantic dynamic between Brennan and Booth, "Bones" has some fun with snazzy hologram visualizations of the murder victims in each case.
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75Like CSI and its offshoots, Bones will take viewers to dark and sometimes disgusting places. So, in one sense, Fox may have come up with a format that will reach both men, who love unappetizing scenes, and women, because of the female heroine.
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75Emily Deschanel is well cast as Brennan--she has the right sort of drained, remote presence, as if still working off last night's sleeping pill--and she's also well cast against David Boreanaz. [19 Sep 2005, p.45]
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70As science and as detection, Bones has a way to go before it's more than a bug in Grissom's Vegas eye. But the screwball romance is promising.
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70An engaging crime show that borrows plenty from the ''CSI" franchise but adds a layer of light character drama.
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70While "Bones" has too much "X-Files" and "CSI" going in the pilot to feel completely original, it's nonetheless a taut, well-constructed, character-rich procedural with genuine potential.
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67If Bones holds up, it'll be because that old Sam-and-Diane, Maddie-and-David, Mulder-and-Scully opposites-attract stuff never feels standard when it's done right.
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63In tonight's premiere of "Bones," for example, super-sleuth Temperance concludes from the young victim's bones that she was probably a tennis player -- a nifty conclusion, but one that has no bearing on the case. It's a factoid that leads nowhere, which is kind of where "Bones" goes in its premiere episode.
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60Deschanel exudes a luminous quality that elevates this grim, conventional show.
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60Rather too slick for its own good.
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60There's a fine line between clever and labored, and "Bones" sometimes strays over that line with one-liners about skull fragments, blood samples, X-rays and microbes. That's where "see how cleverly we can banter" writing creeps into the otherwise crisp proceedings.
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50The quality of the mystery in the pilot, no better than mediocre, is what keeps this series from starting off with a wider lead at the opening gun.
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Boreanaz and Deschanel have nice chemistry... but the script also tends to undermine its brighter moments with dialogue that repeats the exposition and the characters' defining traits over and over again.
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50Clings to proven formulas.
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50It could use a little more dramatic meat on its predictable framework.
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40The scientific setup may be intriguing... But the dialogue, including the contrived sexual tension between Temperance and Seeley, is strictly canned and cutesy.
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40"Bones" probably will remind more viewers of a cross between "CSI" and "The X-Files," except with more humorous banter than the first, and more romantic heat than the latter.
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40Deschanel comes off a little too much like a sorority girl rather than a scientist with missing-parent issues.
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40It's an (occasionally) frothy mix -- comedic moments tumble into serious scenes of forensic examination -- that's not altogether terrible, but neither does it beg to be watched on a regular basis.
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20Bones is a very poor cross between the X-Files and CSI with characters stolen from NCIS, plot devices from Veronica Mars, and topicality from Law & Order.
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20Memo to network execs planning an all-forensics programming slate for fall: Watching attractive people poke at skull fragments is not inherently interesting.
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20The heroine, unlikely in every detail including her name, Temperance Brennan, goes about reassembling corpses and then divining how they got to be that way. It's precise, tedious work and so is watching this show.
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20A flimsy little procedural that uses logical and technological leaps of faith to hide its central problem: lack of co-star chemistry.
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10It's as if we've all passed this way (many times) before and could write the dialogue, act the scenes, predict the outcome all in our sleep.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 83 out of 110
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Mixed: 1 out of 110
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Negative: 26 out of 110
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ToyB10The character dynamics hook audiences, the dark humor appeals, the cases are well-thought out, and the acting is superb on all aspects.
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MargoB10
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JOhnG10The interaction with the characters is excellent, writing was poor at first but getting much better.