A fun episode of Bones repeated last week. Fox seems to have otherwise benched
the show for the summer, although past seasons can be found in syndication and on cable. You can find the episode in question — “The X in the File” — on Hulu or at
the Fox website [bad link].
Image from Bones 5.11 “The X in the File” © 2010 Twentieth Century Fox Television.
Hart Hanson’s loose adaptation of Kathy Reichs’ popular crime novels has always
owed as much to The X-Files as to CSI, despite its dearth of otherworldly phenomena. That’s due to the pairing of Temperance “Bones” Brennan, the strictly rational forensic anthropologist played by Emily Deschanel, with FBI special agent Seeley Booth, the gut-following, Catholic former Army Rangers sniper played by David Boreanaz.
Like many series, Bones’ episode titles have a theme; Smallville’s are just one word, Friends’ always began “The One with / where ...”, and Bones’ follow the pattern of “The __ in the __” (such as “The Woman in the Sand” or “The Killer in the Concrete”). “The X in the File” is an explicit X-Files homage that brings Booth and Brennan to Roswell, New Mexico, and is as good a jumping-on point as you’re apt to get in the fifth season of a procedural with progressively complex subplots and character arcs. Among the winks in the episode, which is more tongue-in-cheek than usual, are the casting of Dean Haglund and usage of a still from the children’s show Rocketship 7. Haglund was one of The X-Files’ Lone Gunmen, while Rocketship 7 was a local children’s show in Buffalo, New York, hosted by Boreanaz’s father under the stage name Dave Thomas in the 1960s before he moved to Philadelphia and became the beloved morning-show host and weatherman Dave Roberts at WPVI Channel 6; the elder David retired late last year, shortly before “The X in the File” first aired.
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