Dem Bones

I make a point of seeking out any cheesy US effort to depict the UK, so it was high hopes that I checked out the Season 4 double episode of "Bones". The show started off promisingly with that other Deschanel girl and Angel in "Oxford University" where apparently it's traditional to give lectures while wearing gowns (actually, that may well be the case) in drafty dining rooms (again, just teetering on the brink of plausibility. In fact, the only palpably implausible thing about the whole episode (not counting the plot) was the fact that it gave the impression that Oxford was a suburb of London. And since they're both on the Thames, it's not impossible to see why you might get that impression. The plot was ridiculous. Rather than bother to do a feature length episode, it consisted of two normal episodes strung together which will presumably make for easier syndication. The first was some dubious parody of the British class system, featuring an oxford Don and his Scotland yard sidekick, presumably in some hilarious mirroring of the main characters. This could have been the start of some tedious spinoff Bones:London. This was promptly dashed in the second half when the don was offed. Yes, spoiler alert, but the show itself opened with a massive spoiler for the end of season three which I hadn't yet seen, so I don't care. This could have been slightly more interesting, but instead I spent the entire time wondering where I had seen the Scotland Yardie before, until the magic of IMDB came to the rescue and pointed out that it was that one off of Torchwood who was featured in all the initial promotional material, and then killed off in the first episode, and then brought back for "Why do they keep killing Suzie?". Anyway, those are all the interesting things about it.