Bones: The Complete Sixth Season
A television series reaches middle age around its fifth or sixth season and it rests on the shoulders of the production team whether or not to get rejuvenated or quietly enter the complacency of old age, leading to a far swifter demise. Thankfully, Hart Hanson and the crew of Bones used last season as a chance to shake up the status quo in numerous ways resulting in a reset of sorts when the seventh season begins November 3. Meantime, [[[Bones: The Complete Sixth Season]]] was recently released by 20th Century Home Entertainment and is once more a handsome package.
The show is far more character-driven than its competitor procedurals on the other networks, so we’ve come to know and love not only the staff at the Jeffersonian and FBI agent Sealy Booth, but the interns and extended family that are part of their world. The series does not shy away from dealing with the consequences of their cases and as one menace is finally dealt with, another arrives to keep things interesting. The Gravedigger, Heather Taffet (Deirdre Lovejoy), had her creepy storyline brought to a satisfying conclusion but as one door closed, another opened and in walked Jacob Broadsky (Arnold Vosloo), an ex-Army sniper who has a history with Booth.
This show has always had an appealing cast, with terrific chemistry among the regulars and the producers make certain we see them at work and at play, mixing and matching the characters to see what happens. David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel anchor the show and their “will they or won’t they” relationship kept things going for the previous five seasons. Still, to everyone but one another, it was clear they belonged together, and it finally was addressed in the waning season five episodes. As season six opened, Booth had been in the Middle East for months and returned a changed man, accompanied by Hannah Burley (Katheryn Winnick). Having Booth seemingly happy in love was just the spark Deschanel’s Temperance Brennan needed to get back in touch with her emotional heart. Their arc was a very strong one, a spine for the season that ended with them finally making love, resulting in a pregnancy that will charge the new season.
Preceding their growing family was the late term pregnancy and birth of Angela’s (Michaela Conlin) baby, resulting in the changes she and Hodgins (T. J. Thyne) had to make in their lives and marriage. The other characters had their parts to play but the two couples and their stories took most of the interpersonal time. The rotating interns were heavily weighted toward Wendell Bray (Michael Grant Terry) and Vincent Nigel-Murray (Ryan Cartwright). Eugene Byrd’s Clark Edison found his happy place much to everyone’s annoyance but it was Nigel-Murray’s shocking death in the penultimate episode that acted as a counterpoint to all the new life. (The move was necessitated by Cartwright’s role on SyFy’s Alphas.)
The cases remain creative but always take second place to the characters and what is going on in their life. Each episode advances various storylines while solving a murder with a speed that is the envy of real-life law enforcement agencies.
There are 23 episodes in the season, one of which is a backdoor pilot to Hanson’s The Locator, which gets a brief season run over the winter while Bones rests given Deschanel’s real pregnancy. The new premise was okay but with recasting of a supporting role, the jury remains out.
We get two audio commentaries for the episodes “The Doctor in the Photo” and “The Blackout in the Blizzard” along with extended versions of “The Daredevil in the Mold” and “The Bikini in the Soup”. There are just a few featurettes including the behind the scenes “Breaking Down: The Blackout in the Blizzard” and another look at “The Visual Effects of Bones“. Yes, there’s a gag reel as we see everyone try and handle the jargon. Finally, in an interesting addition, there is the pilot episode of the television series The Killing.