It’s always been said that, should your television series be showing some serious signs of redundancy or you just can’t figure out how to tally up the very equation that you set forth into the world, just add a kid to the show and call it good. There have been many instances in which we have witnessed the demise of even a moderately mediocre primetime program due to a noticeable lack of originality and the ever-dreaded addition of a child character to the fray. And Bones — a series that started off as a somewhat so-so title to begin with — has certainly not ignored this unwritten rule to television production.
So, as you may or may not recall, the end of Season Six announced the pregnancy of the show’s titular character, Dr. Temperance “Bones” Brennan (Emily Deschanel), a brilliant forensic anthropologist with nary a social skill under her skirt. Alas, such an off-putting quality was not enough to steer FBI guy Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) — her partner in the field of solving a heap of murders every year — from becoming her partner in private, as well.
For me and millions of other viewers, it was a moment that solidified the unavoidable jumping of the shark every series goes through at some point. Though the show was never 100% believable to begin with, the pregnancy factor upped the ante. Sure, the purpose of the plot point was for good reason — Deschanel herself was pregnant — though there have been many other shows that managed to hide such a fact from its audience in order to keep things routine. Of course, once you’ve reached your seventh season of a procedural drama, the word “routine” is synonymous with the expression “same shit, different day.” Here, it is indeed the same thing over and over, but with a heavy serving of forced emotions because of a pregnant lead character.
Another offense committed in the previous season, the incorporation of the equally-dreaded backdoor pilot (The Finder), managed to return for the original broadcast order of this season on Fox, with The Finder slipping its way into Bones‘ regularly scheduled airtime during the first quarter of 2012 while Bones was on hiatus, before being shifted to another day and timeslot (appropriately enough, the short-lived spin-off series was canceled only a few months later). Fortunately, we don’t have to suffer through those replacement episodes here in this Blu-ray release, which presents us all thirteen episodes of this quickie season in a three-disc set.
Bones: The Complete Seventh Season boasts a beautiful 1080p/AVC transfer that is quite pleasing on the eyes. From the endless array of blood reds to the deep contrast of the most subtle of blacks, the video presentation here is a nice one to behold. Likewise, the 5.1 DTS-HD MA lossless soundtrack delivers all the goods a show that is mostly held together by dialogue (and tired gimmicks), but lives life to the fullest when it comes to those scenes wherein music and sound effects are required to engulf the viewer.
Apart from the obligatory gag reel, a small portion of deleted scenes, two featurettes about the gimmicky film-within-a-film setup of the twelfth episode, “The Suit on the Set” (one of which is a bona fide behind-the-scenes look, the other being a faux red carpet interview), and an audio commentary for the season finale (“The Past in the Present”), there isn’t much here in the way of special features. It should be noted, too, that Fox ordered four additional episodes for Season Seven, which were aired as part of Season Eight, but which are not included in this set, which — I feel compelled to remind you — is entitled Bones: The Complete Seventh Season.
I suppose it really doesn’t matter, though, since there’s really nothing new under the sun here except for some old, brittle, sun-bleached Bones.
