Sneak Peek
Bones
The forensics hit returns for a second season of mysterious bodies and hot hookups
By David A. Keeps
TV Guide 28th August-3rd Sept 2006

"Anyone who carries a badge and a gun and drives a fast car has to be cool," says David Boreanaz, who does all of the above as FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth on Bones, which starts its new season this Wednesday. Apparently, that isn't quite cool enough, Boreanaz has a few tricks up his sleeve - and in his trousers.
"This Wittnauer watch and World War II belt buckle belonged to Booth's grandfather," the 37-year-old actor explains, while hustling across the high-tech set of the medico-legal lab in the Jeffersonian-the Bones version of the Smithsonian Institution. What's his hurry? Oh, just another autopsy. (You'll see it in the new season's third episode, "The Boy in the Shroud," when the imprint of a dead man's face has been transferred to a piece of cloth.)
Before "action" is called, Boreanaz explains how he wove his goofy sease of humor into the fabric of Special Agent Booth. He lifts his trouser leg to reveal an ankle sheathed in pastel-striped Paul Smith hosiery. "Yes," he confesses, "I wear character socks."
Boreanaz may know his character from head to toe, but his cerebral and sexy costar Emily Deschanel only thinks she does. In last season's finale, she discovered that Temperance "Bones" Brennan, the forensic anthropologist she plays, hasn't been herself for years.
The episode revolved around indentifying the remains of "Jane Doe 1-29-09-98," which turn out to be Temperance's mother, who disappeared in 1991. With the arrival of her estranged brother, Russ (Loren Dean), and the help of her scientific team , nicknamed "squints"-Zack Addy (Eric Millegan), Dr. Jack Hodgins (TJ Thyne) and Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin)-Temperance discovered her parents were bank robbers Ruth and Max Keenan. On the run from a crime syndicate, they assumed new identities and later had to abandon their teen daughter,Joy, and her brother, Kyle. Oh, and her dad isn't dead after all.
"Every five minutes there was a new revelation about my family," says Deschanel,29,sitting in her alter ego's office. Now, Brennan's work-identifying dead people by their bones-has a new resonance. "Because of what has happened with my parents, I don't even understand who I am. I might be bringing too much poetry to it all, but it's like I am in pieces."
Brennan also receives a shattering bit of news in the first episode. She has an unwelcome new boss, Dr. Camille Saroyan (Tamara Taylor). "I go on vacation to visit my brother," Deschanel says, " and she gets appointed as head of forensics. I'm upset, like, "Why didn't I get that job?" And it's alluded that Camille had a relationship with Booth."
Creator Hart Hanson believes that solving grisly crimes is "the skeleton of Bones, but what the audience really likes is the humor, the characters and their relationships."
Accordingly, Hanson divulges that there is "a burgeoning romance" between two of the squints, Angela and Hodgins. "I would like Angela to fall in love," says Conlin, who plays her. "Last season I was always being screwed over by some guy." The new entanglement is definitely a change of pace for Thyne, who portrays Hodgins. "I think it's hilarious that the first actor that I showered with was Eric Millegan, aka supergeek Zack] when we had to take a decontamination shower," Thyne says.
The romantic prognosis is not so bright for Temperance, who always fingers the killer, but hardly ever hooks her man. "Well, I did meet a guy online," Deschanel says of her character, "but then someone shoots at me as I'm on my way to that date, and Booth gets very protective and suspects the guy when it was somebody else trying to kill me."
The question killing Bones fans is this : When are Booth and Brennan going to banter and bicker their way into each other's arms? "It might be possible for them to hook up," Deschanel theorizes. "There have definitely been moments where they get really close, but then, of course, they have to go on a stakeout."
There's one further complication : Not only does Booth's old flame become Temperance's new boss, but the mother of his young son (Jessica Capshaw) appears in the season's second episode. Temperance may have to take a number.
Deschanel sighs. "Booth is a little manwhore." And they call her "Bones."