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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Open letter to television writers: 'It was all a dream' is getting old

By: Mary McNamara

17/05/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

HOLLYWOOD -- What is it with Fox and the season-finale sexual psych-outs? First we discover that the consummation of the House/Cuddy relationship, so vividly portrayed last week, was not just a figment of House's Vicodin-addled imagination but a symptom of Actual Mental Illness.

Now, after months of flirtatious magazine covers and Internet teasers about Bones, we find out that the big "Bones and Booth Hit the Sheets" episode was similarly rigged.

After 40 or so minutes of a more-grey-than-noir story line that had Bones (Emily Deschanel) and Booth (David Boreanaz) happily married and owners of a nightclub where a murder has been committed, it all turned out to be either a Booth coma-dream or a Bones novel-outline. The season ended with Booth, having survived his brain-tumour removal, looking at Bones and asking "Who are you?"

So instead of sex, amnesia; that's ... unexpected. But if the episode itself was not the season's best, it should be required viewing for all those TV fans who just can't stand it if their favourite couples don't hook up and soon. This Bones had a lesson for us all: Romantic drama is 90 per cent anticipation.

You'd think we would have learned this from Moonlighting, which fizzled pretty much the moment David (Bruce Willis) and Maddie (Cybill Shepherd) decided to lip-lock the clever banter. If Bones and Booth get together and break up, that's tragic and sad. If they get together and stay together, well ... let's review the season finale for a moment. Gone was the snappy dialogue, the fond but mutually mystified glances Deschanel and Boreanaz have perfected over the years. Gone was Bones' Spockian charm and Booth's sheepish machismo, leaving instead a man who wore a black fisherman's cap and a woman who flinched when she saw a fairly ordinary corpse.

We all know the dirty little secret about happily ever after is that it's boring to watch. Which is why, as a critic, I call on television writers and producers to hold the line. Ignore the websites and comment pages and then simply turn back to your laptops as if they never happened.

Yes, we may whine that it's time for Cuddy and House to fall into each others arms, and that everyone knows Bones and Booth are in love. But whining is bad behaviour; it does not pay to reward bad behaviour. Don't pander with promises of hot kisses and rumpled sheets that you know will ruin your show and then offer some soap-operatic fakeout that will only make us angrier. Stand tall in the knowledge that no pain is more exquisitely delicious than that caused by tenterhooks.

But pencils down on the lame hallucination/coma dream/brain cancer sequences. Psych us once, shame on you. Psych us twice, permanent DVR deletion is just a click away.

-- Los Angeles Times

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 17, 2009 D9

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