| TV’s new Bones filled with AU links BY SALLY ACHARYA No bones about it. There’s definitely an AU link to one of TV’s newest shows—more than one, in fact. Bones is not only produced by an AU alum. It’s based on the stories (and to some extent the life) of a real-life AU alum, who is transformed for TV into a part-time AU professor who, in an upcoming episode, even lectures in Ward Two to a roomful of extras in AU T-shirts. The show’s season premiere drew 10.8 million viewers, making it the most-watched new show in the Nielsen Ratings. Bones, which airs at 8 p.m. on Tuesdays on Fox (Channel 5), is a show about a forensic anthropologist who works at the Jeffersonian Institute, pumps out best-selling fiction about a forensic anthropologist, and solves crimes. Sound unbelievable? Think again. The Bones heroine is based on Kathy Reichs ’70, a forensic anthropologist, professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and New York Times best-selling author of a slew of mysteries with such deadpan titles as Death du Jour, Grave Secrets, Monday Mourning, and Déja Dead. The latter book begins, in typical hard-boiled style:
I wasn’t thinking about the man who’d blown himself up. Earlier I had. Now I was putting him together. The character in Reichs’s fiction, and in the TV show loosely based on it, is named Temperance Brennan—although in the originals she works in Quebec instead of Washington, and doesn’t lecture at a lectern with an AU logo. In a sly twist of insider humor, the TV version of Reichs’s Temperance Brennan is also a novelist—and supposedly writes about a fictional character named, you’ve got it, Kathy Reichs. The producer is Barry Josephson ’78, who studied political science at AU but made his mark as a producer and film executive in Hollywood with such credits as Hide and Seek, Men in Black, and Like Mike. Producer Josephson is a member of the SOC Dean’s Advisory Counsel. The average viewer may be impressed by the holographic reconstructions of murder victims, but the AU community may be more intrigued by the way the show, on occasion, recreates familiar scenes at AU. The main character’s AU link is set to be revealed in an upcoming episode, which features her teaching from an AU lectern (recreated in Hollywood) at a Ward Two duplicated on a Hollywood sound stage. “I sent them about 20 pictures of the inside and outside of the building,” says Clark Gregor, Media Relations. “They went to the campus store and bought a bunch of things.” Unfortunately for those who would enjoy hunting for AU references, American Idol takes over the Tuesday time slot by midseason, and as the Seattle Times noted, Bones may vanish unless it earns a permanent place in the lineup. That is still up in the air. Early ratings are strong, and Bones has won a thumbs up from critics at the Boston Globe (“engaging”), USA Today (“satisfying and entertaining”), and the Denver Post (“smart, dark, and flirty”). But other critics, including Newsday and the Seattle Times made no bones about hating it, and Tom Shales at the Washington Post panned the show as “a dizzy and grisly bummer.” Oh, well. At least Shales is also an AU alum. |
