When it comes to Bones, which returned last night in a new time slot with its first new episodes since November, absence tends to make my heart grow fonder. So clearly, this blustery New York winter has frozen my ticker, because I thought those two hours kinda blew.To me, they represent the creative conundrum at the center of this show that I love: Can you have too much character in a character-driven procedural? The answer is yes, if the writing of those "character" elements isn’t as sharp as it is for the cases. (Or, should I say was for the cases? Fingers crossed the forthcoming return to the Grave Digger storyline — with Booth being buried alive — is also a return to Brennan wowing us with her forensics and not just her ability to take a rhetorical question literally.)
In last night’s first episode, Booth and Brennan went undercover in a circus after finding the remains of female conjoined twin jugglers on the Oklahoma-Texas border. We learned that Dr. Sweets was adopted and that his birth mother was a psychic on the circus circuit…presumably just so that he could counsel "Buck and Wanda Moosejaw" on how to get in with the notoriously tight-lipped performers and ringmaster (guest star Andy Richter playing straight, except for when he fired a clown gun to stop Booth’s showdown with his paint-faced nemeses and said, "Tumbles, I’m serious"). Were there moments of this episode that I enjoyed? Of course. Booth and Brennan’s actual knife-throwing act (embedded above) was probably the reason this episode got made: Booth’s biceps and Brennan’s boobs on display — always good. Brennan’s childlike enthusiasm as she gave Booth smaller and smaller targets, DOWN TO A CLOWN NOSE — classic. Sweets explaining the "sexual component" to the act ("The knife representing…. Dr. Brennan is showing remarkable trust and willingess") — definitely funnier than the twins’ doctor explaining how much privacy can be achieved by an eye mask and a MP3 player. I just found most of the episode to be as forced as the sight of Booth and Bones riding in a motorcycle and a sidecar. Does the FBI really not plan an undercover mission better than that? In the end, thanks to Brennan’s determination to show us her mad high-wire skills, we discovered that the twins had been trying to save the circus that they loved by taking their act to the tightrope. When they fell into the net, their heads knocked together, and Magnum the strong man buried them. Next!
To every American woman who’s ever wanted her breasts cupped by British fashionistas (and Lord knows I do), you can officially get happy. Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine, hosts of BBC’s What Not to Wear (and frequent Oprah visitors) are bringing their act Stateside.
On 
Here I was today, wallowing in discontentment over what may be the most vanilla/predictable crop of 
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