Bones: The End Of Season Cop-Out

In recent years a number of shows have taken things to a whole new level by killing off main characters and establishing the real-world mentality that no one is safe.  Think of Heroes, Lost, 24 and even Supernatural, where each of the main characters has died at least once. (Sure, they cheat and bring them back, but remember that first time when we didn't know that they would...)  These shows set the bar high, making our expectations bigger.  Hell, even Bones used this in the second season when one of the main characters - Zack - becomes a villain and is ultimately arrested and leaves the show.

I'm not a rabid Bones fan, but I do watch the show regularly and I have to admit that I was intrigued by the commercial for the most recent episode, which indicated that the team would lose one of their own and cycled through pictures of all the main characters.  Unfortunate advertising choices on the part of Fox resulted in an ad for the season finale airing prior to the episode of doom and, based on the images shown, I was able to deduce that all of the main characters were safe except Sweets (nooooooooooo!!!) and Cam.  So I settled in to watch the episode convinced that the writers would eliminate the always-interesting Sweets rather than the generally-bland and under-utilized Cam.  Turns out that my worry was misdirected.  Instead of killing off a main character, the writers built the suspense then chose to eliminate one of the squinterns - Mr. Vincent Nigel-Murray.

Now, I'm not saying that Mr. Nigel-Murray didn't have a kick-ass death scene.  I'm just pointing out the falsely-advertised, cheesy cop-out that was his death.  I'm not even sure that I can fault the writers for this - it's a solid episode.  The main issue here is that the episode didn't produce what was advertised.  Who put those previews together, anyway?

I'm also irritated because the show has been a revolving carousel of squinterns this season, and the writers chose to kill off the best one.  Bones told him - as he bled out on the floor - that he was her favorite, and I echo that sentiment.  He was better than Depressed Guy, better than Repressed Guy, better than Broke-Slept-With-Angela Guy, and certainly better than Daisy.

There were some good dramatic moments in the episode but a lot of the emotional power was lost because the actual product fell short of the expectations generated by the advertising.