Bones Episode Review: The Finder aka The Bones spin-off episode

THURSDAY NIGHTS ARE THE BEST NIGHTS ON TELEVISION
and "Bones" really contributes to that excellence...normally...

Yay for all of you! Except you CBS, Sorry...

Thursday nights are the best nights on television, hands down. Seriously, can you beat a night full of "Bones", "Grey's", "The Office", "Parks and Rec", and "30 Rock"? Didn't think so. My only complaint is that several of these shows are on at the same time which makes later Hulu-ing/TiVo-ing necessary.

I've given you a full day to catch-up, so I really hope by now you've watched yesterday's "Bones". But, in case you missed it, I'll try to avoid too many spoilers. Basically Bones and Booth had to solve a murder (what else is new) and they were successful (seriously, I'm ruining nothing). What was interesting though was that they appeared in very little of the show. Why? Well, because Hart Hanson and his crew wanted to introduce us to their new show, which will be premiering on Fox in the not too distant future. The show has, rather obviously, the same name as this episode: "The Finder".

During this week's episode Bones and Booth were in Miami where the remains had been discovered. Apparently, Booth has an old army 'friend' (Walter Sherman) who is a finder. Weird that Booth has never, ever mentioned this guy before, huh? Guess you need plenty of army buddies for a successful spin-off series. He can, quite literally, located anything that anyone has ever lost. He was also brain-damaged in the war which causes rampant paranoia.

the new team of "The Finder"

Now, the premise of "The Finder" isn't all bad. Although I do have to admit that it's a bit too much like "The Mentalist" for my liking. Still, Hart Hanson seems to be skilled at making things appealing quirky, so maybe it will be a smash hit. When reviewing this week's "Bones" episode that's kind of beside the point. My biggest problem with the episode? It wasn't "Bones"! So much of it was focused on introducing Walter and his friends (who I assume will be the primary cast of "The Finder") that the tone of the episode was completely wrong. I felt as though I was watching a brand new show that just happened to have a tiny side-story which featured the crew of the Jeffersonian. It felt bizarre to say the least. I do have to admit that I'm often thrown by shows introducing their own spin-offs (I didn't like it much when "NCIS" featured the new cast of "NCIS: LA" much either), still I felt that "Bones" did a particularly poor job.

Oh, look, here we see Walter and Booth briefly interacting

We only saw Booth and Brennan briefly (which was just enough time for Brennan to appear more socially inept and vapid seriously this used to be an intelligent woman, why are the writers doing this? and for Booth to interact with her in a way that was somehow less charming than it used to be.) In fact, it seemed as though they were only there at the beginning and the end, sandwiched around the real story which focused on Walter and his cronies. And which was, essentially, the premiere episode of "The Finder". I understand that "The Finder" is a new show aimed at the same audience as "Bones", but when I sit down in excitement to watch the weekly episode of "Bones" I prefer not to be tricked into watching something else entirely.

And it seems like some other people agree with me, this week "Bones" dropped 9% from last week's viewers...