From the beginning of my introduction to the TV show, one of my favorite elements was the respectful relationship between the male and female leads.

One of the first episodes had Booth (the FBI guy) lecturing Brennen (the bones lady) about the importance of respecting the rules.

“I can’t always respect the rules,” she insists. “But I can respect you.”

And with very few exceptions she does.

These last few episodes have had that played up more than ever.

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Every story plays on some sort of fantasy.

Bones‘s is about a woman competent and confident (don’t we all want to be?), who in the rare moments her above-average abilities are overwhelmed by some greater strength has an utterly devoted man who would do anything for her.

On the guy side it’s about the nice guys winning.  Both the leading man and all the supporting actors are “nice guys.” Decent, generally healthy people who are all good in different ways– which, if you think about it, is both rare and hard (which is the short answer about why it’s rare).

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Life (one of the shows I followed last year) was about the edge-rider and situational ethics.  Life was fascinating because of how well it followed rules (the writing, not the characters).

The main character was high enough (and rich enough, oblivious enough) to do basically whatever he wanted to do, but he was not so high that he was responsible for more than himself and (at times) a partner.  He was the perfect wingman.

In one episode he quietly accompanies his captain to confront the last people to see the leading lady and Captain was able to keep his killer eye-contact with his opponent because he trusted Cruise behind him to watch his back.  Which he did quite competently.

With the female partner, they had the overweight tough guy wannabe (with the heart of gold, of course) getting the girl.

I have to wonder now if the show ended up failing because it tried to feed to many fantasies and so didn’t feed any one of them enough…

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Right now the Bones writers seem to be trying to walk a line between accuracy in healthy male/female relationships (deference, honor, protection) and avoiding what they (possibly) see as bland stereotype.

There’s still the extra-marital sex to keep it from being generally recommendable as a whole show, but as a character study, I enjoy it immensely.

I hope they keep trying; I love “getting to know” characters that I wouldn’t mind meeting in real life.

I like it when the nice guys win.