We watch... so you don't have to.
The Foot Bone's Connected to the Arm Bone
I finally got around to watching the Bones pilot a couple of days ago. Much to my surprise, I enjoyed the show quite a bit, though it might be better if they throw out the overdone crime solving aspect and just have the two main characters circle each other trading quips for an hour. If Deschanel and Boreanaz just kept repeating, "Squint! Sniper! Squint! Sniper!" that would be at least as engaging as the Scooby Doo-quality dead intern storyline in the pilot. (And even by Scooby Doo standards, this caper was one from the Scrappy Doo/Jonathan Winters-in-drag files, not the relatively cerebral Where Are You? caseload.)
Even more to my surprise, in the few months since I was last in D.C., Dulles Airport has apparently been moved to within a stone's throw of the Capitol Building. I've always thought that Dulles was unnecessarily located a long ways out in the boonies, but I would never have thought to plop it down right on top of the existing Reagan airport.
In Nathan's highly accurate review of the show, he already pointed out that the writers have relocated the long rows of headstones at Arlington National Cemetery to Abe Lincoln's backyard. (Have we learned nothing from Cuesta Verde Estates?) That bit of geographic revisionism is at least understandable from a narrative perspective. If the show's characters had to walk all the way across the bridge that actually separates those two locations, they might run out of snappy patter on the way. And if Bones ever runs out of snappy patter, even a surprise visit from Don Knotts and the Harlem Globetrotters isn't going to save it.
But calling Reagan airport Dulles has no apparent purpose. Is it possible that nobody involved in making the show bothered to check a map before allowing their opening shot to be so totally inaccurate? Nobody expects a Fox show to be the pinnacle of genius, but that would be dumb even for them.
The other possibility is that the name change is intentional, but what conceivable reason could they have for that? The only one I can come up with is that the show's creators are so left wing, they refuse to even have the word "Reagan" in their product. Such liberal sensibilities might also explain the pilot's repeatedly stated view of the Boreanaz character's background; that is, "Snipers bad! We shouldn't be hitting our enemies from 300 yards away with bullets, but with random acts of kindness." This message is only slightly diluted by the scene at the target range, in which we learn that being able to accurately shoot holes in people is really pretty neat.
I'm not sure which is worse. Actually being completely clueless, or being so fanatical in your political convictions that you're willing to appear completely clueless in the most public forum imaginable.
I just hope nobody ever tells the Bones writers that John Foster Dulles was a Republican, an aggressive opponent of Communism, and a pioneer of the doctrine of mutually assured destruction that was so favored by a certain 40th President of the United States. If they do, later episodes might see characters flying into Kennedy International Airport, conveniently located on the White House lawn.
