bones is back

Finally. My favorite show has returned. Its third season is airing. And I feel like my life has settled back in to some comfortable, life-giving niche, like the click of a key settling home in a lock.

I don't know what it is about Bones that does me so much good. I do get attached to shows, but not ordinarily as they air -- I watched Dark Angel for its first season, but didn't finish the second season until it came out on DVD. I never finished The Pretender. I love Buffy and Angel, but I never watched them once while they were on the air.

And it's not like I'm a crime show lover. NCIS? Bah. CSI? Shoot me. Law and Order? Forget it. The half-baked plots, the insipid characters, the vapid writing, all conspire to bore me to the state of glazed eyes, tongue half-hanging out of my mouth, little spots of drool at the corners.

But Bones. I'm in love with all the characters. The dialogue is great. The story arcs are wonderful. Nothing in it is particularly true to life, but I couldn't care less. The writers are incredible, and I've come to trust them. The show is steeped in a close-knit sense of family, a deep and unspoken love among all the principles, that reaches out and wraps me in it, too. When I watch that show, I feel like I'm home.

It's great too that I watch it on the phone with Leigh Ann. We've been friends for ten years, have gone through all shorts of rough and bright spots together, have similar temperaments, similar dreams, similar ways of relating to the world and to people and to God and to ourselves. So every week hitting the "Send" button on her speed-dial number, or picking up her call, to settle into my big-cushioned chair and tune into Bones and laugh and oo and ahh and screech and squeal over the turns of events in each episode is another anchoring ritual in my weekly life. Especially since the network always puts me about three seconds ahead of her (drat you, Fox!) and she can usually guess what's going to happen by listening to my reactions. And there's something magic about sharing a present, connected now with a close friend who lives a thousand miles away.

So after the episode finished last night, and we said our goodbyes, I went and sat on the porch for a few minutes to enjoy the long-awaited coolness of a rainy night, and laughed my head off with Luchenne as she related her temper tantrum at her boyfriend for overflowing the toilet, and then, for the first time in weeks, I went back upstairs and had the emotional energy to wash my stacked-up dishes before I turned in for the night.

For whatever reason, and as strange as it might be, Bones has a good effect on my psychological wellbeing.

I'm so glad it's back.