No 'Bones' about it: We like the patter

Brennan's partner is FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth, a post-"Angel" David Boreanaz who's grown beyond Buffy's tortured vampire lover to become a latter-day John Wayne -- a man with a penchant for big belt buckles and crazy-patterned socks who needs to be a hero because there are bad people in the world.

The whodunit on "Bones" (Fox, 8 p.m. Mondays, except when postseason baseball is on) is never as interesting as how the clues are discussed, and the show's success is rooted in the Nick-and-Nora banter of Brennan and Booth. Unlike the crime scene investigators of Las Vegas, Miami and New York, the Washington, D.C.-based "Bones" is a forensics show that reaches across the aisle and gives us a fresh and smart mix of gun-toting cop and idiosyncratic geek.

Whether it's a control-freak office manager who's been thrown down an elevator shaft (and whose dead body's been riding up and down -- up and down -- for days), a sleazy TV reality host buried at the bottom of an outhouse propelled topside by a methane explosion, or a human skull tossed off a highway overpass that causes a three-car pileup, the human remains end up at the Jeffersonian Institute -- a fictional version of the Smithsonian that allows oil drums of human waste to be shipped to its premises for testing. Once there, Booth strides through Brennan's implausibly high-tech lab trying not to break things, like the quarterback of the football team getting his plays from the statisticians.

Yes, the sexual tension hangs heavy, and everyone knows Booth and Brennan want to do it, Sam-and-Diane style -- but series creator Hart Hanson also writes an adult male-female friendship that is wonderful and special without being precious.

Brennan and Booth try to explain away the respect and concern they feel for each other as something simple -- they're partners, like Mulder and Scully -- but "Bones" gives us the first on-screen pairing that makes you think and gives you pause; if they do have sex, will it ruin the friendship?