Face of an Angel

The face of an Angel. The body of a sinner. It doesn’t matter that she’s the villain of this particular episode of BONES (2005-2017), although one just finds that out in the end. This is, after all, a nicely done whodunit-procedural-crime-series. And it doesn’t matter that I give this info up ahead. One needs not be particularly attentive to the intricacies of plot structure to figure it out when one first catches a look of Lena Brodsky (then Emily Foxler, actually Emily Baldoni).

Her manner is all professionalism, and yet conveys some insecurity. Her Ukranian accent (how refreshing that this was done prior to the 2022 Russian invasion, when Ukranians could still be villains, and not just washed-up saints), or what passes for it in TV-land, makes her voice oh so sexy and as inviting as those deliciously pouty lips and those clear grey-green eyes. And those long, long legs… they just make you wonder… Can someone with legs like these be so innocent as those sweet big eyes imply? Can someone so hot really feel even a little insecurity? Or is it just a mask? A way of allay suspicion, just as the bejeweled belly of a black-widow spider makes it look just an object of natural beauty?

Some women are just like that. They look so sweet and so innocent, they makes us want to do things for them. And to them. And if you fool yourself, even for a tiny moment, that you’re on top of things, they’ll bite your head right off.

I fell in love with Temperance Brennan…

…from the get go. Maybe it’s due to the contrast between her bright brains and her sinner’s body, or maybe it’s due to the nonchalant disdain for all things that our pop-bubblegum culture thrives on. Truth is, I love her dedication. Her utter obsession towards the task at hand. Towards solving the mystery.

Her selfless quest for truth and enlightenment almost erases her inner self. Piecing together the puzzle of a smashed skull, the looks straight into the abyss of death, and although the abyss looks back at her, her capacity for marveling with the hidden truths and the cold equations of the universe, smothers that frightful look, like vacuum killing a flame.

Working throughout the night she seems lonely, but one feels she’s never truly so, as if she’s carrying the ghosts of all her broken, twisted, charred skeletons within her, collecting experience – lived experience – through the martyrdom of the victims she reveals in every episode. 

In a way, it’s as if Bones (Brennan’s nickname, derived from her anthropological expertise) is meant to give life to the Cartesian duality of body and soul. Something the series – Bones (2005-2017) – hints at, but never quiet fully explores. Temperance, Dr, Brennan, or simply Bones (Emily Deschanel), is a focused mind lodged in a body she’s oblivious to, however a body that we’re all too aware of.

Although to say she’s oblivious to her body is not the most truthful assertion, as she keeps it honed as a lethal weapon through martial arts training. The more correct statement would be that she thinks of her body as an instrument to her mind, and so the attention she gives to it is the same we give our cars. It must be kept functional, and clean, and impressive, but it is not who we are.

Not having met her when I was kid, I didn’t fell head over heels for her, as I had for Wilma Deering, or Daisy Duke, or Triple A. But I fell in love nonetheless. How can you not, when such a sharp mind is housed in a body like hers?