That doesn't stop former Army sniper-turned-FBI agent Seeley Booth (Angel's David Boreanaz) from tapping her to work with him week after week on Fox TV's Bones. He's much more interested in her under-the-lacerated-skin people skills than her face-to-face social skills, anyway.

The brainy doc—based on a character originally created in a best-selling series of novels by real-life anthropologist Kathy Reichs—regularly assists Booth and the FBI, but she actually works for the Jeffersonian Institution (think Smithsonian with a scientist loaner program). There she heads a crew of four bright and photogenic specialists who excel in the areas of anthropology, 3-D digital imaging, engineering, entomology and mineralogy. Together they make up a forensic team to die for. And somebody always seems to be doing just that.

Skeletons in the Closet
Bones lives to find new piles of moldering bodies lying around someplace. Skeletons in the lake. Body parts in a bear's stomach. Mummified corpses in the walls. Burning bodies with bug-eaten brains in the ... well, you get the idea. And each carrion clot or femur fragment holds information just waiting to be discovered. An interesting wrinkle in a game of TV autopsy show one-upmanship is that on Fox the good doctor's team of "squints" (so named because they squint to study evidence) can create a holographic image of a victim from just a few pieces of exhumed calcium.

But along with all the scientific insight and superhero-smart solutions, there are parts of this hour-long drama that are a real challenge to our powers of suspended disbelief. Besides the fact that all these science geeks are beautiful (no offense to real scientists, but this is TV, after all), the brilliant Dr. Brennan is also a best-selling author, a black belt in martial arts and an adept pistol markswoman. Given a little provocation, the cerebral and shy Ph.D. will turn all Clint Eastwood and kick (or shoot) somebody. And somehow, the police always let her get away with it. In one scene, a suspect is about to destroy evidence and Brennan puts a bullet in his leg. Let's see that case stand up in court.

In addition to this evidence bag full of dramatic hyperbole, viewers will also be treated to eye-covering close-ups of Brennan and her team digging through rotting flesh. In one case, after finding stray pieces of bone in the smoldering, charred remains of a plane crash, the scientists decide they need to determine some kind of bone-fragment trajectory—so they toss a frozen pig into a wood chipper. (The results are predictably goopy.)

Smart, But a Little Brittle
While solving murders together, Booth and Brennan often wrestle with some kind of spiritual question, too. On the plus side of this issue, in one episode the self-proclaimed atheist scientist speaks negatively about the "rules" that God lays down, comparing Him to a criminal they are pursuing. Her Catholic FBI partner assures her that that's not how God works and asks her not to speak that way. She retorts: "You go to church every Sunday?" "Yes I do," comes his answer. "Can I come with you?" she implores with a scientific curiosity. "No, you can't." "Why not?" "I am not going to help you disrespect God in His own house," says Booth, and closes their argument with, "God doesn't make mistakes."

Unfortunately, Dr. Brennan's denouncements of traditional morality, God and religion aren't always challenged. Nor does Booth (or anybody else, for that matter) shy away from pressing up against moral boundaries. (In the area of sex, for example, and, rarely, flashes of too much skin.) So when you roll everything together with occasional sexual commentary, alcohol consumption and scattered foul language, the show ends up feeling a little out of step, especially since it resides in the first hours of prime time, that time of night traditionally known as the "family hour."

"Eight o'clock seems too early for a show featuring long, loving shots of desiccated corpses, but network TV doesn't abide by many genteel rules or good manners anymore, " wrote Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales. "Even adults may feel the director is way too generous with views of rotting remains. And later we are treated to a holographic reproduction of a man bashing the poor woman's skull with a sledgehammer as she lies on the ground."

Bones has some well-developed characters speaking smartly written dialogue who are easy to like. Booth and Brennan bring to mind opposites-attract duos from such TV shows as The X-Files, Moonlighting and Cheers. But folks in the family room will find that it's a drama with grisly inclinations and an unfortunate case of moral osteoporosis.