“The Princess and the Pear,” last Thursday’s episode of the Fox show Bones, opened with a group of eighth graders dressed like wizards and warriors playing Dungeons & Dragons in a sewer.
And my first thought was, “Oh, God, here we go again with the tired stereotypes of fantasy enthusiasts!”
The kids soon find a decomposed corpse dressed like a princess — which makes sense, of course, because it’s only RPGers who root around in sewers, never football players or rodeo riders.
Soon the apparent murder is being investigated by Dr. Temperance ‘Bones’ Brennan (Emily Deschanel). Special Agent Seeley Booth (Angel’s David Boreanaz) Bones‘ regular co-star, is waylaid by an injury this episode, so Bones is joined in her investigation by another agent (guest star Marisa Coughlin).
The corpse in the sewer, it seems, was the owner of a highly prized artifact — “Excalibur,” the sword used in the first fantasy film ever made.
Truthfully, I wasn’t particularly impressed by the plot, or the “reveal” at the end, which seemed pretty obvious. Don’t you need a red herring if you want your audience not to be sure who the killer is?
Anyway, the episode mostly struck me as an excuse to parade — for laughs — an endless assortment of stereotypes of fantasy-enthusiasts: the goth girl, the history nut, and — mostly — the nerds and geeks.
Oh, Lord, were there a lot of nerds and geeks.
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It makes sense that it wasn't a jock or something who found the body because the role players weren't just there because fantasy fans are sewer dwelling oddballs, it was part of the imagicon.
I really liked the episode, but agree the end was slightly obvious. I figured out the killer very early on, so it just became a matter of waiting to hear the motive, but I thought the character interactions and development made up for the obvious killer.
The geek/nerd stereotypes are annoying, but I try to ignore it as on TV things like that are always exaggerated. Like the episode with the pageant kids. Mothers who would give their kids drugs and put them in a corset to help them win aren't the norm, but watching them portrayed that way is considered more entertaining.
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