David Boreanaz

Love under wraps

WHEN a TV show develops around a will-they-or-won’t-they pre-romantic pairing, audiences try to enjoy the ride, all the while fearing several possible conclusions.

The example most frequently mentioned is the fate of David and Maddy on Moonlighting, a couple with splendid chemistry until they actually started hooking up.

On one extreme, you get Ross and Rachel, who got together so early on Friends that they were back-and-forth for 10 frustrating seasons.

At the other end, you get Scully and Mulder, whose unconsummated X-Files flirtation far outlasted most viewers’ interest in the show.

While Bones has won fans with its reliably icky corpse-of-the-week mysteries and for the appeal of its underrated ensemble cast, there’s little doubt that the verbal sparring between Booth and Brennan has stirred up the most predictable and heated audience exchanges.

Because neither the brooding, caustic Booth nor the detached, analytical Bones is prone to flowery emotional confessions, most of their supposedly budding romance is inferred, which pleases David Boreanaz.

"I don’t really like to dive into the soap opera-y aspect of the show," he says.

"We did that with one show this year that I really didn’t like and I told (creator Hart Hanson), ’You know, I’m not into this whole soap opera thing that you’re doing right now’.

"I think it’s about relationships and the issues that they both have, whether it’s about religion, politics, her knowledge, his knowledge. That’s the interesting arguments that happen while we’re going to a crime scene, at the crime scene, the end of a crime scene."

On a professional level, Emily Deschanel agrees, noting it would probably be better to wait until the end of the show’s run to bring the characters together but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t understand the other side.

"In the world of Bones, Booth and Brennan, I think, belong together," she laughs.

"I just don’t know, in the series, how long it will take them to get there. I’m just saying in the future, I’d like to see them get together."

Let it never be said, though, that Boreanaz and Deschanel have taken a haphazard approach to developing their chemistry.

As if the Bones weekly production cycle isn’t work enough, the actors get together every weekend with acting coach Ivana Chubbuck for hours of extra rehearsal.

"(Ivana) really helps us define and maintain that it’s always going back to relationships," Boreanaz said.

"Always going back to the two of us in every scene, always bringing it back and making it into a competition between the two of us and really creating that conflict and that give-and-take."