Bones (TV Series) The Yanks in the U.K.: Parts 1 and 2 (2008) User Reviews

Get over yourselves!

[herriwood · 8/10 · 10 May 2021]

I'm British and I love these episodes. Those that complain obviously don't have a sense of humour or a soul for that matter. I love the British versions of B&B, they are fantastic.

I loved looking at the locations and recognising where they were and I like the spin on a typical British story line. Thanks Bones, ignore the miserable, puffed up, self important whingers.

Cheerio

[lastliberal · 8/10 · 3 September 2008]

This was the best episode of the series. The setting in England made it well worth watching.

The fact that we are, as they say, two countries separated by a common language, makes for some very funny moments. I love the dry British wit and it was very evident here.

I also felt that the love triangle that was going on back at the Institute was fascinating and added immensely to the story.

The glimpse of English life in the story was a real plus, and it made it almost as good as a Kathy Reichs novel with the various settings.

I'll stick around this year to see if they keep up the good work.

A lark

[ctomvelu-1 · 7/10 · 3 January 2009]

Countless American TV series have done an episode or episodes set in England, so why not BONES? B&B head for England to lecture, and come across a grisly murder that leads to all sorts of complications as it involves royalty and mixed-up bloodlines. Just as they solve this case, a second murder comes up that delays their return. This one involves a professor and an archeology dig in Kensington. Meanwhile, back home Angela's husband shows up and all sorts of problems ensue. About half the episode seems to be focused on Angela. Normally, I wouldn't mind, as I like Angela, but this one gets soggy and soapy and drawn-out. I came to realize as of this episode that I am not as intrigued by Angela as I was originally. She's interesting, but not that interesting. Back in London, Booth can't get the hang of driving on the left. Where have we seen that before? Oh yes, in about 500 movies and TV shows.

Not really great to watch if you are British.

[ApplePiePerson · 22 September 2008]

The interesting character dynamic and strong plot lines were put on hold for this episode. Why? Because the characters go to ENgerland and see the posh dudes and butlers and drive on the wrong side. And the Brits are all so gay and retarded, they need Americans to wonder in and solve it all.

Apparently someone (Hart Hanson) thought it would be fun to turn Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain, 1942 into an episode of a detective show. I felt like looking outside for German bombers.

Gross stereotypes, poor jokes, tons of cultural mistakes and stupid illegalities. National Lampoons European Vacation without the funny bits. Why even bother? The show is usually so good but this - along with the end of Season 3 - makes me wonder what the heck is going on with this show. If Booth wandered around with a gun and FBI badge nowadays, he'd be shot on the tube like a Brazilian electrician.

Also, the writer's pitiful knowledge of European archaeology as well as basic British law and geography makes a mockery of the meticulous work of Kathy Reichs.

In short - if you want to look at cute totally old LOLZ British stuff, watch Inspector Morse.

Booth hates England

[mitchrmp · 9/10 · 22 July 2016]

While Brennan adjusts well in England, Booth has a lot of issues. He doesn't understand a lot of the sayings, he has a lot of trouble driving, and he surely doesn't like the fact that the good anthropologist is trying to get Brennan to sleep with him! But he does his best to deal as they work together to find out who killed an American girl - and why.

Meanwhile, back at the lab, Angela's husband shows up. She and Jack ask him for a divorce, but he is still in love with Angela!

This is a rather humorous episode, followed by a finale that ended on a very tragic side. Everyone has adjusted, and we'll soon get to meet the interns that can't really take Zack's place, but try.

Amazing Reviews

[chadwick-86955 · 6/10 · 6 February 2024]

Looking at the reviews, I am so amazed at the reaction of Brits with the two episodes. This was a typical Stupid American in London episode. I don't see how it could offend Brits, the Americans, especially Booth, was a Neanderthal.

Such unrealistic ideas, Booth being able to carry a gun, being necessary for the resolution of the cases, presumably because Scotland Yard requires his help ... Hysterical. Who would actually believe it? Again, the stupid American in London. This was a spoof.

Driving on the left was hysterical, but Booth's reaction is, of course, typical of Booth. I understand that when I go to the UK, I will not be driving. That doesn't mean that driving on the left or the right is bad ... it just means it is different. Booth was Booth, he cannot adapt, as mentioned by Brennan.

I saw nothing realistic in the episode, especially to use to criticize the Brits. Stupid Americans ... it is a stereotype.

Booth, however, even with his lack of flexibility, appreciates the Brits ... maybe for stereotypical reasons, but does so nonetheless.

Again, this is a gynocentric episode when it came to Angela, her ex-husband (Grayson), Cam, and Hodgins. The women have their rights, but the men (except Grayson, because he was "used" (like he didn't like it), have none. Angela can jump on Grayson, mounting him with clothes on, and give him a passionate kiss ... that is ok. Cam can sleep with the guy for her own desires, that is ok (it really is ... because he is Angela's "ex"). Angela reacts ... that is always ok ... typically self-centered, she is always correct. And the distrust starts.

The script writers have their own objectives, even when the circumstances are contrived. That is normal.

Brennan actually acts like a real human in this episode. That is a big advancement.

Clichés galore.

[lisy-babe · 3/10 · 4 September 2008]

Every clichéd idea the Americans have about life in Britain crammed into one 2-part episode! There are hundreds of pubs in London, most of them are not located along the Thames.

Routemaster buses, red phone boxes and old-style minis are all fairly rare sights these days, but they managed to get them all in to the show.

Oxford is about 60 miles outside of London, so why did a London fire engine attend a fire in Oxford? Surely an Oxfordshire fire engine could've gotten there a lot quicker?

Oh, and not all London's buildings are that old.

Just awful...

[shantisaraswati · 1/10 · 3 October 2010]

Oh dear American TV series people.. how can you be so unfunny, so un-entertaining and so wrong! And Andrew Buchan (one of the UK's great young actors)- What were you thinking!?

Bones is usually quite good... not that I'm a regular viewer.. but these episodes show yet again that TV in the USA has a bizarre way of dealing with anything outside its own boundaries. - Look at the weird things they did to some very popular UK and Australian born series (Absolutely Fabulous, The Office, Kath and Kim etc etc) They simply did not translate.

I have seen American shows set in, or referring to, Australia, and they are just as appalling. American TV should stick to its own, or learn something about the rest of the world.

Blighty

[generalsmuts · 1/10 · 14 September 2008]

Routemaster (that's the red doubledecker ones) buses do not even EXIST anymore. Not everyone in Britain is part of the aristocracy and is friends with the Queen. A lot, and I mean a LOT of buildings in London are very modern - in part due to the blitz. And no, we do not all talk like that. I've seen the actors in this in other things and they do not talk like that. Did they ask British actors to put on an even more ridiculous accent?

Seriously, America, I thought we were over all this?

I had a feeling this show wouldn't recover after the stunt they pulled in the season 3 finale, and I was right. The characters were particularly unlikable in this episode - as another reviewer said - they were much more interested in childish "who-likes-who" games than any kind of forensic crime-solving activity.

Typical misguided yanks

[scubajoe-555-830715 · 1/10 · 14 October 2009]

I don't know what is worse, London being portrayed in this episode like it was set in the 1950's or the American viewers actually believing it

I have always hated the way Americans think that all British people speak like the upper class snobs and its all down to shows like this. The whole episode has made the British look like complete idiots still living in the Victorian times, its okay though as long as the Americans are here to save us and help us solve the murder (that the butler did by the way in case you were wondering if there were any clichés.) The fact that Booth was able to just get a gun is ridiculous as was the very old minicabs, buildings and phone booths that appeared in pretty much every scene Americans have different accents across their 50 states so why the hell would everyone in England speak like a posh snob.

This episode of bones has seriously shaken my confidence in the writers of the series. I only hope that the American viewers aren't really buying this crap. (Yes we use the word crap too)

Give this episode a miss if you are British!

[BuddyBontheNet · 1/10 · 27 April 2010]

I love the Bones series, but if this had been the first episode I had watched I wouldn't have watched another.

The old 'being an American in England' plot was quite simply utter drivel.

That Mini must have been found in a museum.

From the tea versus coffee gag, to the upper class and royalty quips.

Only one English accent throughout, good old British bobbies and the Beefeater cracks...

The 'barrister's wig is weird' line and the gun bit - give me strength.

I could go on and on...and on.

Very disappointing and smacks of desperation.

Worst. Episode. EV-ER!

[tygerkittn · 1/10 · 6 September 2008]

Normally I love this show, but this episode was horrible, there was only one kind of bone the characters were interested in. They discarded good writing in the interest of prurience. At the end of the two part episode I agreed with Clark Edison's assessment of the characters. I think future shows should revolve around him, since he was the only one who acted like he was out of junior high. Let the rest of the cast go off and follow their hormones while we watch Clark solve forensic mysteries. There were a few good moments when Booth was interviewing the British aristocracy, but the little bit of levity couldn't sustain it when the cast acted like the most important issues were who they were lusting after at that particular moment. I watch Desperate Housewives for this kind of stuff, and they write cleverly enough to build a series around it, but the writers here can't handle it and shouldn't be trying, since Bones is supposed to be a forensic crime show with humor and a nice bit of sexual tension between the main characters, not a medley of bed hopping and juvenile games of "who 'likes' who." Wow, I hope the whole season isn't like this. The only people who could possibly empathize with the cast's behavior are too young to be watching it.

Abysmal

[johnjens · 2/10 · 29 May 2009]

I can only echo many of the previous comments - this was a terrible episode (almost as bad as the finale from season 3!) with twee English accents, ridiculous stereotypes (Jeeves the butler) and countless inaccuracies from redundant buses to flying forensic evidence across the Atlantic! Somebody should have advised the writers that Scotland Yard does have SOCOs of their own! Bones is at its best when the team are investigating murders on home soil and the interplay between the regular characters is allowed to shine. Sadly, this episode was a mistake, particularly following the rushed ending to season 3 and Zach's overnight conversion from "King of the Lab" to Cannibal sidekick! I'll persist with the next few episodes, but please get this series back on track.

Trash

[rikalonius · 1/10 · 14 November 2010]

As an American who lived 3 and a half years in London, I found this episode to be heinous. As has already been said, it was an attempt to cram in all the over-used stereotypes into as short a time as possible. This is nothing new, but in this case it was done quite badly. I've often commented that any American show or movie that takes a trip to London must have obligatory shots of Tower Bridge, Parliament, and Piccadilly Circus. There must always be a reference to Bond, snobbery, and tea. The fact that they crammed no football hooligans into the mix was stunning, but they managed to make Oxford look as though it was down in W1.

I was deeply offended, as any Brit who watched it is right to be.

Serious disappointment

[fionahz · 1/10 · 12 November 2008]

This was a very lazy, very disappointing episode. It was also incredibly old fashioned. Surely we left the whole "going off to Blighty to watch them drive on the wrong side with their stiff upper lips" garbage behind thirty years ago! But no, obviously Hart Hanson still thinks it's funny. It wasn't clever, it wasn't amusing and it added nothing to the show. I'm just glad it's only a two-parter. For a while I was worried they were going to spend the whole series there, which would mean I would have to skip the series, because I won't waste any more time on this. Get back to the US and back to the lab.

How about spending some time to tell us who Gormegon was. That little story arc fizzled out like a wet firework. All tidied up in a matter of minutes. I hope this show hasn't jumped the shark.

Hideous

[jonnywarboys · 2/10 · 23 October 2018]

Bones is a very corny TV show. Usually I can put up with it but as a Brit this episode is atrocious.

Much like all American attempts at setting an episode in England it insists on ridiculous stereotypes, awful British accents (off British actors who should know better) and infuriating Americanisms.

No one would give Booth a gun, no one would confuse a mini with an Aston, we have labs in the UK... I could go on.

Awful

Terrible, TERRIBLE episode from normally good show

[fake_address-1 · 9 October 2008]

Absolutely terrible! This episode appeared to be written by hack writers who knew almost nothing about the characters.

It was like they tried to emulate The Simpsons in the UK. "Americans Abroad" stupid comedy such as you'd expect to see in National Lampoons Vacation.

I just can't imagine that the characters would have behaved like they did - completely wrong, completely foreign.

Very disappointing.

My wife and I had been avidly watching the entire series over a month, and enjoyed it immensely - but this episode was almost totally removed from the what had come before it.

Worse every time

[akicork · 1/10 · 9 December 2017]

Every time I box-watch the series, this seems worse. Absolutely the low point of all twelve years. The nineteen-thirties and -forties stereotypes of UK environment and behaviour. The sloppy research - e.g. if you're going to include the aristocracy in a script, you should make sure you know to list a character as "Gerald, Duke of Ennisford" rather than "Duke Gerald Bonham". The general contempt for what actually happens in the UK - e.g. references to "the Queen of England" and the events related to Booth carrying firearms. I can only assume that Ian Toynton either did not have the authority to influence the crap he was being asked to direct, or deliberately allowed it to go forward so that the perpetrators would be left with internationally public egg on their faces.

So bad it should be good... but it isn't

[helemegg · 1/10 · 5 September 2020]

I'm not certain which nationality should be more insulted.

The English are portrayed as stuck up snobs who all speak with posher accents than the Queen (except for the guy who calls Booth a w4nker for his bad driving... with that same voice clip being played at least twice that I'm sure of). We also apparently don't have the facilities to solve a murder so have to get Americans to help us, although in the second episode of this British special (wahay, we get to suffer this twice!) we do have somewhere Bones can do her examinations in a room which looks like the crypt in a gothic church because, of course, everything here is soooo old. Our police are quite happy to go along with letting posh people try and evade the law - probably because they are all so terribly, terribly posh themselves (does anyone really talk about themselves as "one"?)

I think however that the Americans come off a lot worse. Booth has a tantrum that would shame a 3 year old because, boo hoo, we drive on the other side of the road and he can't cope. He also can't cope with our coffee not being as good (try being a British tea drinker in the States if you really want to suffer!) and he is gratuitously offensive to anyone English despite being the diplomatic and charming one in the normal episodes. He gets off lightly tho compared to the rest of the cast back in the lab who act like a bunch of school children gossiping and throwing jealous hissy fits about who fancies who. Angela is upset that Hodgins doesn't fully trust her - given she snogged her ex when he turned up and keeps going on about what a hottie he is, who can blame him. We have discussions about sex while discussing a murder and the only character who comes off as having any morals or ideas of how to work professionally unfortunately decides he doesn't want to work with them and quits, which is a real shame as this show needed someone who could lend a bit of gravitas to what is descending into a really amateurish set of performances.

The only way to enjoy this is a good game of cliche buzzword bingo. Fill out those cards (red buses, phone boxes, a butler, jokes about British teeth,...) and have a drink every time you cross one off. 10 minutes in your card will be full and you'll be drunk enough to sit through this bilge (probably because you'll be too drunk to look for the remote).

complete trash!

[cassie01994 · 1/10 · 25 February 2013]

they start instantly with gross stereotypes and then they have the ordasity to insult the austin mini!!!!! the locations oxford London high society doesn't reflect england at all! it showed an complete failure to portral the uk and any form of diversity the uk has! The episode makes no geographical sense and is extremely offensive! i only managed to stomach the first 2o mins of the first episode and after the reviews I've read here i'm glad i did!

I've decided not to continue watching this show!

i have lost any and all affection i had for the characters!

i hope you read this before your subjected to this episode

Totally Racist!

[ZinQ · 1/10 · 8 March 2019]

Fast forward these two episodes. Total drivel and utterly ridiculous. Two to avoid if you are British and have high blood pressure.

Continuity!!!

[phillipslight · 1/10 · 17 February 2019]

Let's avoid the highly inaccurate stereotypes of the UK... The continuity of the Mini driving through the City, is the worst I've ever seen on screen!! Yes, even worse than Brannigan. Procedural script wasn't even close to reality, in fact highly illegal. Please don't try this again, it's insulting & atypical.

Not Worth the Time and Place

[Hitchcoc · 2/10 · 27 January 2023]

Neat idea. Put Brennan and Booth in London. The worldly Brennan fits in fine. Booth becomes a sickening, boorish character with no respect for the people or the country in which they are staying. He uses expressions he probably read in comic books or some asinine British comedy. He can't handle the car and becomes dangerous on the road, like a keystone cop. He treats the woman police officer disrespectfully and makes fun of the most mundane things. Sometimes I like this guy but often he is insufferable and downright stupid. I can't imagine someone getting into the FBI with such awful knowledge of foreign places. The plot didn't help either although without all the silliness it could have been decent. Certainly not enough to fill two episodes.

Terrible episode

[cathysparta · 3/10 · 16 August 2023]

I find it funny that British people are insulted by this episode as much as I am as an American. Booth's behavior in this episode is exactly what the media portrays as a stereotypical American traveling through Europe. The scenes that show Booth demanding a gun or screaming and yelling about the cars and the roads is absolutely embarrassing. Brennan is always arguing with Booth about everything but says nothing as he throws a hissy fit? Neither character would ever behave that way, I really don't know what the writer's were trying to prove with this episode, but all it did was reinforce horrible stereotypes.