I’ve been spending an embarrassing amount of my spare time this summer at one with the Netflix. I would cancel my subscription when school starts if I weren’t sure they would screw me over on fees when I returned. Anyway, one of the shows I’ve been catching up on is Fox’s Bones, staring Emily Deschanel as Dr. Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist who teams up with FBI agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) to solve crimes when the only clue is the skeleton. I quickly realized that it’s the nerdier precursor to my much beloved Castle. Anyway, the show’s “The Girl with the Curl” episode (2.7) featured Booth and Brennan investigating the death of a 10 year-old beauty queen and contained a super-awesome conversation between Brennan (who has no social skills) and a quintet of pageant girls. I had to share.

[…]21:00

Little girl 1: She took my birthday watch too. She took anything she liked.

Temperance Brennan: So you weren’t friends with her?

Little girl 2: You had to be friends with her.

TB: Why?

LG1: Because Brianna waaaas the queeeen.

TB: So yours was a cultural structure predicated on the equation of beauty with power. [Girl 3 looks puzzled] You instinctively align yourself with someone who has the greatest potential for societal supremacy. It’s a Darwinian pressure you’re too young to bear.

[Booth comes in and lifts her off the ground and out of the conversation.] LG2: You have huge muscles.

Booth: Thanks. [To TB] Learn anything?

TB: Yeah, I learned about cankles.

I about spit my coffee and was instantly smitten with the scene. Well put, Bones, well put. Queen Bees and Wannabes from an anthropologist’s perspective.