"Bones:" If your network yanked your show all over the schedule, you'd want to put your eye out, too

Say what you will about "Bones" - how many seasons has it gone on, now, and Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz haven't gotten it on? - but it's certainly Fox's underappreciated secret weapon. The network plops it all over its schedule, and it invariably does well and even better.

Fox exec Kevin Reilly was asked at TV Press Tour about the tough-love/no-love/crazy-love the network has for the show in slapping it hither, thither and yon on its schedule, and he replied, fairly honestly: "(Series creator) Hart Hanson doesn't exactly love moving all over the schedule, but what's happened is it's a show where, in trying to find where it could perform best and, frankly, accommodating some other shows, we found that wherever we put it, it ended up working and, in fact, now growing. ... So the show clearly has a base. I'd like to stop moving it around. If it does what we think it's going to do on Thursday, we'll glue it to the schedule there. ... We do have faith in the show. It's a little strange way of showing the love, but I've got to tell you, we appreciate the work they do on that show because that's part of what you build a network with, these shows that can go in there and do a job for you."

"Bones" was originally supposed to debut in its Thursday-at-8 timeslot last week, but then, George W. Bush felt the need to go before the American people with one last "It wasn't all tears and regrets, was it?" push. And so, tonight, "Bones" - which has in four seasons appeared on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays - makes its Thursday debut with two back-to-back episodes. One was made available in advance.

And that one, it must be said, is one of the show's sillier episodes, which may be saying something, but, you know, it's still entertaining enough. It begins with a fairly b.s. scene on the Texas/Oklahoma border, with two sheriffs squabbling over jurisdiction of a crime scene involving skeletons of conjoined twins joined at the butt near an oil rig. You almost expect Jeff Foxworthy to appear to declare, "You know you're a redneck if you don't want the Feds investigating your case of dead conjoined twins where only one has evidence of having had sex."

Because that's what apparently has been going on, and the victims had been working for a traveling circus (which makes them victims in so many ways), so Booth (Boreanaz) and Brennan (Deschanel) decide that the only way they can crack this case - given how tight-lipped carnies can be, understand - is to go undercover at the circus.

Brennan asks, "Are we going to join the circus?"

Booth answers, "We are going to join the circus."

So, just in case you're not clear - they're going to join the circus.

They venture into the circus arena as "Buck and Wanda - Knives of Death" because Booth can throw knives with a reasonable amount of accuracy and Brennan just kind of gets off on the idea of phallic symbols being thrown in her direction. (This might seem like a joke, but it's an actual plot point. Take note.) Andy Richter plays the ringleader of the woebegotten outfit traversing the land, hoping against hope that he can make some money entertaining the easily entertained (even though he's an unwitting metaphor for broadcast-TV executives these days, he's not given a whole lot to do).

So they're recruited to join the ragtag band, sort of, and, in order to fit in, they have to prove they're white-trashy enough. "So, sex, right?" Booth asks. Meaning they have to seem like they screw indiscriminately. So they rock their RV back and forth to simulate satisfying sexual congress, even though we all know they'd both be better off doing the real thing, but they nonetheless coin the new phrase "If the van's a-rockin' and carnies are inside, don't bother knockin' because you do not want to see what's going on inside there."

Anyway, their colleagues back at the Jeffersonian want them to install a webcam, mainly because they want to titter at their travails, and when Brennan gets all excited about Booth "throwing knives" at her for their putative circus act - which is called "Boris and Natasha," sans Moose - he responds, "There is no act - there is just me trying not to kill you," which sounds like the description of a lot of celebrity couples.

Anyway, Fox sent out a press release with the screener for this episode reading, "Please note that Emily Deschanel injured her eye (not during work hours) while this episode was being shot. ... Post-production will work to make the injury unnoticeable, but ... we would appreciate you not mentioning it in anything you write about the episode."

And, ordinarily, I'd honor such a request, but it's so obvious that the show's producers' worked so hard to try to write around her injury, and some of it was pretty clever and some of it was absolutely not, that it bears mentioning if only to show the creative lengths showrunners go to to fix problems on the fly and at least try to make such anomalies organic to the creative process.

Anyway, it involves an eyepatch that sort of makes sense ... until it doesn't.

Eventually, they figure out what happened, naturally. But, up to that point, we've had some fun, yes? We've had some laughs. It's been silly/mildly sexy all the way through - and then they have to end it with an Emo song, an acoustic guitar strumming oh-so-sensitively and a whiny guy crooning.

It's like they brought Bobby Goldsboro to write the last three pages of a script started by Mel Brooks. It's like Hart Hanson is warning Fox, "Keep screwing with my show and I'll feature a gang rape involving the cast of 'You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.'"

Deschanel is pretty hot in her carnie outfit, though. So there's that.

- "Bones:" 8 and 9 p.m. tonight, Fox (Channel 11).