We’re about a month away from the season premiere of Bones, and I am not excited. I swear. Season six was an embarrassment, start to finish, and this pregnancy storyline is just an atrocious piece of storytelling. I feel like …

Oh, holy God, this is adorable.

From the bickery banter IN THE MORNING AT HIS APARTMENT WHERE THEY SLEEP to the sweet puns (“Due this November!”? Pinch me!), this promo suggests that this season is going to be absolutely freaking adorable.

Seeley Booth as a daughterfather? Temperance Brennan as a hormone-crazed pregnant woman? I’ve wanted this since season one, episode two! (What? It took some convincing.)

My concern is — how far can this baby carry the show? Will he or she (she, most definitely) be enough to redeem the wrongs of last season? Or will this baby just be a constant reminder of the out-of-character, almost-cruel-to-patient-fans leap forward these writers made last spring?

I feel like this could be good, actually. The time jump and the enormous (har har) shift in Booth and Brennan’s partnership will immediately distance season seven from its predecessor, and that’s a good thing. But I’ll be curious to see if longtime Bones fans can put the past behind them.

I think I can, if that counts for anything, although I reserve the right to roll my eyes with some frequency. (Brennan’s going to go into labor at a prison during a lockdown? EYES ROLLING SO MUCH.)

It’s important that, as series age and their long-running characters become less likeable, they add new characters who can fill that gap. For Grey’s Anatomy, that character is young Zola, the soon-to-be-adopted daughter of Derek and Meredith.

In this clip, a scene from the season premiere (airing three weeks from tonight!), Derek’s in a bad mood mid-surgery while his pager beeps incessantly. He’s snapping at nurses about the distraction, but when someone comes in suggesting that the page is about his baby, Derek puts the scalpel down.

Although he’s near-frantic trying to get ahold of Meredith, we see that she’s not that busy–she and Zola are down in the basement while Meredith mutters her old standard, “What did I do? What did I do? What did I do?”

Is Meredith trying to get Derek’s attention by using their baby as emotional bait? Could she have paged him repeatedly about Zola so he’d drop everything and come looking for them, at which point she could corner him and talk about their marital issues? Even for Meredith, that seems low and probably a bad idea. Could it also be that something is wrong with Zola, and whoever’s calling (say, a tech with bad test results) can’t get ahold of Meredith, either, because she’s being a basketcase not answering her phone?

Whatever the case may be, I’m sure that Zola will be okay, Meredith will get her job back, and Derek and Meredith will work their crap out. And I will keep watching, because Zola is cute.

Booth and Brennan arrive at a crime scene, where Brennan is dressed in her typical Jeffersonian jumpsuit—pulled tight over her huge baby bump. Booth is, as expected, doing a pretty good anxious father routine, complaining about her traipsing through the woods. Brennan is, as expected, using anthropology to refute his concerns: women have been squatting in the woods popping out babies for centuries. Booth is, as expected, traumatized by all discussion of squatting.

“I’m never going to be able to survive this pregnancy, I’m telling ya.”

It’s predictable, it’s not particularly clever—but it’s also freaking adorable.

I mean, you guys! Booth and Brennan are having a baby together! They are opposites and they are having a baby together! They have been will-they-won’t-they-ing for six seasons and they are having a baby together!

Question is, after the novelty of squatting conversations wears off, what’s left? Well, then there’s the actual baby, but then what? The writers seem certain that skipping the first six or so months of Booth and Brennan’s romance will allow them to beat the Moonlighting Curse—which, until they actually paired them up, they swore did not exist—but I maintain that good stories can be told whether the characters are together or apart, and bad stories can be told whether the characters are together or apart.

The challenge they have to deal with this season, in my opinion, isn’t writing an interesting post-hookup Booth/Brennan, but rather writing good stories—period. Maybe it will give them a fresh burst of creativity—it sure did for Friends back in the day—but they’re only going to be able to rely on cute baby cuteness for so long.

Last thing—do you want to hear my theory? I think episode six—the last before Emily Deschanel’s maternity hiatus kicks in—will end with a “Booth, I’m in labor” cliffhanger. And it’ll probably happen at a really inopportune time. Maybe it’ll even be related to this season’s serial killer. Booth thinks squatting in the fields to birth a baby is an unsavory idea? See what he thinks when she starts having contractions in a killer’s dungeon lair or something. Then they can decide when they get back if they want to:

(A)   Say it was false labor and get Booth and Brennan the heck out of that dungeon lair!

(B)   Start right back in the dungeon lair and have Booth deliver that messy baby by himself, all the while holding a gun on the killer!

(C)   Skip more time to where the baby is born and fine and like three years old!

Good times all around.

(Leaving more space in case you clicked here from Twitter and don’t actually want to know.)

As if there were ever any question about the sex of this baby.

It’s a girl!

In the script for episode two, a suspect gets fresh talking about Brennan, to which Booth does not take kindly. Sweets tells the suspect to take it easy: “The little girl she’s carrying is his daughter.”

Booth is going to be a daughterfather. Commence squeeing and universal “I told you so”s.

I’ll take the first one: I told you so!

even jenna fischer believes jim and pam have become boring and sexless. // nbc promotional photo

Jenna Fischer told New York Magazine this week that her real-life pregnancy will be written in to The Office. I guess they heard all my griping about James Spader and figured they needed to find a way to keep me invested.

Said Fischer, “Pam will be pregnant when the season starts. Pam and Jim snuck away last season on Valentine’s Day, and they had sex. The story is that they conceived this baby at that time and were keeping it a secret until we come back from the summer.”

Couple thoughts:

1. Does Jenna really believe that Pam and Jim have sex so infrequently that it’s a good thing the writers made such a blatant insinuation in “PDA”? That’s cold.
2. There’s really no reason NOT to write in the pregnancy. Pam and Jim are happy, they’ve already done the first baby storyline (meaning #2 will be even LESS of a burden than Cece), and it’s the best excuse for sending Jenna on her real maternity leave. Also, BABIES!!!!!!!
3. It actually could be pretty funny. Remember that the Cece news was big enough to merit taking The Office’s cliffhanger spot in 2009. #2 is the afterthought. Also, after how big of a deal the whole unplanned pregnancy thing was, it’s hilarious that Pam got pregnant less than a year after the first one was born. And likely accidentally, once more.
4. Please don’t let Jenna name this one.

this was five episodes ago and now you are seven months pregnant. // fox promotional photo

The first spoilers for Bones’s seventh season are out, and they weren’t lying when they said they were doing a time jump. In fact, in this premiere, it’s three years later, and Booth and Brennan have a child. They got married, but it didn’t work out, and they are now divorced and splitting custody of their kid. See? They managed to keep the tone of the show exactly the same! They’re back to WILL THEY OR WON’T THEY, but with EVEN HIGHER STAKES because now there’s a child involved. DRAAAAAAAMA.

Just kidding. That’s not what happens.

Actual spoilers after the jump.

We pick up several months later. It is indicated that Brennan is “great with child.” It appears that she and Booth are maintaining separate residences, and at least on this morning, they’ve spent the night at Booth’s. Brennan is bitching about his apartment being too small; in reality, she’s just Aunt Marge-ing it up in there.

From the limited information we have, we know that the case, which involves a woman who lost her memory, will evoke memories for Booth and Brennan about their respective childhoods. Brennan in particular seems kind of moody throughout the episode, which is to be expected, since she’s still working on her feet all day while she’s hugely pregnant.

That’s pretty much all we know, but I feel pretty confident reaching the following conclusion:

By episode’s end, Booth and Brennan will have decided to live together, either at her apartment or at a new place that’s big enough to fit all of their tchotchkes and children. (Recall that Brennan slept on the couch in “The Hole in the Heart,” suggesting that there’s no spare bed in the apartment, even for Parker. Where are they going to put a second baby?) Brennan may also express to Booth her doubt that they can successfully parent a child, considering how crappy their own parents were. He’ll reassure her with lovely statements such as, “You’re going to love this baby so much.” and “Parker’s turning out okay, right?” and “Hey, at least you know what not to do.” They’ll determine that, at the very least, they’ll do better than their own parents did. Which, really, is a low bar to set, considering Booth’s dad beat him and Brennan’s parents preferred bank robbery to successful parenting. Bottom line is, this is the episode where they’ll decide to officially raise this baby as a family.

Michael Hodgins also makes an appearance, to which I say, Child, enjoy your time as the baby on this show, because you’re about to get upstaged but good in a couple months.

No word yet on whether or not B&B have been remanded to Sweets’s psychological jurisdiction or if there’s been confirmation that this baby will be female (she will).

Anything else you’re particularly waiting to find out about? 

only one character in this photo was totally likeable this season. hint: it's zola. // abc promotional photo

Where We Started: Post-rampage, the staff of Seattle Grace-Mercy West puts the pieces back together. For Cristina, this means being emo and annoying; for Meredith, coping with Derek’s near-death experience and the miscarriage she suffered during the shootout. Other people are also affected.

Where We Ended: With a lot of rocky relationships. Cristina and Owen seem to be over, after she told him she was planning on terminating her pregnancy, regardless of his opinion. Derek’s being a baby about Meredith’s clinical trial shenanigans, which is ironic because they have an actual baby now. Alex moved out of Meredith’s house, which is convenient considering Zola didn’t have a room. Let’s see, what else? Sloane “gave” Lexie to Jackson, so that’s decided on. Teddy surprisingly made out with her cancer-patient husband, whose pilot conveniently did not get picked up, so that could be a thing. The lesbians didn’t really get a storyline in the last episode, but they seem to be doing okay.

Outstanding Episode Along the Way: The musical episode. Just kidding! My favorite this season was “Golden Hour,” a real-time episode that showed many characters, and especially Meredith, in new and interesting ways.

MVP: I mean, with Grey’s, this is always going to be kind of a “lesser of fourteen evils,” but I’m going to have to go with Alex. He’d been kind of a sad-sack post-Izzie, and it was fun to see him move on with Lucy, despite how badly that ended. We’ve known for a while (since he was making out with Addison) that Alex was leaning toward neonatal surgery, but this year he really embraced the specialty. It was even his devotion to sick babies (or at least to making chief resident by way of sick babies) that introduced Derek and Meredith to little Zola. It’s just too bad he ended the season as a crapface tattletale.

Best Payoff: Zola! Derek and Meredith’s season of infertility was capped off with them adopting a sick little girl from Africa, and while the adoption process has thus far been unrealistically easy, it’s been great to see known daughter-father McDreamy and known Champion of Mommy Issues Meredith ease into parenthood. Even just seeing Meredith WANT to have a family was such a monumental (and satisfying) change for her. I can only imagine that they will evolve even more next season, and, God willing, that we’ll get to see lots more of McDreamy being a snuggly dad.

Quote of the Year: Related. “Okay, we’re gonna be okay,” Meredith told little Zola when she realized it might just be Mom and daughter for a while. “You and I, we’re a team, right? We’re tough. We have that in common. I am very glad you’re here. I didn’t think your first day would be quite like this, but I’m gonna get it together, and we’re gonna figure this out.” Don’t tell me that’s not the most optimistic and gung-ho that Meredith’s been about anything since the day she cleaned Crazy Ava’s blood off the floor.

Worst Storyline: Callie and Arizona got into a car accident. Although Arizona was fine, Callie spent one episode in critical condition with internal bleeding and hallucinations of her colleagues singing The Songs of Grey’s Anatomy, and one additional episode recovering. Since then, it’s barely been mentioned again. Also, there were no repercussions for Arizona and her terrible driving skills. Note to future boyfriends: if we are driving in a car and you give me an ultimatum about marriage and then proceed to crash the car in such a violent fashion that I am thrown through the windshield WHILST PREGNANT, there will be serious conversations about the future of our relationship when I regain consciousness.

Spend the Summer Wondering…: Last week’s finale really didn’t have any major cliffhangers. I mean, I think it’s very safe to say that Derek will forgive Meredith in time for them to file official adoption paperwork for Zola. (Although, gosh, can you imagine if they had to send her back to Africa? That would be a ROUGH storyline.) Cristina and Owen are obviously headed for a breakup, if not an out-and-out divorce. I will be spending the summer wondering why Cristina didn’t just have her tubes tied after her first unwanted pregnancy back in season two. Last season’s finale was built on such a crazy series of events that it took a good chunk of this season to deal with the fallout. Since this one ended without gunshots, prom sex, or any of the other insane finale fodder that Grey’s has brought in the past, they’re going to have to come up with some fresh storylines going into season eight. Good luck.

s'gonna be one genetically lucky little girl. // fox promotional photo

Where We Started: Booth and Brennan return from their respective workcations. Brennan may have figured out that absence makes the heart grow fonder; unfortunately, Booth had sex with a skank under a fig tree and she’s followed him home.

Where We Ended: “I’m pregnant. You’re the father.” Yeaaaaah. That happened.

Outstanding Episode Along the Way: I’d say “The Hole in the Heart,” just for Angela’s faces when Brennan told her that she and Booth and shared a bed. On the flip side, though, now I’m just mad, because apparently Booth and Brennan had offscreen sex in this episode.

MVP: Angela. Not only did she carry an iffy-at-best pregnancy storyline to term, she was often the only voice of reason in a season of absurdity. And, as noted above, her facial expressions were pitch-perfect. She gets points taken off for ridiculous lines about her baby’s potential blindness (which we all knew would end up being a non-issue), but she still has many, many more points than her colleagues.

Best Payoff: As if Bones knows anything about payoff. Can we talk instead about all the things they never paid off?

• Booth threw Hannah’s engagement ring into the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. For a guy who worries about his kid going to public school, that seemed like a big chunk of change to just throw away.
• Booth and Brennan each wrote down a hypothetical date when they’d be ready to start going out, then burned the pieces of paper. We can assume, I suppose, that they decided to screw that plan and just have sex when they felt like it. Okay.
• In the season five finale, Booth and Brennan agree to meet at a coffee cart on the National Mall a year from that date. Even though they came home from Afghanistan and the Maluku Islands ahead of schedule, it’s still annoying that they never followed through on that coffee date.
• Booth and Brennan agreed that the reasons keeping them apart were his anger toward the women who’d wronged him and her “imperviousness” in matters of the heart. Neither ever acknowledged that they had moved past these barriers before jumping into the sack.

On the other hand, this whole baby situation was foreshadowed in the season four episode, “The Critic in the Cabernet,” arguably one of my favorite episodes of the series. Booth agreed to give Brennan some sperm in the event of his death while having brain surgery, but when he survived, the matter was never mentioned again—until now. So if you consider this cliffhanger a payoff of that years-old follow-through crap-out, then THAT’s the best payoff.

Quote of the Year: “I messed myself.” God bless Patricia Belcher for delivering this line with the seriousness required, and not the immature chuckle that I still can’t help, months after the sniper took out the Gravedigger.

Worst Storyline: Is it even a contest? Congratulations, Ms. Hannah Burley. In all seriousness, imagine if Hannah had been a non-issue and Booth and Brennan had gotten together earlier in the season. It might not have felt so out-of-left-field, so “DON’T LOOK AT ME. BLAME EMILY AND HER FETUS” for Booth and Brennan to be facing down parenthood this summer. As it stands, the major storyline stall caused by the introduction (and subsequent, inevitable exodus) of Hannah put a big damper on the season, and ultimately makes the otherwise juicy cliffhanger feel like too little, too late. Even if we know this little baby’s going to be super cute.

Spend the Summer Wondering…: … how in the hell they’re going to deal with this. Having just gone through a season-long pregnancy storyline with Angela, do we think they’ll drag this out another 22 episodes, even if these nine months involve our lead characters, not our second-stringers? Also, wouldn’t that mean that they’d have to downplay Emily’s real-life pregnancy at the beginning, only to put her in a prosthetic belly once she’s back from maternity leave? Seems logical to me that they’d skip some time in there and have Brennan deliver just before Emily goes on leave, but it’s Bones, after all. And you know what that means: logical schmogical.

I’ll also be wondering how Hart Hanson is planning on responding to the hate mail he’s about to receive for cheating the viewers who’ve been watching for six long, sexless years out of the consummation of Booth and Brennan’s relationship. Even for him, that’s low. Also, if this doesn’t work out, let this please be a cautionary tale on dragging things out past the point of no return, and not on letting your main characters have sex.

Here’s how I feel. (Hannah: “I DON’T KNOW HOW I FEEL.”) Yesterday, I read this story about three boys who were lost at sea. Floating in a dinghy and out of food and water, they were incredibly thirsty. They were surrounded, of course, by saltwater, but they knew better than to drink that. (Everyone does.) Still, they couldn’t help themselves. And even though it tasted awful and ultimately resulted in the boys just getting dehydrated more quickly, it was satisfying. This baby is my glass of saltwater. It’s a terrible idea, but at least for a few moments, it’s going to be delicious.

Oh, I hold absolutely no hope that the brides (Callie and Arizona) will stay together or stop being annoying, but the rumors swirling around this episode’s B-plots are rather exciting.

See, it’s been known for some time now that Derek and Meredith skip the wedding. Which led people to believed there were but three possible conclusions:

1. Legalizing the Post-It wedding.

2. Adopting a baby.

3. Both.

Now, I had my reservations. Shonda Rhimes has long been of the opinion that Derek and Meredith’s Post-It wedding is completely normal and not at all weird, so I’d given up hope of seeing a real wedding between the two. And adopting a baby usually takes longer than an afternoon. It usually takes, like, A YEAR. If not more. It is not a spur-of-the-moment decision.

But then I remembered that this is Grey’s Anatomy, and they will forgo common sense if they feel they must. And then I saw this sneak peek (for Thursday’s episode, “White Wedding”) and I decided … okay fine. They must.

Now, looking past the fact that tiny Zola (Zola! I assume this references the author of the famed open letter J’Accuse) makes a lot of noises without ever opening her mouth, thus suggesting she is some kind of magical baby, this scene is super cute and sets up some really interesting implications for Derek and Meredith going into the finale. Also, I’ll go on record as saying I love the name Zola. I mean, I was secretly hoping for Zahara, but this is good, too.

Last week, you may remember that Meredith fudged the clinical trial designations in order to sneak Adele Webber into the program. She’s getting away with it for now, but it’s only a matter of time before word gets out–not only to the higher-ups overseeing the clinical trial rules, but also to her Post-It husband, who’s running this operation.

Imagine Meredith agrees to adopt tiny Zola. Let’s give Shonda the benefit of the doubt and assume she won’t make it easier for the Shepherds to adopt this baby than it was for them to adopt that dog back in season two. So then let’s guess that they miss the lesbians’ wedding so that they can go down to the courthouse and legalize their Post-It note. Because that’s not suspicious AT ALL on adoption paperwork.

“You’ve only been married … three days?”

“Well, two years, actually. The first two were unofficial. We can provide documentation of the Post-It if that would help.”

So, say they formalize their marriage and start the process to adopt tiny Zola. Maybe it even happens unnaturally fast, so that by the time the finale rolls around, Derek and Meredith have officially roped tiny Zola into their house of crazy.

Speaking of which, do you think that the adoption people are going to want to look at the prospective parents’ living situation?

“I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Shepherd, but we’re going to have to reject your application to adopt this baby. You have nine different kinds of tequila on your kitchen counter and there are two people having sex in your shower as we speak.”

That house is no place for a baby!

Anyway, imagine the authorities (African? American? Who is responsible for this nugget?) give them the go-ahead, but then in the finale, Derek finds out about Meredith’s clinical trial transgressions. And it’s like … oops. Because last week, the only thing tying you to this person was a Post-It note, but now, you’re married and you have a kid. So, that could make things rough.

Now, what I think would be REALLY amusing is if Derek and Meredith speed through this babytaking operation and then find out that (surprise!) Meredith is pregnant. I am all for adopting tiny Zola, but they’ve just spent an entire season on Meredith’s hostile uterus, and at some point, the rules of storytelling say that they should fix it. Also, Meredith just needs to deliver a baby so that Addison can come back and deliver it. In the meantime, I’m just happy they’re actually giving them something to do–and that baby is pretty darn cute.

were you too busy dealing with this corpse to come up with an adequate name for your child? // fox promotional photo

Got some pretty big spoilers for the Bones season finale–of course none on what everyone cares about, but these are definitely sparking some conversations on the interwebs. After the jump.

More script pages for the season finale leaked today–this time, for the doctor who delivers Hodgins and Angela’s baby. As expected, it’s a pretty stereotypical TV-character-in-labor situation. Screaming! Hand-crunching! Epidural-refusing!

There’s also some pretty serious tripe between Hodgins and Angela as they discuss the possibility of their child being blind and how much they love the sound of each other’s voices and the feel of each other’s skin and BLAHDY BLAHDY BLAH IT’S SO CHEESY I CAN’T EVEN STAND IT.

Let’s get a couple things out of the way quickly.

1. The baby is not blind. (Duh. As if they were actually going to go there. They dragged it out longer than I expected them to, but ultimately, we all knew this was going to be the outcome.)
2. The baby is of the male variety. That I told you seven months ago. Booyah.

Now let’s get to the goods.

The baby’s name is, I shit you not, “Michael Staccato Vincent Hodgins.” Which leads us to the other piece…

Obviously, Vincent Nigel-Murray is the one who get creamed by the sniper in the episode prior. (I speculated it’d be Wendell, but this is fine, too.)

This is going to cause some problems. People are crazy about Vincent Nigel-Murray. The man calls himself LOVELY. And he kind of is. I can’t remember any big plots he’s had, but he does wear a fun hat in the coma dream episode, so there’s that.

So VNM is sniped at the lab in the penultimate episode (hopefully taking a slug for Brennan accidentally), which leads Hodgins and Angela to oust Booth from his honorary middle name position and name their newborn son after the dead British intern. I’d say it’s hokey, but after reading these lines (“Every time you take my hand, I can feel your whole life vibrating with mine.” Gag me.), this barely even registers.

Also, I guess they’re humoring her father by including the Staccato.

All in all, Michael Hodgins isn’t such a bad name. He can live with that. Actually, when you leave out the musical articulation and the dead intern homage, it’s pretty boring. Blah.