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I have voiced my respect for the FOX show Bones in an earlier post; commending its hyper-rational heroine and her disdain for pseudoscience. It also has a charming and ridiculously good-looking cast, and its forensics-based mystery tales are for the most part well-crafted.

But tonight the show really worked my nerves with its extraordinarily lame “product placement” for the upcoming James Cameron film, Dances With Smurfs^* Avatar. The subplot revolved around three of Bones’s male colleagues as they took turns guarding a place in the ’round-the-block line for the Avatar premiere. Many of the queue-campers were painted up like the blue critters we have seen in the film’s relentless promos, and nearly half the trailer was played as part of a scene. And to top all this nonsense off, one of the lab assistants who is willing to camp out in line is the sometimes-appearing character Colin Fisher — portrayed by Joel Moore, one of the actors in — Avatar!.

But the lamest part of all was the subplot’s mismatch with the main plot. The main plot was about vintage video-gamers, specifically those who play “Punky Pong”, a clumsy reworking of “Donkey Kong” and “Pong”. The show was asking us to believe a badly-drawn fictional video game with one part of our brain, and to believe that the characters exist in the real world of blockbuster sci-fi movies with the other. It was like hearing an untuned guitar.

[Apparently you can play "Punky Pong" yourself at the FOX website: fox.com/bones]

^* See South Park

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It may sound oxymoronic — but the FOX network has become a refuge for rational thought.

I must hasten to say that I’m referring to broadcast, prime-time FOX, not its idiot troglodyte child the Fox News Channel. Clearly there’s not much safe haven for reason on those windy airwaves.

But the daddy FOX network has an impressive track record of bringing unapologetically rational characters. Tonight I tuned into “Bones” and saw the main character scoff at the pseudo-scientific aspects of psychology, and to my pleasant surprise she wasn’t punished in the final act for her disbelief.

FOX also gives us Brian Griffin each week on “Family Guy” — Brian is a strident atheist; in one episode he even used Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” to pick up a like-minded chick.

And of course, the best of the lot is House, M.D., who is my cuppa tea. Dr. House is actively hostile to religion, superstition and unclear thinking. His irritation with fuzzy thought makes him a hard pill to swallow for others, but the writers never steer him toward some warm and phony redemption… he can’t have his brilliance without his pain and anger.

The only show on the prime-time lineup that toys with science-phobia is “Fringe”, which I enjoy quite a bit. But it does have an undercurrent of “science can do unspeakable things” which is kind of a 1950′s approach to sci-fi.

But all in all, kudos to Rupert Murdoch for letting rationality occupy a tiny corner of his media empire.