It’s always interesting to see your favorite books turned into television series, but it can also be troubling. The troubling part is what I’m thinking about at the moment, particularly as it applies to the television versions of two favorite book series: Bones and Rizzoli and Isles.

Both shows are based on long-running book series, by Kathy Reichs and Tess Gerritsen respectively. Both Reichs and Gerritsen have science backgrounds—Reichs is a forensic anthropologist and Gerritsen is an MD. And both series feature female scientists as lead characters. Unfortunately, both series seem to feel very nervous about seeing those female scientists as anything but freaks.

Let’s take Bones, for example. The lead character of the television series is Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist at the “Jeffersonian Institution.” Temperance is brilliant, but she’s totally without people skills. Her friends and colleagues must continually correct her when she runs roughshod over people’s feelings or misunderstands simple human interactions. In fact, there have been times when Dr. Brennan has seemed so out of tune with reality that I’ve suspected she suffers from Asperger syndrome.

Now look at the Kathy Reichs books on which Bones is based. Again the central character is named Temperance Brennan, and again she’s a brilliant forensic anthropologist, but there the similarities end. This Temperance works as a consultant to police departments in Montreal and North Carolina. She’s divorced and has an adult daughter. More importantly, she had no particular problems interacting with the public. She works effectively with both her fellow scientists and her police contacts; in fact, she’s occasionally more skillful in talking to witnesses than they are. She’s as well acquainted with social mores as any other person she meets and she can toss off pop culture references with the best of them. In other words, she’s a normal woman who happens to be a very intelligent scientist.

Why am I making a point about this? Possibly because the difference between the television and book versions of Temperance underlines something that’s both troubling and annoying: the tendency of television to portray female scientists as non-functioning human beings. If Bones was the only example of this tendency, it might count as an anomaly—but it isn’t. Maura Isles in Tess Gerritsen’s books has several problems, but being unable to function in normal society isn’t one of them. Yet the Maura Isles in Rizzoli and Isles is another example of someone who doesn’t quite understand how the “common folk” operate—her partner, the more “down to earth” Jane Rizzoli, is constantly correcting Maura’s confused idea of how the man on the street thinks and talks. To be fair, male scientists in television series sometimes suffer from the same treatment, as witness the nerdish physicists on Big Bang Theory. But male scientists can also come across as “normal”—thus Hodgins on Bones may have a few hang-ups regarding conspiracy theories, but he can communicate with others and seems to have a solid grip on the way the world functions. And back in the days when CSI was an interesting series rather than a train wreck, Gil Grissom was clearly in command of his facts.

The problem here is that television lags behind books when it comes to the portrayal of strong, intelligent, functioning heroines. And if anyone wants to argue that Temperance needs some flaws to make her interesting, I’d point out that Reichs’ original Temperance is a recovering alcoholic who slips off the wagon at least once in the series. That’s a realistic flaw. Being too smart for your own good isn’t.

So I’m glad to see television production companies looking at book series for inspiration, but I’d like to see them go farther beyond the mere outlines of character than they’re using at the moment. Given the popularity of the books by both Reichs and Gerritsen, the reading public seems ready for intelligent heroines who can manage to hold a normal conversation. I look forward to the day when television is too.