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"Pilot" is episode one of season one of Bones.
Another pilot episode unimaginatively called "Pilot". Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) is a forensic anthropologist who is loaned out to the FBI, specifically Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz - prior to this, probably best known for his role as Angel in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel). This time, a decaying skeleton has turned up at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia - as Brennan points out, not the most unusual place to find a decaying corpse.
The skeleton isn't in a grave, though, which is a little more unusual and turns out to be the body of a Senator's intern who went missing two years previously. When she is identified, suspicion falls on the Senator. Being a Senator, it's a bit harder to proceed with the investigation.
The first episode seems a bit erratic; it has potential, but relationships and personalities aren't firmed up as yet - hardly unusual for a first episode.
The series is based, extremely loosely, on the Kathy Reichs thrillers (which are loosely based on Reichs' own experiences as a forensic anthropologist), and Reichs works on the show as a producer. There aren't many similarities, though; Temperance isn't splitting her time between helping the police in Montreal and South Carolina. Instead, she's based out of the - fictional - Jeffersonian Institute in Washington, D.C. (it would appear to be based on the real-life Smithsonian Institution), and is helping the FBI. The series' Tempe also seems a bit more gung-ho, as well as younger, and more socially awkward, than the original. Those familiar with the books but not the television series are unlikely to find many points of commonality.
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