By DAVID MARTINDALESPECIAL TO THE STAR-TELEGRAM

One of the joys of Angela Montenegro, the character played by Michaela Conlin on the hit crime drama Bones, is that she’s so refreshingly unpredictable. There’s just no telling what Angela, a bohemian artist working in a science lab full of “squints,” will say or do next. She has no inhibitions and knows no boundaries.

“I’m a pretty upfront person in how I live my life,” Conlin says. “But compared to Angela, I’m timid.” Almost anything is possible with her. This season, for example, after breaking off her engagement to Hodgins (played by TJ Thyne), Angela threw everyone in the lab a curve by getting back together with an ex. As in ex-girlfriend.

That was something we didn’t know about her. And now longtime Bones viewers, who have been speculating for years about a romantic future for lead characters Brennan and Booth (Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz), have a second true-love-in-denial relationship to worry about.

“People talk to me about it all the time,” Conlin says. “But to be honest, I don’t know what’s going to happen with the two of them.” New episodes return on Fox beginning at 7 p.m. CT on Thursday, Jan. 15, but don’t expect any immediate answers. That’s not the Bones way. In the meantime, reruns will have to do. The Brennan-and-Booth-in-London two-parter (in which Angela and Hodgins split up) airs at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 31, on Fox.

Then TNT serves up an 18-hour New Year’s Day Bones marathon, beginning at 5 a.m.What were your expectations with this show and with your character when you first signed on in 2005? Did you think you’d still be playing Angela today?“We’ve definitely surpassed all of my expectations. It’s our fourth season and we’re doing better now than we did in the first season. That’s pretty great. It’s kind of amazing when you do a series, because it’s like a living thing. It’s improving and moving and flowing and growing and that’s really what the last four years have been like. My expectations were just that I loved the pilot script.

I had been up for a couple of other shows at the same time and I chose to test for just this one. Thankfully, that decision worked out, because you never know what’s going to last. The pilot of the show was actually called ‘Brennan’ and I remember, the night before, I was talking to my mom, and I said, ‘I just love the way the women speak on this show. They’re really intelligent.’”