Bones Had To Cut A Gross Bathtub Scene Due To Unbearable Imaginary Details
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In the second-season "Bones" episode "The Truth in the Lye," Bones and Booth (Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz) examine a dead body that ... well, it isn't really a body anymore. Arriving at a construction site, they find a bathtub full of squishy human remains, half-melted in a soup of chemicals. Although "Bones" was a network TV series, the camera lingers on the human soup for a few disgusting moments so audiences can see the skin, blood, and organs in their viscous state. Booth is completely grossed out, while Bones, in her usual idiom, calmly begins reciting forensic details into her tape recorder.
It will eventually be revealed that the soup man was once a cad who was living a double life, splitting time between two families that didn't (at least until recently) know about each other. He was melted with a combination of household chemicals. Who wants to go for gumbo?
As one might predict, getting a bathtub full of human porridge onto TV caused a little consternation from the executives at Fox. Speaking at a "Bones" event at the California Paley Center for Media back in 2009, all part of Paleyfest (and available on DVD), executive producer Stephen Nathan talked a little bit about the bathtub scene in "The Truth in the Lye" and how the executives asked that he cut the scene. Nathan, it seems, is asked frequently to cut shots of rotting corpses and gore from "Bones," so he was used to the grossed-out note from the higher-ups, but the human étouffée was just too much for some people.
Not because of what was in the shot, mind you, but because of what wasn't.
'What is makes us imagine.'
Nathan explained that everything they put into "Bones" had to go through the network's standards and practices for approval; they weren't in a position to "sneak" things onto the air. And, as one might predict for a forensic pathology show like "Bones," there are constant conversations as to what can be shown in terms of blood and death. "Bones" is a lighthearted investigation show, mind you, and not a horror program, so it's likely Nathan got away with a lot by dint of the show's comedic underpinnings and objective, scientific title character.
When it came to a human birria bathtub, however, it seems that the execs couldn't handle it. Nathan said:
"They will oftentimes say 'That's just too disgusting. Please cut that back.' I think the weirdest one we ever had, it was season two. Scott Williams (who's one of the co-executive producers) wrote an episode where a guy was kind of decomposed in a tub of goo. So you kind of saw the top of the head ... and goo. But you didn't really see anything. You saw a couple of bones. And they said 'Oh no, you can't do that! You can't do that!' I said 'Why? You don't see a body or anything,' and they said 'Oh no! But what it makes us imagine!' and I said 'How can I cut what you imagine?'"
The scene is plenty gross. There is a lot of red glop, a pale disembodied flap of skin (maybe a leg?), and some floating pink unidentifiable giblets. It looks like something one might see in a local haunted house. Nathan is right, though. You can't really see anything human in the vat of Brunswick stew. There aren't skulls or ribcages or intestines. Just ... goo.
This is how we do it
Nathan noted that these kinds of conversations — with grossed-out standards and practices workers — happened all the time on the long-running show. He pointed out that the showrunners knew how to toe the line in terms of actual gore on screen, and only occasionally crossed over. Usually, carefully placed cuts kept everyone happy. He said:
"We're constantly doing that because the way we do the show is to try to make the audience imagine more than they actually see. But sometimes, you know, we will have eyeballs falling out of skulls and things like that, and the compromise is we won't show it for four seconds, we'll show it for two-and-a-half seconds, and that somehow makes them feel better."
"Bones" was a huge hit on TV and streaming, when it finally debuted in the new medium. Attentive fans will likely know about the 2019 lawsuit surrounding the show, wherein various Fox executives had become incredibly shady with their accounting, leading to the cast and crew getting wholly stiffed out of millions of dollars in royalties. The "Bones" lawsuit later proved to be a precedent for the prolonged SAG and WGA strikes of 2023. "Bones" wasn't just a hit show with blood and guts, but an important battleground for exposing how poorly creative people were being treated by the higher-ups. It seems that, just like on "Bones," the makers of goop won out in the end.