David Boreanaz & Emily Deschanel Won A Battle Against Fox That Changed Bones Forever
Networks tend to be frustratingly unimaginative in their never-ending quest to find the next big thing on television. When "Lost" became a cultural phenomenon in the mid-aughts, it didn't inspire a wave of equally ambitious, thematically dense, and risk-taking TV shows. Instead, it led to a whole lot of copycat puzzle box series being green-lit, most of which only seemed to have a surface-level understanding of what made that show tick and failed to catch on. ("Happy Town," we barely knew ye.)
So, as might be expected, when "The X-Files" ended its original run on Fox in 2002, the network went searching for a similar series to replace it. Three years later, it found one in Hart Hanson's "Bones," an investigative crime dramedy that was also about two co-workers in the shape of an emotionally closed-off woman and a man who wears his heart on his sleeve. The show's pilot even nodded to this by having David Boreanaz's FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth name-drop "X-Files" duo Mulder and Scully during one of his early encounters with his newfound partner and future love interest, forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan (Emily Deschanel).
The lack of supernatural elements and extraterrestrials aside, "Bones" would subsequently carve out an idiosyncratic personality that was all its own and quite different from that of Chris Carter's paranormal procedural. But as much as Hanson and the many, many other people who worked on the show over its 12-season run deserve credit for that, Boreanaz and Deschanel should also be commended for going above and beyond when it came to ensuring "Bones" was more than just an "X-Files" knockoff with 100 percent less Cher-loving, dancing monsters.
More than an X-Files replacement
"Bones" was far from Boreanaz's first TV rodeo. After playing the tormented vampire Angel for three seasons on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" in the late 1990s, the actor would go on to headline the character's spinoff series, "Angel," for another five years. It was during that time that Boreanaz also got bitten by the directing bug, calling the shots on the trippy season 5 episode "Soul Purpose." He would go on to helm nearly a dozen episodes of "Bones," all while taking on more responsibilities as a producer and ensuring the show would continue to evolve.
However, if Fox had gotten its way, the series would have never formed its own distinct identity. At least, that's what Boreanaz claimed when interviewed by Entertainment Weekly ahead of the "Bones" finale airing in 2017:
"Emily [Deschanel] and I met every weekend with Ivana Chubbuck, a renowned acting coach, for seven or eight years. She's very dynamic in regards to bringing and creating that chemistry. We rewrote and rehearsed — we cultivated our characters that way and excited the writers. [Fox initially] wanted a serious, 'X-Files'-ish show, and we wanted a character show. We won because we kept that drive and people responded. We're proud of that."
This may account for why Fox executives were constantly one step away from axing "Bones" throughout its tenure, even as the series attracted a steady viewership year in and year out. The network should count itself fortunate that Boreanaz, Deschanel, and the show's writers actually cared enough to defy them. If they hadn't, odds are "Bones" would have soon been condemned to the graveyard of forgotten zeitgeist series knockoffs.
You can stream all 12 seasons of "Bones" on Hulu and Freevee now.