Bones' John Francis Daley Tried To Get Sweets Back On The Show But He Was Denied
John Francis Daley and his writing/directing partner Jonathan Goldstein are not exactly what you might call household names just yet, although they've assuredly achieved "Oh neato, it's those two!" status. With writing credits on "Horrible Bosses" and "Spider-Man: Homecoming," plus their efforts as directors on "Game Night" and "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves," Daley and Goldstein have cemented themselves as aficionados at merging cheeky humor with well-crafted action and wholehearted drama — so much so that it's easy to forget Daley had a full-blooded acting career before he turned to filmmaking.
Fans of Paul Feig's "Freaks and Geeks" will recall that Daley played series lead Sam Weir on the cult classic teen dramedy series, kicking off his run as a television actor in the process. He would go on to have recurring roles on "The Geena Davis Show" and "Kitchen Confidential" before signing up to play Lance Sweets, the youthful, nerdy psychologist burdened with untangling FBI agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) and forensics specialist Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan's (Emily Deschanel) emotional knot of feelings for one another on "Bones."
Throughout 138 of the series' 246 episodes, Sweets became a treasured member of the "Bones" family, even as Daley began to branch out into screenwriting. However, it wasn't until he and Goldstein (who co-wrote the show's season 6 episode, "The Truth in the Myth," with Daley) made the jump to directing with 2015's "Vacation" that the "Bones" writing team decided it was time to send Sweets to a farm upstate. Daley had aspired to change their minds, but the show's creatives ultimately felt it better to grant his character a definitive ending rather than try and account for his abrupt months-long absence.
No more Sweets for you
There's a longstanding television cliché of waving away a cast member's sudden absence by having characters say things like, "Oh, you just missed them" or "They're off doing [Insert Very Important Task] this week." It's a clunky but functional means to the end, although it's a whole other ball game when the actor in question is going to be missing for months instead of weeks. (Even "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" struggled with this task during Anthony Stewart Head's hiatus in season 6.) It's why the "Bones" creatives elected against going this route when Daley had to step away for four months to go make "Vacation."
Speaking to TV Line in the wake of his exit from the series in 2014, Daley said he would've "100 percent" come back to "Bones." In his own words:
"I knew it would be tough because I was asking for four months off. And I was so happy that they were able to accommodate that. But, yeah, in a perfect world, I would've loved to have [completed the movie] and then segue back to the 'Bones' family. I had spoken to [executive producer] Stephen Nathan about it all, and he said it would be more satisfying for the fans to conclude Sweets in a dramatic way rather than for it to be up in the air and have him come back midway through the season."
It was a tough call to make, but the right one. Daley had "always dreamed of being a director" (as he told TV Line) and it shows in the passion and flair he brings to films as unremittingly silly as "Game Night" and "Dungeons & Dragons." By affording Sweets an emotional farewell and freeing up Daley to pursue his ambitions, the "Bones" team gave us the best of both worlds.