Bones' Emily Deschanel Had A Real-Life Injury The Show Cleverly Covered Up
Like any effectual will-they/won't-they foxtrot (not least of all the '80s action rom-com that convinced David Boreanaz to join the series), "Bones" was always looking for fun and frisky ways of bringing socially aloof forensics expert Temperance "Bones" Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and intuitive FBI agent Seeley Booth's (Boreanaz) underlying sexual tension to a boil. Even so, few of their adventures saw Bones and Booth engage in quite as much figurative edging as they did in "Double Trouble in the Panhandle."
This particular season 4 outing (which aired on January 22, 2009) sent the then-platonic power couple undercover at a traveling circus as part of their investigation into the dubious death of a pair of conjoined female twins who previously worked there. Mercifully, this didn't lead to them trying to pull off a problematic cowboy and Native American princess act. Instead, it began with the two posing as the Canadian performers Wanda and Buck Moosejaw (which would become their de facto alter egos during future stealth operations) and ended with Booth strapping on a fake bushy mustache and fluffy coat while chucking knives at Bones — herself dressed in a lacy bodysuit — as part of a Russian-themed routine.
If this somehow wasn't already a "Bones" fan's sexual fantasy, then it absolutely was one after the episode.
Luckily, Booth's knife-tossing prowess from his years of military training allows him to execute the act and maintain their cover flawlessly, even when he's required to pull a William Tell and hit a prop apple atop Bones' head. Deschanel, on the other hand, was not so fortunate and injured herself over the course of performing her stunts. However, rather than try and work around her bruised eye with careful camera angles, the show's creatives prudently elected to incorporate it directly into the episode.
A black eye for her efforts
"Double Trouble in the Panhandle" certainly isn't lacking for risqué shenanigans, with Bones and Booth at one point even pretending to have rowdy sex by rocking their trailer back and forth to ensure the circus' increasingly suspicious performers do not, in fact, come a-knockin' without them being ready. The shamelessly silly double-entendre of having Bones and Booth perform a knife-tossing routine (one in which Booth comes exhilaratingly close to literally penetrating his partner) wasn't lost on anybody watching at home, either.
It's little wonder Deschanel recalled the episode with fondness years later while speaking to TV Tango in 2015, despite hitting herself squarely in the eye during filming:
"I love the circus episode. That's probably my favorite undercover episode. It was a lot of fun to do and dress up. [...] I actually hit my eye in real life and I have a bruised eyeball, and so we had to think of a way of covering that in that episode so I got an eyepatch. It's just a crazy fun episode where we had to be on our toes and change things around all the time, so that was a lot of fun for me. I have a lot of favorite episodes, but that's my favorite undercover episode for sure."
Within the episode, Bones gets her black eye after Booth accidentally smacks her in the face while fending off a posse of angry clowns — you just can't trust clowns, amirite, folks? Like a trooper, though, she does their act anyway, and "Bones" fans were none the wiser about what happened behind the scenes. They were also gifted the sight of Bones in an eyepatch, which must've been an unexpected bonus for those watching at home with a pirate fetish. (Never fear, we're not here to kink-shame anyone.)