Bones' Showrunners Axed More Than Half A Season Due To Emily Deschanel's Pregnancy
Every show with a will-they-or-won't-they romance inevitably faces the question: should we try and make our characters work as a couple for real? Or do we just keep pretending that Cory and Topanga aren't stuck in a toxic loop and Cory wouldn't be much happier with Shawn? Or that Cory, Topanga, Shawn, and Angela should just end the charade already and enter a polyamorous relationship? I have a lot of thoughts on "Boy Meets World," that's what I'm really saying.
So it was when "Bones" reached what would only end up being the halfway point of its 12-season run. By that time, creator Hart Hanson knew he couldn't pull another fakeout, what with "Bones" fans still fuming from Booth (David Boreanaz) hallucinating that he and Bones (Emily Deschanel) had finally done the horizontal mambo at the end of season 4. Instead, Hanson and his fellow creatives decided it was time for those two unruly kids to have a go at being together and not just pretending they were while, say, working undercover as knife-throwing Canadian circus performers doing outsized Russian accents. (It's a long story that ends with Deschanel wearing an eyepatch to cover up a real-life injury, don't ask.)
Speaking to TV Tango in 2012, Hanson recalled how the original plan was to have Booth and Bones grappling with their newfound intimacy throughout season 7:
"Before revealing they were lovers ... I can't stand the word lovers. I can't stand it. I think only English people can say that. We always knew that the end of season 6 would be the reveal that Booth and Brennan had slept together. We knew they were going to sleep together."
The only problem? It turned out Deschanel was pregnant for real.
Bones's having a baby
In a case of art imitating life, Deschanel's pregnancy led Hanson and his "Bones" crew to chuck much of what they originally had planned for season 7 out the window. Rather than a storyline where Bones and Booth live out their version of the third act of "When Harry Met Sally...," the season would instead see them wrapping their heads around the prospect of becoming parents when they've only just become lovers. (Ugh, Hanson was right, that word doesn't sit well on its own.) So, essentially, it's "Bones" doing John Hughes' "She's Having a Baby." In Hanson's words:
"What changed everything was when Emily confided in us that she was pregnant, and we decided to adjust the storyline for season 7, accordingly. Season 7 would've been the story of how Booth and Brennan come to grips with the fact that they are now intimate and sexually involved. We threw out half a season, perhaps more, and inserted that they were going to have a child."
Clearly, this plotline worked for the "Bones" fans, seeing as they kept tuning in for another six seasons in practically equal numbers. What's more, it gave the show a chance to continue exploring not only Bones and Booth's hangups about being romantically involved but also their lingering parental issues from their childhoods (even if the series never went quite as far as Boreanaz would've liked in that respect). In the past, most shows would've wrapped up their rom-com hijinks well before putting their leads through the trials and tribulations of early parenthood. It just goes to show how much the will-they-or-won't-they formula had developed by the time "Bones" rolled around.