The 'Fresh Body' On Bones That Went Too Far For Producer Stephen Nathan
A crime procedural called "Bones" was always going to involve some pretty grisly scenes. While the hit Fox series often kept things light, that didn't mean it held back when it came to depicting some truly gruesome and upsetting crime scenes. As John Francis Daley, who played Sweets, put it in a 2012 interview:
"Every episode there's something that makes me want to gag. But that's, I think, part of what makes the show successful is there's a morbid curiosity that everyone has, and to be able to combine horrific deaths and body parts with humor and light subjects is brilliant."
Throughout its 12-season run, "Bones" presented some surprisingly graphic scenes, particularly when it came to the dead bodies. One body, in particular, had Eric Millegan, who played Zack Addy, extra grossed out, while another gross bathtub scene had to be cut completely. Much of this was down to brothers Kevin and Chris Yagher, who crafted the fake corpses for "Bones" throughout its time on air, sculpting bodies and body parts mostly out of silicone to create what Kevin called a "much more realistic, translucent-looking skin."
But one particular fake corpse proved too realistic for executive producer Stephen Nathan, who had to cut it out of the show for being too disgusting.
One fake body on Bones was a step too far
It wasn't just the bodies on "Bones" that made viewers uncomfortable. In fact, the cast themselves often felt unnerved by elements of their own show, with one serial killer in particular truly terrifying star Emily Deschanel. Then, there was the time "Bones" (sort of) predicted a real-life tragedy with the season 9 episode "The Mystery in the Meat," in which a food scientist basically becomes canned food. But while the showrunners could evidently put up with terrifying serial killers and canned human bodies, one particular fake corpse went a step too far.
In season 7, episode seven6, "The Crack in the Code," Emily Deschanel's Temperance "Bones" Brennan and David Boreanaz's Agent Seeley Booth investigate the appearance of a detached skull and spine at the American Heritage Museum, below a message written in human blood on a national monument. The episode introduced a new villain named Christopher Pellant (Andrew Leeds), who had a penchant for leaving his victim's body parts in various places, and it was one of these victims that Stephen Nathan cut out of the show.
Speaking to AssignmentX, the executive producer explained that "The Crack in the Code" was the only time he's ever had to remove something from "Bones." He continued, "There was a shot that I said, 'We've got to cut it out of the show, it's just too horrible' [laughs]. It was too horrible, it just took me out of the show."
It seems the issue was that this body was a fresh kill, with Nathan explaining that they usually "have more decomposed bodies," adding, "But this was a freshly dead person — a dead body that [the production team had constructed] and the way he looked in a couple of shots was just too awful."
There was nothing 'fun' about this Bones body
Dead bodies weren't the grossest part of "Bones" for Emily Deschanel, but they clearly were for Stephen Nathan. In an interview with TVTango, he and creator Hart Hanson spoke further about "The Crack in the Code," explaining why the corpse in question was so egregious. Nathan said:
"The people who do the bodies are so brilliant. The Yaghers. Chris Yeager—they are so brilliant and they are so realistic that when it was kind of fresh and newly killed, it was too—it was just too horrible. It wasn't...to the "Bones" fans, it was me. It wouldn't have been right."
For a show that has shown us all manner of grisly detail, this body must have looked particularly upsetting. In their TVTango interview, Hanson even mentions one particular instance from the same season where a snake crawls out of a partially decomposed body in a close-up. As the creator himself admitted, "We were looking at a rendering of remains in the lab when something happened that I physically ran away from the monitor as did one of the characters in the lab."
According to Nathan, however, this moment that caused Hanson to physically recoil from the monitor was "fun" enough to keep in. The body that was cut, however, evidently lacked any form of humor or "fun" and was completely removed. If nothing else, then, it at least remains a testament to the Yagher brothers and their skill.