The Bones Actor You Likely Forgot Guest-Starred On The Simpsons

In 2009, Fox created a "Simpsons" scavenger hunt to celebrate the 20 year anniversary of the series. It involved hiding Easter eggs and references to the animated sitcom in all of the network's prime-time programs, including "House," "Lie to Me," and "Glee." At the time, Fox's popular procedural "Bones" had been running for four years and was in the midst of its fifth season. As such, it too received the "Simpsons" scavenger hunt treatment, and might have been the show that most successfully paid tribute to Matt Groening's series.

Season 5, episode 7, entitled "The Dwarf in the Dirt," contained multiple nods to "The Simpsons," including a wrestler named Bumblebee Man and a scene at the Jeffersonian Institute that featured an x-ray of Homer Simpson's skull hanging in the background, revealing an alarmingly small brain. The episode also featured a cameo by Homer voice actor Dan Castellaneta, who plays police officer Navarro and is introduced with a few notes of the "Simpsons" theme when he leads David Boreanaz's Seeley Booth and Emily Deschanel's Temperance Brennan to a crime scene. This wouldn't be the last time Deschanel would share a scene with Castellaneta, however, as the actor later guest-starred on "The Simpsons" in what would turn out to be a bit of a disappointing appearance.

"Bones" ended in 2017 after an impressive 12 seasons on air. It might not match "The Simpsons" and its now 36-season run, but it's a remarkable achievement for any show — especially considering demand for a "Bones" revival (which looks likely to happen) remains high almost a decade after the series went off the air.

A year after the Fox procedural ended, and almost 10 years after Emily Deschanel and Dan Castellaneta shared a scene together on the show, the former guest-starred on "The Simpsons," voicing herself in the season 30 episode "Bart's Not Dead." The season premiere aired on September 30, 2018, and saw Bart (Nancy Cartwright) take up a dare only to injure himself. To spare his mother's feelings, Bart tells Marge (Julie Kavner) that, while unconscious, he went to Heaven and met Jesus himself, which prompts Christian movie producers to descend on the family and encourage them to agree to a film based on Bart's experience. Homer, along with Ned Flanders (Harry Shearer), then leads auditions for the movie, and it's during these auditions that Deschanel makes an appearance.

The actor reads for the part of Marge and even does an impression of the Simpsons matriarch that actually isn't too bad. Sadly, the scene itself acts as a reminder that "The Simpsons" was way beyond its prime by the time Deschanel got a chance to cameo.

There was a time when "The Simpsons" was a truly subversive and effective satire — a time when Fox was little more than a running joke for the show's writers, who took every opportunity to bash the network, ultimately leading to an absurd scenario in which Fox almost sued itself over a "Simpsons" joke. By 2009, however, that endlessly entertaining antagonism seemed to have dissipated somewhat, with Fox shoehorning its longest-running series into other shows as a celebration of its 20th year on air. Things had seemingly only gotten worse on that front by the time Emily Deschanel appeared on the series.

Her scene in "Bart's Not Dead" sees Deschanel reading for the part of Marge, but not before Homer manages to mention "Bones," asking whether any of the actual bones from the show still had meat on them and enquiring about where he might find them. Already, then, the scene was off to a rocky start, but as it goes on it just becomes a lesser version of a classic gag "Simpsons" fans had seen done better so many times before.

Homer being a clown is just part of the character's charm, but there are certain scenes that have taken his cognitive sluggishness to absurd levels that remain classic moments in the history of the series. I'm thinking of the time in season 5 when the Simpsons family went into witness protection and exasperated FBI agents tried repeatedly to make Homer accept his new identity as Mr. Thompson by addressing him as such, only for Homer to consistently misunderstand ("I think he's talking to you"). In Deschanel's "Simpsons" scene, we see this same joke replayed, wherein Homer can't understand what acting is, and asks the actor to raise her foot and arm while acting, only to repeatedly interpret her words as if she were talking to him directly. Much like the time Banksy created a controversial "Simpsons" couch gag that essentially just recycled a joke from an earlier episode about underpaid Asian animators, Deschanel's interaction with Homer just served as a reminder of how the show had run out of ideas.

Not that any of this was the actor's fault. If anything, it's a shame she didn't guest star on the show during an earlier season when "Bones" was still on-air.