A Season 4 Loophole Pitted Bones' Showrunner Against Some Angry Fans
In the age before streaming usurped network and cable as the main form of TV watching, primetime shows used to do absolutely anything to grab viewers' attention. Ratings grabs were common and still are if you click over to CBS, FOX, and the like today. Yet, for a particular era of the aughts and 2010s, it felt like network TV was more desperate than ever to keep eyes glued to the screen — even when the much-teased twists started feeling cheaper than ever. Dr. House drove his car through Cuddy's dining room on "House," Alex Karev fell for an amnesiac ferry crash patient on "Grey's Anatomy," Artie could walk for just one episode of "Glee," and countless other characters were thrown into ridiculous situations for the sake of building a quick teaser promo around them.
Then there was "Bones." For all its good qualities, the FOX procedural about a forensic anthropologist teaming up with the FBI to solve murders also committed some of the most egregious fake-outs this side of "The X-Files." The show's most controversial plotlines pretty much all involve Dr. Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and Special Agent Booth (David Boreanaz), a will-they-won't-they pairing that spent six seasons growing closer without actually getting together. Their building chemistry was oddly undercut by a 100th episode special that revealed their first kiss actually happened six years ago, and when they finally did hook up, Brennan immediately became pregnant.
Remember that hallucinated Bones and Booth sex scene?
"Bones" had a strange knack for letting the air out of its central ship like a slowly deflating balloon, but none of its mishandled Bones and Booth moments stung viewers and diminished audiences' goodwill quite like the show's choice to hype up a season 4 "sex scene" that turned out to be a hallucination. Shipper fans weren't quite the tour de force in 2010 that they are now, but viewers were still pretty ticked at series creator and showrunner Hart Hanson, who apparently added fuel to the fire by telling press the scene was "not a dream." In an interview with Assignment X after the episode's air date, the outlet noted that Hanson "got in a little bit of trouble" for his misleading characterization of the season 4 finale.
Hanson owned up to the mistake, saying, "We wouldn't do that again. Not in that way." Apparently it wasn't just fans who weren't thrilled by the choice, but the network itself, a response Hanson seems to have been surprised by. "I was talking to the network about the hundredth episode, and they said, 'Well, we don't want what happened with the [fourth] season finale to happen again,'" he recalled. "And I know I can be obtuse, but I don't mean to be difficult, but I said, 'Why? More people tuned in than we ever had, and more people tuned in for a season opener than we've ever had. What exactly was the downside?'" It's hard to imagine a showrunner making similar comments today, when legions of very vocal fans treat characters like real-life friends and take their mistreatment as an unforgivable offense. Back in 2011, though, FOX execs sounded like they just wanted what the fans wanted: good TV that wasn't ridiculous or misleading.
Hanson cheated using semantics
"The executive I was talking to didn't like that in the same way that the audience didn't," Hanson said, adding, "Sometimes it's hard to separate from how you're making people feel — you're making people feel bad." When the interviewer pointed out that the showrunner was catching flak not for failing to deliver a real sex scene between the couple, but for hyping one when it didn't exist, Hanson noted that it all came down to phrasing. "In my mind, here's what I said. And yeah, I cheated, it was semantics," Hanson admitted.
"I take my blows, but strictly speaking, I said, It wasn't a dream. It's not a dream.' And I still maintain it wasn't a dream." Instead, he points out, the season 4 sex scene was "a weird conglomeration of [Brennan's] book" and Booth's coma fantasies, and he points out that the show doesn't reveal which elements of the scene came from which part. "The audience saw something else — it wasn't real, but it wasn't a dream, and I got in trouble with people saying, 'You lied for saying it wasn't a dream,'" Hanson told the outlet.
Bones fans were really mad at Hanson
As someone whose heart skips a beat when thinking of all my favorite fictional almost-couples, I personally live for the strange limbo space in which characters begin to process their feelings for one another but haven't actually confessed them. I love the body swap episode of "The X Files," the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" gimmick that saw Spike and Buffy convinced they're getting married, or any number of TV kisses delivered on a dare or as a distraction.
There's giddy fun to be had in moments like the one in "Bones," which let viewers in on the secret of characters' shared attraction before they really understand it themselves, but they can't be the only thing sustaining a central ship. In this particular instance, Hanson learned a lesson about false promises, one he said he wouldn't repeat again. "I am going to be more careful," he told Assignment X after the season 4 debacle. "People are really mad at me."
You can watch all 12 seasons of "Bones" (and even fast forward to the non-hallucinated kissing parts, if you want) on Hulu and Freevee now.