Bones Creators Changed The Show's Title After Seeing Booth And Brennan's Chemistry

"Bones" enjoyed a ridiculously healthy run on Fox from 2005 to 2017. With 12 seasons and well over 200 episodes under its belt, we're talking about one of the more successful network shows of the modern era. Getting any show made is hard. Making one this enduring? It's almost impossible. Any number of things can derail a show from a casting decision to the whims of a network. But everything went right for this series. Would it have been as successful with a different title? We'll never know but "Bones" was very nearly called something else before Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz came into the picture.

In "Bones: The Official Companion," creator Hart Hanson reveals the show's creatives were struggling to find the right title during development. At one point, the idea was to simply call the show "Brennan" after its lead character, Temperance Brennan, not unlike Fox's other very successful 2000s series "House," which was named after Hugh Laurie's Dr. Gregory House. Here's what he had to say about it:

"We agonized about a title. Initially, we thought it was going to be a single person lead, that we would find Temperance Brennan and she would work with a number of different law enforcement agencies. Then we saw Emily and David working together and thought, 'Oh, we've got a much better thing to do here.' 'Bones' is her nickname and it's the start of every story; it's the bones. So we thought, 'Yeah, that's good. That's better than just Brennan.' And, this way, it was easier to acknowledge that it was more of an ensemble piece than a single lead character."

While Brennan was at the center of every episode, the show did evolve into an ensemble piece (although Deschanel and Boreanaz were two of just four actors to appear in every episode of "Bones"). So, it only seems fitting that their chemistry informed the decision to change the title and, ultimately, the direction of the show from thereon out.

"Booth was gonna play one of many cops that [Brennan] interacted with. He was gonna be the most prominent, but not in every episode," Hanson once explained, discussing a scene in the "Bones" pilot that changed the course of the show. But the chemistry between Deschanel and Boreanaz was undeniable and that informed the creative direction beyond that first episode. It wasn't just going to be the Brennan show, it was going to be the Brennan and Booth show.

Had the "Brennan" title stuck, it's easy to see how that might have informed what happened in the development process. Maybe it would have been more of a single-perspective show as opposed to an ensemble piece. Maybe Booth would have been around, but not as a lead character. Would that show have been as successful? Maybe not. Maybe we wouldn't be sitting here talking about it seven years after it went off the air. Every decision matters when it comes to securing ever-elusive success in television. It's a peculiar puzzle, but that's kind of what's great about it.

"Bones" is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Hulu.