Bones Established An Important Goal For Brennan At The Start Of The Series

"Bones" episode titles all sound like perverse "Nancy Drew" novels. Instead of "The Clue in the Diary" or "The Message in the Hollow Oak," you get "The Headless Witch in the Woods" and "The Passenger in the Oven." But then, "Bones" is loosely based on Kathy Reichs' crime novels, and features a protagonist who aside from being a forensic anthropologist also writes mystery books. In that sense, the slightly macabre mystery novel episode titles fit nicely with the show's overall tone.

What's more, much like Nancy Drew (at least in her later novels), Emily Deschanel's Temperance "Bones" Brennan isn't afraid to travel in service of her investigations into witches in the woods or passengers in ovens. In fact, in the latter case she and FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) actually found themselves solving one such mystery en-route to China. In other episodes the pair have left their Washington D.C. base for such exotic locales as Florida, Las Vegas, and even the city of Angels.

The slightly less morbid-sounding episode, "The Woman at the Airport," finds the duo traveling to Los Angeles, where they were, surprise surprise, tasked with investigating the discovery of a woman's body found at an airport — LAX to be exact. This being "Bones," however, things quickly got pretty grisly, with the revelation that the woman's body had actually been dismembered and placed at various points around the airport itself. This is, after all, the show that, across its 12-season run, reveled in depicting an array of disturbingly-realistic bodies in various states of decay, including one body that went too far for producer Stephen Nathan. But this episode was about more than providing an excuse to come up with yet another horrific murder to solve.

"The Woman at the Airport" is episode 10 of "Bones" season 1. As such, it was the first time Booth and Bones had traveled outside of D.C., which as it happens was a particularly important aspect of the episode. Prior to this installment, the show had been set entirely in the protagonists' home town, making their excursion to the west coast a fairly big change for the burgeoning series. But travel would quickly become a recurring theme in "Bones," and it seems the writers were set on that aspect of the show long before they sent Bones and Booth out west.

According to executive producer Barry Josephson, who's quoted in the book "Bones: The Official Companion," the writers always planned to take their protagonists out of their comfort zone by having them travel to new locations. As Josephson put it:

"I think it's very important for [Temperance Brennan] to travel all over the United States because that's what forensic anthropologists actually do. People wait for the expert to come to them, and the expert comes.... I think that getting her out in the field was very, very important."

While "Bones" certainly does its best at times to adhere to the reality of forensics, I wouldn't necessarily put realism at the top of the writers' concerns when it came to crafting their long-running dramedy.

It is slightly odd to hear how the inaugural "Bones" roadtrip was motivated by a desire to make Temperance Brennan seem like a real forensic anthropologist. This is a show that had no problem making its leads don ridiculous disguises to go undercover at a circus or, for season 8, episode 10, transform themselves into Canadian couple Wanda and Buck Moosejaw and perform in a dance competition. These remain some of the worst "Bones" episodes and in the case of the terpsichorean-themed installment, caused untold embarrassment for star Emily Deschanel. But they also demonstrate a clear willingness, and perhaps even a barely-concealed desire, to veer away from realism whenever possible.

In other words, I'm not sure how realistic it is for an FBI agent and a forensic anthropologist to be galavanting around in such dramatic fashion, which makes Josephson's concern for realism slightly confounding. That said, part of the appeal of "Bones" was its ability to balance the drama with comedy, and fealty to realism certainly played a part in the drama aspect. You can't have the drama without elements of real-life coming into play. In that sense, sending Bones off on her LA excursion really was an important milestone for the show, even if it wouldn't be long before the circus disguises and dance numbers came along.