By all accounts, David Boreanaz had a ball on “Bones.” The actor played FBI special agent Seeley Booth opposite Emily Deschanel’s Temperance “Bones” Brennan for all 12 seasons of the hit Fox procedural, and seemed to enjoy himself throughout. In fact both Boreanaz and Deschanel have spoken very positively about their time on the show, to the extent that it’s only fueled anticipation for the long-awaited “Bones” revival.
But that doesn’t mean there weren’t some tough moments. When your show is on the air for 12 years, there’s bound to be some low points, like when a sexual harassament lawsuit was filed against Boreanaz. What’s more, as positive as the Seeley Booth actor has sounded in the years since “Bones” went off the air in 2017, he also hasn’t been shy about sharing his opinions of when the series didn’t quite hit the mark. Some of the gripes voiced by Boreanaz have been minor, such as his dislike of an arc that required him to grow facial hair. However, the former “Angel” star also revealed his thoughts on one particular storyline which he evidently found so egregious it constituted “bad television.”
“Bones” had a simple formula that worked well. The show followed an episodic format wherein Temperance Brennan and her team at the Jeffersonian Institute would be faced with a new body in every episode, which in turn would provide them with a new mystery to solve every week. But early on, the show’s writers faced pressure to include longer story arcs that spanned multiple episodes. Reflecting on early pressure to include a longform serial killer storyline, show creator Hart Hanson telling TV Tango, “It’s a nightmare, because at our essence we are an episodic show. We’re a network, 22-episodes-a-year, episodic show where we solve crime each week. When we go to more serialized stuff, it’s always more difficult.”
The third season of “Bones” saw the writers trying to work in a longer storyline that saw Booth and Brennan on the trail of a cannibalistic serial killer called the Gormogon. The character was first mentioned in the season premiere, “The Widow’s Son in the Windshield,” and throughout the following episodes he became the primary antagonist of season 3. The leader of a secret society of cannibalistic killers which stretches back over multiple generations, the Gormogon was eventually revealed to be a reclusive mystery man (played by Laurence Todd Rosenthal) who, in the words of John Francis Daley’s Dr. Lance Sweets, was “a nobody — an invisible man who was angry at history for not seeing him.”
The real shock revelation came when it was discovered that Jeffersonian Institute employee and Brennan’s former assistant Zack Addy (Eric Millegan) had been working as an apprentice to the depraved killer. This represented one of the most controversial storylines in “Bones” history, with viewers still struggling to understand how fan-favorite Zack Addy could possibly have been involved in such a heinous scheme. It turns out fans aren’t the only ones who were upset by this particular storyline, either, as David Boreanaz also wasn’t fond of the Gormogon storyline.
David Boreanaz thought the Gormogon storyline was ‘bad television’
In an interview during a SAG-AFTRA event in 2014, David Boreanaz openly criticized the Gormogon storyline, specifically highlighting a scene from the season in which the killer drags a child to the bottom of a swimming pool and Seeley Booth has to dive in to save him. Asked about his favorite memories of the series (which was still on the air at the time), the actor said:
“When I’m chasing this guy around with a freakin’ helmet, diving into a pool. Gormogon. Who is that guy? That was just wrong and bad television, I thought. You have these moments that are good and bad and that’s just the way it is, but you remember them.”
The Gormogon story arc didn’t necessarily produce any of the best “Bones” episodes, and remains controversial among fans — and with Boreanaz, apparently. Interestingly enough, the actor was less bothered by the more obviously ridiculous episodes, such as “Double Trouble in the Panhandle” wherein Bones and Booth had to go undercover at a circus as knife-throwers Wanda and Buck Moosejaw. In fact, he enjoyed those more wacky installments, saying “I loved the circus episode. I loved coming out like Boris the Russian Guy, you know? Being ‘flames of glory.’” A cannibalistic serial killer, though, was seemingly a step too far.
