Bones: How Emily Deschanel's Major Real-Life Event Led To A Shorter Season 7

The crime drama "Bones" enjoyed a longer run on television than most in its genre, amassing 12 seasons and nearly 250 episodes in its time. Throughout its tenure, the number of episodes each season contains fluctuated, with some barely passing the 20-episode mark while others come close to 30. However, as for Season 7, it's one of the rare seasons that doesn't even crack 20 episodes, coming to completion after a mere 13. As it turns out, the decision to make it a shorter season stemmed from a major event in the life of series lead Emily Deschanel.

In early 2011, Deschanel announced that she was pregnant, which, naturally, threw a wrench in the "Bones" Season 7 plans. As shared by The Hollywood Reporter at the time, the episode count for the upcoming batch of episodes remained up in the air, and the team behind it tried to accommodate the Temperance "Bones" Brennan actor during her pregnancy as she worked through it. Eventually, it was decided that the season would be shortened to just 13 episodes for her sake. Deschanel gave birth on September 21, 2011 to a son.

By the time "Bones" completed its small screen tenure, Season 7 proved to be the first season impacted by a Deschanel pregnancy, not the only one.

In addition to shortening "Bones" Season 7, Emily Deschanel's pregnancy also impacted its story. Bones herself is revealed to be pregnant in the Season 6 finale, "The Change in the Game," with it becoming a focal point throughout Season 7. She eventually gives birth to her and Seeley Booth's (David Boreanaz) daughter, Christine, in the episode titled "The Prisoner in the Pipe." Though the showrunners got to return to business as usual for a few seasons, they had to work around Deschanel's second pregnancy during Season 10.

Unlike Season 7, Season 10 stands at 22 episodes, which is much closer to the average "Bones" season episode count. Therefore, it seems that the powers that be didn't have to shorten the season's run, but they did ultimately have little choice but to work Deschanel's pregnancy into the story as they did with her first one. Season 10's "The Eye in the Sky" brings the revelation that Bones and Booth are expecting their second child, and between the end of Season 10 and the start of Season 11, their son, Hank, is born. In real life, Deschanel's second son was born on June 8, 2015.

Even though "Bones" Season 7 was cut short because of her first one, Emily Deschanel's real-life pregnancies inspired two memorable on-screen stories.