After doing some research, the “Bones” team was able to get FOX behind them. “One of the really daunting tasks that a forensic anthropologist has to deal with is that frequently the human remains are extremely compromised,” Josephson noted. “This means we have to find a reason for this character to exist, and the reason is that she’s almost like a magician.”

Indeed, if you want to see some real-life wizardry, just watch an actual forensic anthropologist — like Reichs, the direct inspiration for Bones herself — extrapolate loads of information from nothing more than some scattered bone pieces. “Sometimes she can be wrong, but most of the time she will be right,” Josephson continued. “But her science is great: it enables her to deduce things from these bits and pieces of evidence that she has.”

Over the course of doing their homework, the “Bones” creatives also came to realize the show would have its fair share of disgusting moments. “And many times those bones are going to be or in some sort of bad situation, like the tub or like exhuming a body in any state of deterioration, and so on,” Josephson pointed out. “We said to the studio, ‘It’s not going to be a horror show, but sometimes it won’t be easy to look at. We will try to render it in the best way that we can.’”

The rom-com interplay between Bones and Booth (something that came up during filming on the “Bones” pilot) would provide the perfect foil to the horrors they’d encounter on the job. That and the show’s more whimsical cases-of-the-week, which saw its leads desperately trying to pass for everything from cowboys to bowlers to underground fighters, certainly went a long way towards lightening the mood.