“Double Trouble in the Panhandle” certainly isn’t lacking for risqué shenanigans, with Bones and Booth at one point even pretending to have rowdy sex by rocking their trailer back and forth to ensure the circus’ increasingly suspicious performers do not, in fact, come a-knockin’ without them being ready. The shamelessly silly double-entendre of having Bones and Booth perform a knife-tossing routine (one in which Booth comes exhilaratingly close to literally penetrating his partner) wasn’t lost on anybody watching at home, either.
It’s little wonder Deschanel recalled the episode with fondness years later while speaking to TV Tango in 2015, despite hitting herself squarely in the eye during filming:
“I love the circus episode. That’s probably my favorite undercover episode. It was a lot of fun to do and dress up. […] I actually hit my eye in real life and I have a bruised eyeball, and so we had to think of a way of covering that in that episode so I got an eyepatch. It’s just a crazy fun episode where we had to be on our toes and change things around all the time, so that was a lot of fun for me. I have a lot of favorite episodes, but that’s my favorite undercover episode for sure.”
Within the episode, Bones gets her black eye after Booth accidentally smacks her in the face while fending off a posse of angry clowns — you just can’t trust clowns, amirite, folks? Like a trooper, though, she does their act anyway, and “Bones” fans were none the wiser about what happened behind the scenes. They were also gifted the sight of Bones in an eyepatch, which must’ve been an unexpected bonus for those watching at home with a pirate fetish. (Never fear, we’re not here to kink-shame anyone.)