It's not easy being a Bones fan, or at least it hasn't been lately. The show has seen some of the worst ratings of its entire run, and Fox has been moving it around on the schedule to the point that it's finishing its eleventh season in the summer. Bones will be able to end on its own terms with its final season next year, but first they have to wrap up the current one. The finale for Season 11 aired last night and it's got a legion of fans up in arms. What's got them so mad has nothing to do with what happened in the episode, though. The anger is because fans missed 40 minutes of the episode because Donald Trump's speech went long...like REALLY long.
Last night at the Republic National Convention, Donald Trump formally accepted the position as the Republican nominee for President. Coincidentally, this also happened at the same time as the season finale of Bones on Fox. So when fans tuned in to watch the episode they were instead greeted by Donald Trump's acceptance speech. Sometimes things run late in television so fans stuck around, assuming that Fox would either begin the episode once Trump was finished or cut him off if he ran much later. Well, none of those things happened because after Trump delivered a record-setting 75-minute acceptance speech, Fox resumed the episode in progress, meaning fans missed 40 minutes of Bones. Seeing as how it's impossible to understand what's going on after missing two-thirds of any episode - let alone a season finale - fans were understandably angry and took to Twitter to voice their displeasure. They were joined by Bones lead Emily Deschanel, who was not too happy about it herself.
It seems that Fox has heard everyone's complaints and is going to be throwing people a bone (I'm sorry). According to TVLine, Fox will re-air the finale on Friday, July 29, at 8/7c. Fox also reminded fans that they can watch the finale on Fox.com, the Fox Now app, and Hulu. It's a nice enough gesture, but it was something they kind of had to do after that scheduling snafu. In Fox's defense, they couldn't have predicted Trump would speak for that long, and they were in a difficult position of whether or not to cut off the newsworthy subject of someone running for President. Still, the burn was felt by fans who already think the network doesn't care much about Bones anymore.
I can certainly understand why people were upset. Just earlier this year ABC cut away during the middle of an episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (an important one too) to cover news in the election, and they didn't even stop the episode. Again, networks aren't in a favorable position when they have to decide between scheduled programming and news, but one can't help but think there's a better way to do it.
If you're a Bones fan and missed out the finale, don't forget that you have a second chance to watch it again on Friday, July 29.
