Bones: When Will Booth and Brennan Be "Healed"?

Bones' executive producers believe Booth and Brennan still have plenty of obstacles to overcome this season. But they don't all have to be so serious!

First Look: Bones in the ballroom

Case in point: Monday's episode (8/7c, Fox) finds Booth (David Boreanaz) and Brennan (Emily Deschanel) struggling with Booth's decision to invite Sweets (John Francis Daley) to be their houseguest. And it won't be very long before Booth realizes three's a crowd.

"Now that [Sweets] and Daisy broke up, we didn't want to go through the sort of traditional mourning of Daisy and moping and stuff like that," executive producer Stephen Nathan tells TVGuide.com. "So, we figured Booth and Brennan have a big house. Sweets becomes instantly comfortable in Booth and Brennan's house, much to the chagrin of Booth."

Indeed, while viewers get to see Sweets strutting around the house wearing only a towel, Booth will get more of an eyeful. And while Brennan is initially against opening up her home, she begins to find other value in having Sweets around. So much so that Sweets may be staying at Casa Bones for longer than initially expected.

"It started out as a one-episode runner, but it was so much fun that we're going to leave him there for a little while until he finds his own place," Nathan says. "One of the things that worked out for us is that he leaves his psychology books around the house, and Brennan, she's a genius. She reads them very quickly and starts to fence with Sweets a little bit about psychology."

Things turn a bit more serious the following week, when Brennan pushes all of her squinterns to work as a team to identify previously unidentifiable sets of remains. As the team reveals that one victim had a rather poignant connection to 9/11, Brennan is forced to think about how much she now depends on the family life she's established with Booth. And those types of thoughts are only made more impactful when you consider Brennan's relatively recent abandonment of Booth.

Bones Season 8: Is love enough for Booth and Brennan?

"They're going to [continue] struggling with the events of last season," Nathan says. "It was traumatic for everybody and we think of it as the Bones version of PTSD. They're still reeling from Pelant being in their life and not knowing when he's going to resurface." Adds creator Hart Hanson: "And every time they think they're getting somewhere, back comes Pelant to stir things up again. And every time he comes back, it escalates. It gets more dangerous every time he reappears."

The producers confirm that serial killer Pelant (Andrew Leeds) will return in a January episode, but his presence will be felt before then. "There's a murder that looks pretty horrible that they think might have been him, but they're kind of healing until he appears again," Nathan teases.

Meanwhile, Angela (Michaela Conlin) and Hodgins (TJ Thyne) will also be forced to consider how their lives have become different. "From the beginning, [Angela] felt like a fish out of water at the Jeffersonian, but she loved Brennan," Hanson says. "Then she fell in love with Hodgins, so she's been staying at the Jeffersonian for other reasons. Hodgins is the happiest man on the planet, and sometimes that blinds him to the fact that other people might not love what he loves quite as much."

But Nathan insists that couple's struggles will only make them stronger. "When their relationship is challenged, we find out just how solid [Hodgins'] commitment to Angela is," Nathan says. "And we certainly find out that Angela doesn't love Hodgins for his money."

Check out photos of the Bones cast

As for Cam (Tamara Taylor), her new love interest will be revealed in the Nov. 19 episode. Although producers have hinted that her special someone is a familiar face to audiences, they insist that any other teases would tip their hand.

"One more hint and people would figure it out," Nathan says. "We don't want to give away too much. We can just say that we were really surprised and very pleased when Ryan Gosling decided to do the show. We didn't expect that to happen, but it seems to be working out."

"That was Ryan Gosling?" Hanson says with a laugh. "I thought it was Ryan Reynolds. I get my Canadian Ryans all mixed up. [It's the] Canadian abs."

Joking aside, Hanson promises that no matter what bumps in the road Booth and Brennan face this season, they most likely won't be permanent. "Everyone knows this group of people," he says. "You know how they deal with each other. I think we can all have faith that things will be, for the most part, healed."

Bones airs Mondays at 8/7c.