The sitcom, or situational comedy, is a genre beloved by many, perhaps for the nostalgic comfort they provide to people in their twenties who often get told “don’t worry – you’re only in your second season of Friends”, when stressed about what they’ve achieved in life. I’ve personally consumed many a sitcom, and love them for the lack of concentration they require; I’ll often have an episode of The Big Bang Theory that I’ve already seen four times playing in the background whilst I do my chores in the morning. I have my favourites, but I think it’s hard to get the sitcom format wrong. I would even consider Gilmore Girls – a notorious comfort show for me and many other autumn-lovers – a kind of sitcom despite its longer than typical episode runtime.
For me, the key to a perfect sitcom is rewatchability. Can I finish the show and obsessively return to the very first episode, sit through the whole thing again and enjoy it even more upon rewatch? If the answer is yes, it joins my exclusive list of absolute favourite sitcoms – I’ve seen Modern Family, The Big Bang Theory and New Girl at least three times each.
When rewatching, you can’t help but notice details that you brushed over first time around, which brings me to the main issue I have with the sitcom, and specifically the male-written or directed sitcom: the character assassination of sitcoms’ women. Nothing irritates me more when watching a ten-season long sitcom with witty, independent and driven female characters, for the show to end with the writers clearly not knowing what else to do with them other than making them a mother, despite their careers or life choices.
I’d like to preface this point by making clear that I don’t believe there is anything wrong with motherhood being a purpose or experience that women decide to devote parts of their lives to, as long as it is what they choose. My issue lies in the common thread I have picked up on, particularly in the contemporary sitcom, that uses the plot device of a pregnancy or new child to ‘write off’ the character. In the case of The Big Bang Theory, I would even argue that they use the pregnancy plot device to promote a certain lifestyle for women.
In Modern Family, Haley Dunphy, the eldest of three siblings (and the frequent butt of the joke in the show because of her perceived bad life choices, partying, vanity and inability to get a job), finds herself accidentally pregnant with twins in the tenth season while still living at home with her parents. The father is Dylan, the boyfriend she had in high school who her family disapproved of because of his aloofness and lack of prospects. In the last two seasons of the show, Haley’s storyline revolves around her anxiety that she is going to be a terrible mother, and that her and Dylan will never manage as parents. She also initially rejects Dylan’s proposal, which he makes out of duty when he finds out she’s pregnant, however she later proposes to him and they end up engaged anyway.
At an overall glance, especially for those unfamiliar with the show and the characters, this may seem a fun and harmless story arc, and it is definitely not one of the worst offenders on this list. However, what problematises this storyline for me is the way that the writers of the show reflect Haley’s young pregnancy with her mother Claire’s – the way they portray it as a full-circle, perhaps inevitable event. We know early on in the show that Claire became accidentally pregnant with Haley at a young age, which caused her to quit her job and become a ‘stay at home mom’ despite her career, which she is seen to have reservations about throughout the show’s eleven season run – thinking about the what-ifs that could’ve put her in a high-paying, successful job. It is just as Haley is finally progressing in her career that she becomes pregnant, and I would argue that there is some kind of underlying connotation here that suggests women should follow along in their mother’s footsteps, or that for women, a career is secondary to motherhood.
This is also a strange parallel to Gilmore Girls, which for the sake of this argument we will consider within the realm of sitcoms. The Netflix addition Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life concludes with Rory telling her mother that she is pregnant. This also provides a cyclical structure to the show, which begins with us learning that Lorelai was a young mother to Rory out of wedlock, and now the same is true of Rory – perhaps not quite so young as Lorelai, but the connection is there. This happens despite Lorelai always claiming that she wanted a different kind of life for Rory, and Rory always focusing on her education and career.
It was definitely an interesting narrative choice from the A Year in the Life writers.
My ultimate inspiration for this article, however, is without a doubt The Big Bang Theory. A notoriously problematic sitcom for its misogynistic jokes and storylines, yet unfortunately still one of my favourites: nostalgia can forgive a lot.
Penny, who for the first three seasons of the show is the only main female character, ends up married to Leonard. In the final season, their conflict as a married couple revolves around the fact that Penny is adamant she does not want to have children. Leonard had always imagined that he would be a parent, and therefore has to decide whether the relationship is something he wants now that he knows this is not a desire that Penny shares. He comes to the conclusion that Penny always has and always will be enough for him, and he does not need children as long as he is married to her.
This seems to be the end of this plotline, until the very last episode, when Penny finds out she is pregnant… and is really happy about it?
Penny goes from a woman who is completely and utterly resolved that motherhood is not for her, to overjoyed that she and Leonard are going to be parents in half a season. And because this sharp shift in thinking happens in the very last episode, we are unable to sit with it and understand why she now wants children. This plot twist we are left with leaves me very uncomfortable, as a woman who also doesn’t feel inherently maternal or see herself ever being a mother figure I felt represented and seen by a character like Penny who also didn’t want children despite that being her assumed role. Her change of heart feels very tacked on by the showrunners, written into the final episode so that everyone is given a convenient and ‘suitable’ ending. Seeing as the two other recurring female characters in the show also end up married or mothers, it is hard not to think the show may be suggesting that this is the only ending for women.
Perhaps because the sitcom genre has always revolved around the family, there appears to be little room to play with the stereotypical family structure. However, I think there is space in sitcom for all kinds of women to be represented, as I think we see in more current sitcoms such as Ted Lasso, or Abbott Elementary, whose much more diverse cast of female characters shows us women in different roles whilst still keeping to the heart of the sitcom genre.
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