TV births

I've only seen the one on Boardwalk Empire.....that was enough....

Painful Baby Boom on Prime-Time TV

By NEIL GENZLINGER
Published: November 2, 2011

So much screaming. So many complications. If I had any money, I’d invest it all in birth-control stocks.

In the past few weeks I’ve witnessed six live births, close-up and in detail, though I wasn’t married or even related to any of the mothers. I’ve watched these orgies of yowling and goo on prime-time television, where comedies and dramas alike have been having something of a pregnancy epidemic. It’s not going away anytime soon. There is a pregnancy on “Bones,” which returns for a new season Thursday. There are pregnancies on “The Office,” another Thursday show. “Private Practice” was working an in vitro fertilization plot recently. And I’m concerned. About the message.

Now, I wasn’t — pardon the expression — born yesterday; I have long been dimly aware that childbirth can sometimes be a tad uncomfortable for the woman involved. I’ve even witnessed the birth of two children of my own, though I don’t claim to have been paying full attention because I was too busy worrying about how to pay for their college educations. The point is, I’m sympathetic to you life givers. But I’m also alarmed about the long-term damage all this prime-time caterwauling could be doing to our country.

A percolating strain of thought these days suggests that the future of countries like this one could be shaky because something called the total fertility rate has fallen to the point where we’re not replacing ourselves with new humans. As is often the case with strains of thought, this one runs directly counter to another that says the world’s population, which, depending on how you count it, has just hit seven billion or will soon, is growing way too fast.

The rational in me knows that the second strain, not the first, is the one that deserves serious attention. But the irrational in me wonders: Will there be enough young American workers around two decades from now to pay for the knee replacements to which I’m entitled?

No, there won’t, because women watch television, and what they’ve been seeing lately is not exactly likely to encourage baby having. Here’s a closer look at the recent TV births, in case you missed them. Keep in mind that this being the we’ll-show-almost-anything age of television, these deliveries resulted not in cherubic babies in bonnets, but in slime-covered balls reminiscent of the film “Alien.” Also, to get the full effect, while you’re reading, have a woman stand beside you and scream as if her hair were on fire.

BIRTH DATE Sept. 26

SHOW “Hart of Dixie,” CW

CIRCUMSTANCES Zoe Hart (Rachel Bilson), a newly minted doctor from New York who is trying to start a practice in a small Southern town, is having trouble fitting in until, at one of those fancy-gown parties, a member of the catering staff named Mabel goes into labor. There’s no time to wait for an ambulance, although there is time for Dr. Hart to outmuscle a rival doctor for the privilege of delivering the baby.

But things don’t go smoothly. A close-up shows blood running onto what appears to be an expensive piece of furniture — somebody’s going to have to pay for that — and Dr. Hart asks for a scalpel. One of the last things poor Mabel hears before the big scream is this, from the rival doctor: “I can’t let you slice open her pelvis like that. That is way too dangerous.”

BIRTH DATE Sept. 30

SHOW “A Gifted Man,” CBS

CIRCUMSTANCES Dr. Michael Holt, a brilliant neurosurgeon played by Patrick Wilson, is performing emergency brain surgery on his accountant’s pregnant wife when she prematurely goes into labor. The baby is in distress, and so is the mother, since at this point a chunk of her skull has been removed, her brain is exposed and something in there is hemorrhaging.

The obstetrician hasn’t arrived yet — long line at Starbucks or some such — and so Dr. Holt has a decision to make. “I don’t have an extra set of hands,” he laments, still poking around in the unfortunate woman’s cranial cavity. “If I stop, Rebecca will be brain-dead.” A grim-faced aide responds, “And if you don’t, so will the baby.” Images from “The Full Monty,” in which Mr. Wilson starred naked on Broadway, may or may not be going through the woman’s head this whole time.

BIRTH DATE Oct. 11

SHOW “Parenthood,” NBC

CIRCUMSTANCES Kristina (Monica Potter), who has set some kind of record for pregnancy giganticness, gets into a screaming match with Crosby (Dax Shepard), her brother-in-law, that’s so epic it causes her to go into labor. This is unfortunate, since Kristina’s husband is unavailable because he apparently has a lousy cellphone and is also on the verge of being mauled by a vicious dog.

So his fatherly duties default to Crosby, who is about the last person Kristina wants at her bedside while giving birth. She is evidently quite religious because she screams, “Oh God” rather a lot over the next several scenes, which include a dangerous high-speed ride to the hospital. Once in the delivery room she stops the screaming long enough to warn Crosby, “Don’t look down there.” NBC’s writers seem to have a thing about “down there.” See below.


BIRTH DATE Oct. 19

SHOW “Up All Night,” NBC

CIRCUMSTANCES Reagan (Christina Applegate) is even more religious than Kristina: she is shouting God-laced exclamations while merely watching a preparing-for-birth video. As she and her husband, Chris (Will Arnett), arrive at the hospital, they meet neighbors who have just been through childbirth. “Pure agony,” that new mother says. “It’s worse than they tell you. And the tearing.”


In the delivery room a nurse asks Reagan and Will: “Would you like the mirror? You can see everything that’s going on.” Down there. They ask for the mirror, take one look into it and scream for it to be taken away. Turns out they didn’t miss much; the baby’s head is too large for a natural delivery, and ultimately doctors perform a Caesarean section. The labor, from first contractions, lasts 12 hours.

BIRTH DATE Oct. 23

SHOW “Once Upon a Time,” ABC

CIRCUMSTANCES Snow White goes into labor just as a nasty spell that a wicked queen (Lana Parrilla) has cast over the entire fairy-tale universe sets in. This ruins the plan concocted by Snow (Ginnifer Goodwin) and her husband, Prince Charming (Josh Dallas), which had been for Snow to climb into an enchanted tree stump that would shield her from the spell. “It’s too late!” someone yells as Snow is shrieking through her contractions. “We can’t move her.”

After more shrieking the baby is born as an ugly black cloud of evil rolls over the land. The couple make a split-second decision to toss the newborn girl into the magic stump, though the prince has to sword-fight his way through the queen’s storm troopers to do it. Moments after depositing the kid in the tree trunk — incidentally, she won’t be seen again for 28 years — the prince takes a sword in the gizzard and collapses.

BIRTH DATE Oct. 30

SHOW “Boardwalk Empire,” HBO

CIRCUMSTANCES Lucy (Paz de la Huerta), enormously pregnant, decides she wants lemons, which her baby daddy, Agent Van Alden (Michael Shannon), promises to bring her on his way back from visiting a hideously burned fellow agent in the hospital. Lucy should know that sending your man out for produce almost guarantees that you’ll go into labor, which she does.

There being no one else around, she delivers the baby herself in her squalid apartment. On another show a self-delivery would be shockingly grotesque, but on “Boardwalk Empire” you’re at least sort of ready for it, since just before the birth was a scene in which a guy hanging upside down in a meat locker has his throat slit. In any case, in the end the lemons sit untouched in a bowl.

Five weeks, six exceedingly traumatic births. Talk about antifamily programming.

Nine months from now we’ll be reading that hospital maternity wards all over the country are closing or being converted into Pinkberrys for lack of business. Women of child-bearing age have been sent an unmistakable message: If you have a baby, it will arrive while you’re attending a major social function at which you’re undergoing neurosurgery; your doctor will be underqualified or distracted or absent; your least favorite person in the world will be at your side, while your true partner is enforcing an ill-conceived constitutional amendment or being sliced to ribbons by medieval knights; and moments after your soon-to-be-abandoned newborn arrives, an evil spell will trap you and everyone you know in a grueling time slot opposite “Sunday Night Football.”

Maybe I’ll have my perfectly healthy knees replaced now. Just in case.

Yeah, call me wimpy but graphic depictions of childbirth are not my idea of entertaining. Maybe it's the memory of my 23 hours of labor. I don't even like to do things I like to do for 23 hours!