5 Worst Pregnancy Storylines In Sitcom History, Ranked

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We've been treated to some great pregnancy storylines in sitcoms over the years, with the likes of "I Love Lucy" and "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" showing how it's done. It's no mean feat — the introduction of a baby often means that a sitcom's best days are behind it. Babies can hog the characters' time and put a limit on the sort of comedic escapades they can get involved in. It's also difficult to write babies in as anything other than a prop or a plot device, and those are rarely interesting. 

The five sitcom pregnancies on this list are the worst of the lot, not necessarily just because they limit the pregnant characters' comedic potential. That was certainly a factor, but what makes these pregnancy storylines the worst of the worst is that they were all introduced in ways that actively undermine character arcs. The hit CBS show "Murphy Brown" used pregnancy to challenge its lead character in an interesting way, but the five shows on this list used pregnancy in some of the laziest ways possible. 

The final few seasons of "The Big Bang Theory" already annoyed some fans by making Bernadette (Melissa Rauch) pregnant twice in quick succession despite her being very clear about not wanting kids. Her second pregnancy storyline was somewhat forgivable, though, because it was the writers' way of working around Rauch's real-life pregnancy. With the decision to make Penny (Kaley Cuoco) pregnant in the series finale, however, the writers had no such excuse.

It's especially frustrating because Kaley Cuoco was against Penny's pregnancy ending. "It was cute how the writers did it at the end with Penny's surprise pregnancy, and all in all I'm glad, but I was actually voting for her not to. I loved that she was like, 'No, I don't really want [children],'" Cuoco told journalist Jessica Radloff for her behind-the-scenes book "The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series." The actress added, "Not everyone wants the life that the next person wants. Not everyone wants kids."

Showrunner Steve Holland told Radloff that the creators got a lot of heat for the storyline. "Some people called us out, and maybe rightly so, that Penny made the decision not to have kids and was OK with it, and then ended up pregnant." He admitted that he now wishes they'd built up Penny's change of mind a bit more, but that the idea was to pay off Leonard's (Johnny Galecki) line in the pilot about him and Penny having "smart and beautiful" babies. While the finale's callback to that moment is sweet, it ultimately feels like wish fulfillment for Leonard at the expense of Penny's agency.

The '90s sitcom "Mad About You" stars Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser as a couple living in New York City. They have a baby in the Season 5 finale, something Reiser was initially against. "We've been talking about a baby for three or four years, and I was the president of the let's-not-do-a-show-just-about-a-baby club, because I wouldn't want to watch that kind of show," he told the Saint John Times Globe in 1998. Critics ripped into the show's "baby-obsessed" turn in Season 6, which reached its peak in "The Conversation," an episode that put viewers through a 20-minute, one-take scene where the baby's crying just won't stop.

The show's viewership declined and it ended with Season 7. The only point in the baby's favor is that it seemed like "Mad About You" would've run out of steam either way. "The show was always about the couple and the relationship," Reiser told Virginia's Daily Press. "When we started, I said we wanted the feel of a couple leaving a party in the car. You shut the door and say, 'Why did you say that?' That was the flavor." This approach to a sitcom can only stay fresh for so long; the introduction of baby Mabel seemed like the writers' failed, desperate attempt to stop the series from going stale. Unfortunately, it only seemed to hasten the cancellation.

The "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" Season 6 episode "Casecation" asks viewers to accept a simple yet ludicrous premise: that Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero), the woman with a life calendar hanging over her bed, has somehow never spoken to Jake (Andy Samberg) about having children. It's only here that she discovers Jake doesn't want kids, and she responds by challenging him to a structured debate. 

Jake ultimately agrees to having kids, but only after Amy makes clear that not doing so would mean divorce. This isn't exactly unfair on Amy's part — it makes sense that a difference in priorities this major would be a dealbreaker for her — but it's all handled a little too flippantly. The episode shows some awareness of how poorly Amy's ruthlessness in the debate comes across, though it's more uncomfortable than funny.

The end of the episode tries to sell us on the idea that Jake's change of heart comes from a place of growth, but it still feels like more of a hostage situation. That uneasiness seeps into the rest of Amy's pregnancy storyline that takes up much of Season 7. Jake and Amy becoming parents should have been sweet for viewers, but it's hard to forget just how heavily Jake was pressured into it.

There are a lot of reasons to dislike Haley (Sarah Hyland) becoming pregnant in "Modern Family" Season 10. The early seasons of the show are filled with jokes about how an accidental pregnancy is in Haley's future if she doesn't wise up. Despite that, she goes on to find success professionally, proving herself to be far more than the shallow popular girl the other characters often assume she is. While her pregnancy doesn't completely throw that career aside, it does sideline it at a point where, from a character arc perspective, it should be her main focus.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about Haley's pregnancy storyline is that the father of her twins is her dopey high school boyfriend Dylan (Reid Ewing), a guy who's always been portrayed as someone that Haley needs to outgrow. The show struck gold with Haley's love interest Andy (Adam DeVine) in previous seasons; for Haley to go back to Dylan after hitting it off with Andy just feels like a major step backward.

It's also annoying how Haley's pregnancy and subsequent motherhood keep her away from the rest of the cast. Her screentime's heavily reduced in the final season, and Sarah Hyland remarked in an interview with Cosmopolitan that she too didn't love how Haley was being treated. "There are so many amazing mothers who are also hard workers and excel at their jobs and kill it every day in both aspects," Hyland said. "That would have been a really cool thing to see, especially from someone like Haley."

"Scrubs" was always pretty messy with its couples, with JD (Zach Braff) and Elliot (Sarah Chalke) ranking high on TVLine's list of worst romantic pairings in a sitcom. But none of JD and Elliot's nonsense comes close to the soap opera shenanigans of Kim (Elizabeth Banks). Kim is introduced as JD's most charming, promising love interest so far, and she stays cool even after her pregnancy is revealed in the Season 5 finale. Up until "My Road to Nowhere," eight episodes into Season 6, JD and Kim seem like endgame couple material. It's in this episode that Kim lies to JD about having a miscarriage, a bafflingly out-of-character decision that kills any chance of her and JD making things work.

Kim lying about something so serious was hard for audiences to let go (even if JD managed to forgive her to a certain extent), and it simply doesn't make much sense given everything established about her character prior to that point. It feels like Kim's lie is the show's way of lazily setting the groundwork for JD and Elliot getting back together. But if JD and Elliot were such an essential couple, surely there was a better way to make them work than this terrible pregnancy storyline? Adding insult to injury is the fact that the "Scrubs" revival revealed that JD and Elliot ended up getting divorced.