If a TV series goes on long enough, it's bound to have at least one pregnancy storyline. It'll happen for one of two reasons. Either the show has figured it's time to spice things up with a baby, or at least one actress on the series has decided to start a family of their own.
Though the reason for a pregnancy plot may end up being relatively simple, the quality of these arcs vary wildly. It’s assumed, and not without solid evidence, that a baby can ruin a show.
A pregnancy and the resulting baby completely change the DNA of a TV series and it's not always for the better.
The blame can easily fall at the feet of the real-life pregnancy of the actress, as the show had little choice but to integrate the baby into the series or oddly hide it. Yet that’s not the case.
While some of the worst and most rushed pregnancy storylines have been because of real-world reasons, storylines where the pregnancy is 100% fake have been just as guilty of shoddy writing.
The exact opposite is also true, as real pregnancies have produced some fantastic stories.
The only real determination of what makes a good TV pregnancy storyline is the writing and acting that goes into it. It has very little to do with how authentic the actual pregnancy was for the actor.
So with that in mind, here are the 15 TV Pregnancies That Were Were Real (And 15 That Were Fake).
Real: Emily Deschanel in Bones
Emily Deschanel starting a family with her husband affected her Bones character Temperance Brennan not once, but twice.
Deschanel first became pregnant during season 7, when Brennan and David Boreanaz’s Seeley Booth had been together but weren’t really a couple.
The baby forced Brennan and Booth together earlier than anyone on Bones probably expected and eventually led to them getting married after the birth of their daughter.
When Emily Deschanel became pregnant a second time, Brennan and Booth were already married on the show.
The second pregnancy was much easier to incorporate than the first but one could argue that the only reason why Brennan and Booth had children was because of Deschanel.
Fake: Jennifer Aniston in Friends
The year-long arc of Friends season 8 is about Rachel becoming pregnant with her ex-boyfriend Ross' child.
At the end of season 8, Rachel has a daughter named Emma and there’s a lot of hemming and hawing if she’ll be with Ross or new love interest Joey.
It’s strange, if not a wholly original story. By the time of Friends’ airing, unexpectedly pregnancies were old news.
It happened purely because the show thought it would be a good idea.
Jennifer Aniston was never pregnant during the filming of Friends, and as far as the public knows, she has never been pregnant or even had a desire to have children.
Real: Chelsea Peretti in Brooklyn Nine-Nine
There’s no real reason why Brooklyn Nine-Nine had to write Chelsea Peretti’s real-life pregnancy into the series.
Peretti announced her pregnancy after the season 3 finale where her character, Gina Linetti, had been hit by bus.
In addition, co-star Melissa Fumero hid her pregnancy behind suspiciously large bags for an entire season.
Fans must have been shocked to find out that the father of Gina's baby was Boyle. It's hilarious that show-runner would use Chelsea's pregnancy to their advantage to give fans a side-splitting revelation.
Yet Brooklyn Nine-Nine did make their wackiest character a mother.
Gina was revealed to be pregnant halfway through season 4 (after surviving her bus incident). The father was left a mystery until the season 4 finale when it was revealed to Milton Boyle, who was played by Ryan Phillipe.
Fake: Mindy Kaling in The Mindy Project
Mindy Kaling caused a bit of celebrity commotion in recent years by becoming pregnant in real-life.
She has never revealed the father of her child and is raising her daughter on her own, as Mindy likes to keep her private life private.
Yet in a twist of fate, her sitcom alter ego went through her own single mother pregnancy, although the fictional Mindy gave birth to a boy, not a girl.
At the end of season 3, it was revealed that Dr. Mindy Lahiri had accidentally become pregnant with her OBY-GYN co-worker and new boyfriend, Danny Castellano.
The central premise being that it was funny that two OBY-GYNs, of all people, were dealing with an unplanned pregnancy.
Real: Katey Sagal in Married… With Children
Sadly, this example is one filled with a lot of tragedy. During the filming of season 6 of Married… With Children, Katey Sagal, who played Peg Bundy, was pregnant.
The show wrote the somewhat unexpected pregnancy into the show, with Peg becoming pregnant at the same time as neighbor Marcy.
The plan was for Peggy to really give birth. However, Katey Sagal’s baby was born six weeks early and was stillborn.
Out of respect for Sagal’s grief, the decision was made to end the pregnancy storyline and explain it away as a “nightmare” that Peggy’s husband Al had been having.
Fake: Dianna Agron in Glee
This is another fake pregnancy that doesn’t come as shock to most fans, as it was baked into the character’s origins.
In the Glee pilot, head cheerleader Quinn doesn’t reveal she’s pregnant. However, shortly into season 1, Quinn revealed that she was pregnant with the supposed child of her boyfriend Finn.
Spoiler alert: she wasn’t. The real baby daddy was Finn’s insufferable best friend, Puck.
Dianna Argon's may not have been pregnant, but her performance was believable.
Throughout the first season, Quinn’s pregnancy and baby was a huge source of drama. Quinn eventually gave her baby up for adoption. This is because unlike actress Dianna Agron, who was 23 at the time, Quinn was a child who couldn't raise another child.
Real: Candice King in The Vampire Diaries
From a fake teenage pregnancy, we move to a real teenage pregnancy-- well, in a sense anyway. The storyline hat saw Candice King’s character, Caroline, become pregnant was rooted in the actress’ real life pregnancy.
King had just married her husband and wanted to have children. The only problem was that that her character Caroline was a vampire who became deceased when she was a teenager.
The Vampire Diaries had to work very, even stupidly, hard to fit Caroline’s pregnancy into the show.
Even though Caroline’s uterus was unusable, she became the surrogate for the twins of her former teacher Alaric and his girlfriend, Jo. Eventually Caroline even raised the babies as her own.
Fake: Phoebe Tonkin in The Originals
The pregnancy plot that unfolded on The Vampire Diaries spin-off, The Originals, wasn’t nearly as insane. However, it does come in a close second.
Perhaps the reason why this pregnancy made slightly more sense was because actress Phoebe Tonkin wasn’t pregnant. The show wanted to include the pregnancy regardless.
In the pilot for The Originals, it’s revealed that Phoebe Tonkin’s character Hayley, a werewolf, was pregnant with Klaus', a vampire, baby.
For several reasons, this pregnancy should’ve been impossible, but the rocky relationship between Hayley and Klaus and the child they produced, Hope, arguably became the crux of the entire Originals series.
Real: Molly Ringwald in The Secret Life of an American Teenager
The Secret Life of an American Teenager, one of the most unrealistic depictions of high school life ever, begins in appropriately melodramatic fashion.
Amy, played by Shailene Woodley, became pregnant after sleeping with someone for the first time. Amy’s pregnancy and how every character dealt with it, especially her mother Anne (Molly Ringwald), was the impetus for the series.
Molly Ringwald's pregnancy shifted the events of The Secret Life of an American Teenager.
It definitely elevated the drama in the show, as Anne had an unplanned pregnancy months after her daughter had given birth to her own child.
However, while filming season 2, Molly Ringwald became pregnant with twins. So, out of relatively nowhere, Anne followed in Amy's footsteps and had her own unexpected pregnancy.
The twist did fit the insanity of the show, but it only really happened because of Ringwald’s own pregnancy.
Fake: Elizabeth Banks in Scrubs
One of the more bizarre storylines on Scrubs is when J.D. unexpectedly becomes a father with Kim Briggs, a doctor who he’s only been dating for a very short amount of time.
Kim and J.D. don’t even technically sleep together, but still she becomes pregnant.
It’s so strange that it might seem like Scrubs rushed the storyline because actress Elizabeth Banks was pregnant herself, but that isn’t the case at all.
Scrubs, which had had characters have children before, simply wanted J.D. to have a baby in the weirdest most Scrubs-ian way imaginable.