ACCORDING TO JIM - Baby on board

Finally, sitcom-reality catches up with, er, reality-reality in this week’s episode of According to Jim, wherein Cheryl pops the big news on Jim: she’s pregnant.  Big time. 

This works out nicely because in real life, Courtney Thorne-Smith (aka Cheryl) was pregnant while filming all of this season’s episodes. She gave birth in January to a baby boy, BTW, so congrats to her and her husband. 

It’s been interesting the lengths that the producers of According to Jim have gone to hide Thorne-Smith’s pregnancy. In the fifth episode of the season they shipped Cheryl off to Florida to take care of her ailing mother, effectively reducing her presence on the show while she was visibly pregnant. Cheryl still checked in on the phone and stuff, but on the occasions when they did film her, they took pains not to show her baby belly. She was seated behind a table or lying in bed with the sheets pulled up, stuff like that. For this week’s episode, the ninth of the season, they showed Cheryl in one scene on a laptop during a video-conference with Jim (just a head shot) and in another scene they blocked out her lower torso with a crib and boxes. I was beginning to wonder if they were going to work Thorne-Smith’s real pregnancy into the show or just try to make it through the whole season without even addressing it.

There’s been a long history of hiding an actress’ pregnancy on weekly television shows, so According to Jim is in good company. Seinfeld’s Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and The X-Files’ Gillian Anderson both opted for the “long coat” approach to disguising their pregnancy and were, if memory serves, written out of their shows for a while. I seem to recall The Cosby Show’s Phylicia Rashad carrying a lot of pillows and standing behind couches a lot. There are loads of more examples; daytime soaps have to deal with situations like this all the time. 

Ultimately, all show-runners must deal with the question: do we write the pregnancy into the show or not? Of course, the precedent for incorporating real-life pregnancy into the constructed reality of TV was set back in The Day by Lucille Ball – just one of the many ways she was a pioneer for women in TV. Her situation was doubly challenging because in 1953 they couldn’t even use the word “pregnant” on I Love Lucy – instead Lucy was “expecting.” Or as Desi pronounced it, “spectin.” 

We’ve come a long way culturally in the decades since then, but biology and the mandates of a weekly TV shooting schedule remain. The producers of According to Jim solved their particular problem in this week’s episode, “Goodwill Hunting,” when Cheryl finally announced that she was pregnant - with twins no less! I’m glad they’re dropping the visual trickery, but now I’m just curious how they’re going to explain the rapid growth of her belly – maybe pull a LOST move and skip ahead in time? I’m not clear on how she could go from first trimester to a big mamma belly in one week’s time.  

But perhaps I’m over-thinking the whole thing…
 

--Dave Campbell

Comments

[Ken]

This show is still on TV?

Too bad...for Dave.

[francesco]

compliments and a very beautiful series.. I hope that you continue the series.... belushi and good very good

[Hippie Child]

I adore Jim Belushi and I love his show. I didn't become a fan until a year ago when I stumbled across the show in syndication and now I can't get enough. Jim has had one hell of a fight; having to live in your dead brothers shadow and to be constantly compared to him must be very frustrating but Jim has indeed made a name for himself both in film and television and he stands on his own merit, not his brothers. I hope Jim goes into season 8 next year because I just can't get enough of him and I definately admire his persistence in becoming his own person. Kudos, Jim! You rock!