Borrowed Time
OK - I was really liking this episode, enjoying the Peter/Mozzie stuff, enjoying seeing Neal and Peter seem like they're back on the same page, it was all good...
And then.
Elizabeth's pregnant.
That hit like a punch to the gut.
I think I"ve mentioned it here before, but I can't have children. But no, this is not going to become some woe-is-me,
I-can't-stand-seeing-another-woman-pregnant type thing. Not that I don't respect that for some women infertility is that painful, but it's just not for me. Maybe because I've known I couldn't have children since I was 11, so it was never really part of what I envisioned for my life. I'm happy not having children and wouldn't change it. But that doesn't mean I don't have any feelings about the fact that I don't and won't, or that I'm immune to the pressure society puts on women to have children or the expectation that it's the "normal" thing to do. All that is to say, seeing Peter and El as a happy, long-term-married couple who just didn't happen to have children made me very happy and was very important to me. It's kind of a rare thing to see on an American TV show, a couple who's been married for more than a couple of years, who are both significant characters on the show, who don't have children either together or from previous relationships, and haven't had some angsty plot or subplot about how they *can't* have children and how tragic that is. Peter and El just don't, and to my memory we've never been told whether it was by choice or not, because IT DIDN"T FUCKING MATTER, and that was awesome and one of the things I loved about them and about the show. It was never presented as something that was "weird" about them, that they were "missing" something, there were never other characters asking them about why they didn't have children or bugging them to have them or any of that crap that happens in real life, they were just an ordinary happy couple with ordinary busy lives who just didn't happen to have children.
And now El's pregnant. And I've already read reactions from a couple of people who said, oh well, it's the end of the show so whatever. But that's almost why it bothers me the most. Because it's like, we're wrapping things up and this is one of the loose ends we have to tie up - we have to give Peter and El a baby. Because god knows we can't let a happily married childless couple go happily off into the sunset of cancellation without "fixing" their lives by giving them a child first. And I kind of want to cry.