About A Boy Thinks Tricking A Woman Into Pregnancy Is Cute

The meat of About A Boy's Season 2 premiere is, as one would expect, Will and Marcus and what Will's been missing since moving to New York. Will inserts himself in a situation involving Marcus and some shitty kids who've been exploiting him for his baller treehouse and then excluding him from their play: fine. (That said, I do wish fewer episodes of this show turned on Will knowing more about or being better at parenting than Fiona. Wanting to be around for the fun is believable for childless Will; intervening in potentially serious situations is kind of this kid's mom's territory, or should be, even if she is a daft hippie.) Less fine is the plotline Will's adult best friend embroils him in.

Like a lot of moderately happily married sitcom characters, Andy was, at some previous time that wasn't part of the TV series, ordered by his mean wife Laurie to get a vasectomy. And, at that previous time, Andy let Will talk him out of having the procedure, probably on similar grounds to those used by Jake in a recent Brooklyn Nine-Nine -- to wit, the misapprehension that a vasectomy is basically the same as castration. But unlike B99's Sgt. Terry, Andy neglected to let his wife in on his conflicted thoughts on the matter, and now, some of her quirky behaviour is making him think she might be pregnant. And I can't with this.

First, there's the suspension of disbelief aspect. Why would Will -- Will, of all people -- want to deprive Andy of contraceptive- and consequence-free sex? We learned back when Andy wanted Will to be his baby's godfather that Will is not into Andy's kids at all; what reason could Will have possibly come up with to justify the possibility of Andy having even more kids for Will not to care about?

But the bigger issue, of course, is the fraud Andy has perpetrated upon Laurie. I get that Andy and Laurie are less characters than personifications of all Will's dumbest fears about monogamy. But maybe Laurie wouldn't have such a shrewish mien all the time if she were married to someone who treated her like his partner in life and not just a two-boobed barrier on his road to happiness. Even on a sitcom, even with tertiary characters, having unprotected sex with someone knowing that a half-unwanted pregnancy might be the result is NOT OKAY. He's been knowingly gambling with her life. ...I guess that makes it seem like she might die from this pregnancy, which I don't think is true, but he's at least been gambling with her life plan -- a plan she worked out with the husband she thought was committed to her happiness.

The worst thing the show does to Laurie's character with this contrivance isn't even making her pregnant without her compliance or making Andy's violation seem like a cute little peccadillo like secretly stopping for McDonald's on the way home. It's not even giving her the chance to react. Sure, we see her realize, as she's eating an avocado, that when Will says she might be pregnant, and how, it's true. But then we don't see her again until Fiona, doula-in-training, is promising to help her through her pregnancy and telling Andy to rub her feet or some shit. It's not that I expect this sitcom to give us a scene in which Laurie raises the possibility of terminating this "accidental" pregnancy, EVEN THOUGH she would be completely within her rights if that's what she decided, under the circumstances (or under any circumstances). But taking away all her agency in the decision -- dramatically, at least -- is just another way of making Laurie little more than a plot device.

I realize this is a lot of fiery rhetoric to have been inspired by a sitcom -- and a middling one at that! But of all the characters on About A Boy, Laurie is the one whose life circumstances line up the closest with mine, so I feel like I have to stick up with her. To Andy and all the Andys out there: please don't decide you'll just blow off your vasectomy and take your chances with your wife's fertility if the alternative is having a slightly awkward conversation with her. And to Laurie: the only fit punishment for Andy is to make him do all the work with this new baby, starting with figuring out how to lactate.