Fair Warning the Subject Matter some might find gross. As a writer, I have always researched every topic known to man to make sure the information I present is as fairly accurate as research can go. But it seems TV shows are exempt from this rule or something. I'm about to dive into a kind of gross topic. But its like either TV shows completely missed basic sexual education. Or they chose to ignore it. I hit my breaking point with GLOW. Every damn show has a "she had sex and missed her period" she must be pregnant trope. Every damn show. Where's the lesson of -A woman's cycle can change -You may actually miss it or be a day late or a week late -It can be early than you expect as well Periods don't happen on clockwork. Something my wife of four years keeps telling, me too. [She's also a writer] I am just getting tired of it seeing it on every show. It be nice to see something else once in a while. Its no longer high drama. Its just silly. And uninformative and not educational in the least bit. I mean I am not discounting it can happen. But I am also saying it can be also something else.
I'm not sure what shows you're watching where every one if them has a subplot where a character has sex, misses her period, and realizes she's pregnant, and it apparently takes up enough time that it's all that tiresome ... I'd also point out that that is in fact how pregnancy happens. In the case of Glow specifically, though, there's more context than is probably typical. We don't know how regular the mc normally is (sometimes it is clockwork; my mom is fond of saying that she could tell time via uterus from thirteen to menopause [no, I don't know why she tells me these things either]), but it's set up by her realizing that a lot of the other women are falling into the same schedule, and you can see her go, "Huh ...". It could be a fluke, sure, but when you know you've had unprotected sex (or even think that you didn't, because shit can be defective), yeah, I'm sure that's something you investigate. I guess I don't get the complaint. How do you want unexpected pregnancy subplots to go? Or do you just not want people to write them at all?
In the particular case of GLOW, I would have thought it was fairly important for a woman involved in a violent sport to know whether or not getting injured in certain areas was likely to do more than just give her some unpleasant bruising; so knowing whether or not she was pregnant going into a bout would MATTER. And, as @izzybot points out, some women are like clockwork. I used to work with a guy who kept a spreadsheet of the periods of the women he worked with, so he could then be the first with the news of when they became pregnant (everybody needs a hobby!). During the three years I worked with him, he got every call correct.
*shrug* It's entertainment. Also, as @izzybot mentions/asks... what are you watching, in general, because this is literally the first time I encounter this particular bit of questionable information in a show. Even when a show or movie is focused on a certain thing, real-life facts will pretty much always get shoved aside for I Want The Plot To Move In This Direction™. I work as an interpreter and translator. The ONE movie ever made about my profession, The Interpreter (2005), with Nicole Kidman, was a complete let-down. She would have been fired, stripped of her credentials and licences, and banned from ever entering the U.N. building again within the first 15 min of the movie. But never mind that because she never would have gotten the job in first place given her ties to shady guerilla types in the past. Background checks for a job as a U.N. interpreter aren't just thorough, they're invasive. You will have access to large numbers of world leaders on a regular basis. But, you know... drama, story, blah, blah, blah.
Off-topic, but...wow. That's...that's really something. Am I alone in finding that just incredibly weird and kind of creepy?
I agree - really creepy. That said, the women must have shared the information, so I guess it's consensual, at least... but that actually doesn't make it any less creepy.
Generally when you have a wife, you often have to watch shows she likes. They all end up with unexpected pregnancies plot at some point in time. FYI, I do like GLOW, but some the shows. Some of the shows. I think there is a show about a couple who accidentally falls pregnant on Netflix, can't remember the name. But yeah, I have suffered through the Fosters [who also has a pregnancy scare plot with some teenagers], I have suffered through Degrassi for some reason [who also had a pregnancy scare plot, though I do admire the fact they tackled abortion in a genuine, respectful manner in a teen show]. Again its a romantic subplot in movies like Knocked Up and even Juno. It's the punchline in a lot of comedies as well. I'd like people to take a break from unexpected pregnancy plots. There are other ways of writing woman besides accidental pregnancies is all I am saying. I am not saying don't have it. But not every damn show needs it. I mean for f-sake it was a subplot of weird experimentations in X-files. [yeah granted it was part of a weird experiment, but still]
Military and military-related shows are my private bugbear. "J.A.G." (Judge Advocate General), a military lawyer show, always, always had that little clicky teletype thing on the lower-left corner of the screen when a new scene was introduced, telling you where it was and what time it was, and it was always in 24 hour time (which is what I think in) and always listed as "Zulu time": Scene: A military barracks, from the outside. There's a palm tree in front of the building, and a sailor who's either unconscious or dead is propped up against the tree. Reveille is playing, the sun is at a low angle, and the clickety little thing says: CAMP HANSEN, OKINAWA 0500 ZULU Of course, since Zulu time is UTC, or GMT, that means that Okinawa, at GMT+9, it's the middle of the day and reveille is way the hell off and why has no one noticed Seaman Smith passed out against that tree at 1400 LIMA time. I could never watch that show with that popping up every five minutes...
