Basic Trope: A pregnancy ends in miscarriage in order to avoid changing the plot too much.
- Straight: Alice is pregnant, but in a later episode she has a miscarriage.
- Exaggerated: Alice gets pregnant several times over the course of the series, always resulting in miscarriage.
- Downplayed:
- Alice gives birth to a healthy baby, but immediately puts it up for adoption. The baby is never seen or mentioned again.
- Alice gives birth to a healthy baby, but it inexplicably vanishes before the next episode.
- Alice gives birth to a deformed baby that dies almost immediately.
- Alice is sad that she miscarried, but her friends are thankful.
- Justified: Alice has a rare condition that makes it harder for her to give birth successfully.
- Inverted:
- Alice does not want a baby, and deliberately exposes herself to several conditions that would make it much more likely for her to miscarry. Nevertheless, she gives birth to a healthy baby.
- Alice's miscarriage is inconvenient to both the plot and the characters.
- Subverted:
- Alice always miscarries early on (possibly as a Running Gag) except this time.
- Alice is pregnant for the second half of one season. In the next season's premiere, Alice is shown with a baby.
- The baby dies...oh, wait, no, correction, the baby Disney dies. Welcome to the show, little Faye.
- Double Subverted:
- Alice has a stillbirth at thirty-six weeks.
- The baby is Alice's niece or nephew.
- Parodied:
- Alice gives birth to a healthy baby, but suddenly the Status Quo God enters the hospital room and uses a Bolt of Divine Retribution to kill the baby against Alice's will.
- A scene mirrors a reveal scene for this trope in a previous work, but ends with a healthy birth instead of a miscarriage.
- Zig Zagged: Alice is pregnant for the second half of one season. In the next season's premiere, Alice is shown with a baby. The baby is revealed to be Alice's niece or nephew, but it is later revealed that Alice carried the baby ... as a surrogate for her sister, Carol.
- Averted:
- Alice gives birth to a healthy baby.
- There is no pregnancy storyline.
- Alice thinks she might be pregnant but then finds out that she isn't.
- Enforced:
- Adding a baby to the show's cast would alter the plot too much, but the writers still want to use pregnancy for dramatic effect. And for obvious reasons, an abortion would cause network troubles.
- Denise is pregnant while playing Alice, but the writers can't easily add a baby to the cast and writing Alice out of the series for several months isn't a option either. Instead of recasting Emma as Alice or trying to disguise Denise's condition by dressing Alice in loose clothing, they keep Denise and say Alice became pregnant. It is stated that Alice (the character) miscarried after the baby is born in Real Life.
- Alternatively, Denise was pregnant and this was written into the show, but she miscarried and they had to account for her belly being its normal size prematurely.
- The original plan was to add the baby to the cast. However, the producers decide to have Alice miscarry for dramatic effect.
- Lampshaded:
- "It's a good thing you miscarried, Alice. If you had a baby to look after, you couldn't hang out with us."
- "Is this loss?"
- Invoked: Alice knows that she always miscarries due to her rare condition, but continues to get pregnant anyway, possibly hoping she'll get lucky and give birth to a live baby.
- Exploited: Charles The Casanova, doesn't want to find a Doorstop Baby at his house, so he only has sex with women who always miscarry (like Alice) or who are sterile.
- Defied:
- Alice refuses to have sex, for fear that she will miscarry again.
- Alice gets sterilized.
- Discussed: "So Alice is pregnant, is she? Odds are it'll end in a Convenient Miscarriage."
- Conversed: "Why do pregnancies on TV always end in miscarriage?" "I assume it's to avoid changing the plot. The Moral Guardians would pitch a major fit if they wrote about an abortion, you know."
- Implied: Alice gains weight over the course of one season of the show, but then suddenly loses it, and there is no sign of a baby at her house.
- Deconstructed:
- No matter how many times Alice insists that she miscarried, everyone assumes she had an abortion. She becomes an outcast.
- Alice is severely traumatised by her miscarriage, and falls into depression over the death of her child.
- Reconstructed:
- Bob convinces everyone in town that Alice did not have an abortion.
- Alice gets over it by whatever means or circumstance.
- Played for Laughs: Alice has a dark sense of humor about her own miscarriage: ("I didn't terminate my pregnancy. God did.")
- Played for Drama: Alice dies giving birth to her stillborn, and Bob is Driven to Suicide over her death.
Back to Convenient Miscarriage
