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Decompressed Storytelling
Basic Trope: Plot Time makes a character's pregnancy seem extremely long.
- Straight: In Alice and Bob, Claire, the lovable neighbor, has been pregnant from Day One. By the seventh-season finale, she still has no baby.
- Exaggerated: The series has been running for 30 years and Claire still hasn't given birth.
- Downplayed: It takes about three seasons for Claire to finally have her child.
- Inverted:
- Claire and her husband Dave have sex that results in her impregnation at the beginning of an episode and she gives birth by the end of the same episode.
- Claire gives birth at the end of an episode, even though there was no prior evidence that she was ever pregnant — even in that same episode.
- Subverted: In the fifth season, it is revealed that Claire had a Convenient Miscarriage in the second season and then gained weight.
- Double Subverted: She becomes pregnant again.
- Parodied: Claire becomes pregnant in the first episode, then the calendar is thrust forward. Even though Claire is pregnant for nine months of real time in-universe, everybody acts as if it's longer.
- Zig-Zagged: Claire is pregnant in the pilot episode, and stays pregnant for three seasons (roughly three years in-universe) before it's revealed that she actually miscarried halfway through season one and never lost the weight. Except then she gets pregnant again, for another two seasons, until it's revealed that it's a hysterical pregnancy triggered by her stress from losing the first baby (or babies). Season six sees Claire get pregnant again, and the Grand Finale ends with the poor woman finally going into labor with what's implied to be that same child (or children).
- Enforced: After forgetting for a couple seasons how far along Claire was supposed to be, the writers of Alice and Bob pick up the progression of her pregnancy where they left off.
- Averted:
- Claire's pregnancy lasts roughly nine real-time months' worth of seasons.
- No one becomes pregnant nor gives birth.
- Lampshaded: "It's been at least ten seasons, Claire! Are you going to have that baby or not?" "I wish I knew."
- Invoked: Bob the narrator tells the audience "I'm going to explain each day to you every week. I know it looks like Claire has been pregnant for years, but she really hasn't."
- Defied: "Okay guys I think you know Claire is pregnant, let's skip to her raising her kid."
- Discussed: "Boy, were you ever pregnant for a long time!" "What are you talking about? I was pregnant for nine months, and then I had my baby. Last I checked, that's perfectly normal."
- Conversed: "Why do pregnancies on television always last several seasons?"
- Implied: Claire suddenly gains weight in the second season, even though she takes care of her health.
Abnormally Long Pregnancy
Basic Trope: A character has an extremely long pregnancy.
- Straight: In Alice and Bob, Claire, the lovable neighbor, has been pregnant from Day One. Since then, she's had at least three birthday parties since the first season, implying that three or more years have passed, but she remains pregnant.
- Exaggerated:
- Even at the end of the Grand Finale, which takes place ten years after the first episode, Claire still has yet to give birth. Dialogue confirms it is the same pregnancy and not a later one.
- Claire dies of old age in a Distant Finale, and her corpse still appears to be pregnant with what's implied to be the same child.
- Downplayed: The episode wherein Claire finally gives birth takes place a year or two after her pregnancy was first revealed.
- Justified:
- No one knows who or what the father of Claire's child was.
- Claire is a frilled shark, which has a gestation period of 39 months.
- The fetus died and was calcified, but never expelled.
- Inverted: Express Delivery
- Subverted: Each season actually represents a month, or a week, or a day, so she wouldn't have given birth by then.
- Double Subverted: But she's still nowhere near giving birth, even after nine in-universe months have passed.
- Parodied: When asked how she could stay pregnant for so long, Claire just nonchalantly explains that she held it in. When she finally gives birth nine years later, it's a nine-year-old boy, completely dry, fully clothed, and with the intelligence you'd expect of a nine-year-old.
- Enforced:
- At the beginning of the series, Claire's actress suddenly got pregnant, so they wrote it into the story. But given what they want to do with the timeline (see the "Decompressed Storytelling" folder), she's going to have to pretend to be pregnant for a very long time. The plan for the slow timeline is later dropped, and by then, Claire's actress has gained weight, forcing the writers to keep her "pregnant".
- The writers can't decide whether to add a baby to the cast or have Claire miscarry instead.
- Averted:
- Claire's pregnancy lasts roughly nine in-universe months.
- Claire has a Convenient Miscarriage after less than nine In-Universe months.
- No one becomes pregnant or gives birth.
- Lampshaded: "Alice, shouldn't Claire have given birth by now?"
- Invoked: Claire is deliberately delaying the pregnancy, by one means or another.
- Exploited: Claire and her husband use the extra time to better prepare themselves for becoming parents.
- Defied: Claire decides to induce labor by the end of season one.
- Discussed: "It feels like I'm taking forever to have my baby..."
- Deconstructed: Claire is worried that her child might never be born.
- Reconstructed: Claire somehow knows that she will give birth sooner or later; it's just a matter of time.
- Played for Laughs: Bob and Alice flash back to various points throughout their marriage and Claire is pregnant in each one.
- Played for Drama: For any human pregnancy to last that long, something is probably very seriously wrong, and wondering what it is causes Claire and Dave no end of anxiety and tension.
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