The news today that Amy Poehler and Will Arnett are expecting their second child poses some questions for the one-camera sitcom: How are they going to deal with Leslie Knope’s baby bump? It’s a particularly sticky issue for Parks, which features way more outdoor and full-body shots than, say, How I Met Your Mother, which dealt with the simultaneous pregnancies of its two female leads, Cobie Smulders and Alyson Hanigan, with a mixture of humor (Hanigan holding a basketball in front of her stomach, other characters noticing at the end of an episode that they haven’t seen her character in days) and the show’s easy settings (at least a quarter of each episode takes place in a bar booth).
In the past, shows would either write a character’s pregnancy into the series, or awkwardly try to hide it and in most cases fail miserably (see Julia Louis Dreyfus on Seinfeld — you could practically see the baby kick). But this is 2010, and viewers are too sharp not to be distracted by sincere trickery. The show is already delaying its normal summer hiatus in order to get some season three episodes in before Poehler’s maternity leave (she’s reportedly due in late summer), but there are no details yet about exactly how they plan to work around the petite Poehler’s growing belly. We think it’s absolutely impossible that a Leslie Knope pregnancy will happen on the show, so our best guess is that they’re going to go a more creative route, like making Poehler’s character get fat all of a sudden. The only thing that worries us for the show is Poehler’s co-star Aziz Ansari’s just-announced “Dangerously Delicious†tour which has him all over North America from early June to mid-September. Just don’t kill off Tom! (Any ideas for a non-hack way to hide Amy’s pregnancy – maybe Leslie could be sent on a space mission! – are welcome in the comments.)
Pregnancy in Pawnee: ‘Parks’ Star Poehler Expecting [The Wrap]
Aziz Ansari’s Dangerously Delicious Tour [Aziz Is Bored]