Popular Culture: Television

"If ye water turns blue, a baby for you! If purple ye see, no baby thar be! If ye test should fail, to a doctor set sail!"

• - From "Barnacle Bill's Home Pregnancy Test"
  The Simpsons, Episode 47, "I Married Marge," December 26,1991.

Marge Simpson was not pregnant, but as she took her home pregnancy test she joined dozens of other television women for whom peeing on a stick is a common plot point. How far television has come since Hot Lips’ pregnancy scare forced her M*A*S*H comrades to threaten the life of Radar’s rabbit! In today’s television-world, it is a rite of spring to take a pregnancy test in May, and force America to wait for the season premiere the next fall to learn the results rather than the three minutes it would take in real life. But the test is usually portrayed as simple, no dead rabbits necessary.

Rachel stares at her positive pregnancy test as her friend Monica looks on, (Friends, 2001)