They went there...

Yep, they went there. :p  As I feared, after 12 seasons, "The Big Bang Theory" ended -- with childfree-by-choice Penny not only pregnant (an "oops" pregnancy after a night out drinking at the Cheesecake Factory) -- but happy about it.

There was absolutely no explanation about her  sudden change of heart. Nothing to show us how Penny got from point A (adamantly childfree) to point B (happily pregnant).  Husband Leonard said something to Sheldon along the lines of  "She didn't want kids, and now she does."  Well, allrighty then... easy peasy...

Perhaps this abrupt shift in character development wouldn't have been quite so eyebrow-raising/infuriating if Penny wasn't the show's SECOND childfree-by-choice female character to wind up pregnant.  Howard's wife Bernadette also didn't want kids (perhaps even more vocally so than Penny) -- and yet wound up having not one but TWO.  And in a week full of bad news out of the U.S. about the extreme limits some states are trying to place on reproductive choice... it just left me very disappointed. (Not that I would expect an abortion discussion in the series finale of what is, after all, a comedy... but...)

I found several articles that agreed with me, or that at least pointed out that this was entirely out of character for Penny.  Said Vanity Fair:

The Penny story is not necessarily a problem on its own; some women do change their minds about wanting children after learning they’ve conceived by accident. The issue is how it all unfolded: viewers find out Penny has been secretly pregnant, and never see her find out the news or contemplate what it means for her. Instead, they see a character who has repeatedly stated her desire not to have children suddenly do an about-face for no discernible reason—cheerful and ready to bear children. Given the recent, alarming wave of punitive abortion restrictions cropping up across the country, including one that passed in Alabama just this week, this might might be the worst possible time to drop a story in which a female character gets accidentally pregnant and does not once contemplate her options... 

The uncharitable read on all this would be that both a female character’s emotional experience and the option of abortion were both rendered invisible to pay off a male character’s fantasy of getting his hot neighbor pregnant with his babies.

From Vulture:

...it’s hard to overstate how much this plot — which was surely intended as a sweet, hopeful end — instead comes off as thoughtless and tin-eared at best, dismissive and condescending at worst. In an otherwise heartwarming finale for these characters, after 12 years spent together on one of TV’s most popular shows, it’s infuriating and unfortunate that The Big Bang Theory would essentially erase a woman’s right to choose from her own narrative.

Of course, many viewers were ecstatic:  I saw lots of comments on Twitter and in news stories along the lines of "FINALLY!" and "It's about time!" Some were disappointed that Amy didn't announce a pregnancy too (oh, brother... she only just won the Nobel prize, but nope, her life is not complete...)(although we learned on a past episode of "Young Sheldon" that he & Amy do have children -- so that would have been a more "in character" pregnancy announcement than Penny's, in my mind).

Said one commenter on the Vulture story: "Until you decided to make it political it never even crossed my mind." (Seriously?) My own husband rolled his eyes at me when I moaned "OF COURSE" at the TV screen, and said he thought it was a sweet way to end the show.

I've loved this show, and there WERE some funny and touching moments in the finale.  It's just disappointing that the ending was so completely, utterly predictable and cliched (happy ending = MUST HAVE BABY!!).  SO MANY TV couples who struggle with infertility wind up with a "miracle" baby (even though we know that real-life "miracles" are not quite so frequent), and those who say they don't want children somehow wind up with them, and becoming cheerful, loving parents.  Just off the top of my head, I can think of Doug & Carrie in "The King of Queens" (in the series finale, they adopt a Chinese baby and immediately, before they even leave China, find out Carrie is pregnant);  "Rules of Engagement" (in the series finale, immediately after the birth of their baby via surrogacy, Audrey tells Jeff she's pregnant), and "How I Met Your Mother," in which the series ends with childfree-by-choice Robin marrying Ted after his wife dies and becoming stepmother to his two kids (= she gets to be a mom after all!). (I'm sure there are others!)

Women's lives are complex. Not all women want to be mothers. Not all women who want to be mothers get to be mothers. A happy ending does not always have to include a pregnancy/baby.
It would be nice, just once in a while, to see a few stories where the infertile couple winds up without children (and a good life regardless), and/or the childfree-by-choice characters remain childfree and happy.

Come on, Hollywood, surprise us!!