Am I right in thinking that the pilot episode (where Louise Lasser interviews Bob & Emily to see if they'd be good adoptive parents) is the only one where the Newharts' childless status is addressed? I've seen a good many - but not all - episodes and I don't recall it ever coming up again.
shareThere's an episode where Emily thinks she's pregnant, but it turns out it's a dream. I'm pretty sure there were a few others that brought up the topic.
shareThere was a scene in one episode when Bob's mother mentioned briefly to Emily her desire for a grandchild and Emily just smiled.
Bob Newhart, despite having four children, never wanted the Hartleys to have kids on the show. He said that he didn't want it to turn into a Father Knows Best type of show. He wanted to keep it about the adults.
In an interview Bob Newhart says that at one point the writers came to him and said they had a script where Emily was pregnant.
He said, "Okay, but who are you going to get to play Bob?" lol
I think he was right because if the Hartleys had one or two kids it would've been similar to I Love Lucy or The Dick van Dyke Show. The kid says "hi" and is immediately sent off to his room. It's awkward because the child has no real role in the storyline so there has to be some way to get rid of him.
I caught some S3 recently and there was an episode with Bob's mom that had some funny lines. At one point Mom says that they couldn't be trying for a kid because she didn't hear any noise coming from their bedroom the night before. Bob's facial expressions and body language were great in response. In earlier seasons I do think they threw in references to trying for a baby and adoption to make it clear they weren't childless by choice. Maybe that was to keep them likeable to the public. By later seasons it wasn't mentioned. I first watched it in reruns in a college dorm and none of us thought to question the lack of kids. We saw them as an older couple and probably would have found it more remarkable if they had an infant. We were all 17-22 and Bob looked our dads age.
shareChild free.
share