Horizon

I don't know the "Friends" show. Is there any chance they (or the writers) are so oblivious they don't bother to mention having nannies?

Perhaps it's because a high proportion of the audience is childless, and the writers don't feel the need to explain that babies have to be looked after all the time?

Nah, it's just the difference between satire and fluff. That's what I always hated about Friends, though I grudgingly admit that it was often funny, but this (to me) embarrassing sense of trespassing on someone else's middle class day dream always ruined it for me.

I think Rachel said something about who was looking after Emma.

Where was the baby when Rachel was boarding a plane for Paris? Most likely a relative was keeping her until Rachel got settled.

OK, fair enough, but it would have been nice for the writers to acknowledge every now and again that a baby does limit one's opportunities to pop out for a chai tea latte whenever the mood strikes.

(David, David; these injections of fact are going to totally ruin my rant ...)

Yes Rachel has a nanny. I think they introduced her not to add to the reality of raising children, but so Joey could say "How you doin" yet again. And yes, Rachel specifically said her mother was flying to Paris with Emma at a later date. My big problem with the whole "Rachel goes to Paris" plotline was that she just announced it as fact. It seemed as if she and Ross had joint custody but there was no discussion about visitation or if she had the right to take Emma out of the country. (They obviously missed "Not Without My Daughter") When Ross was trying to convince Rachel to stay he never even mentioned Emma as a reason. The writers should have just given in to the soap opera nature of the show and had the children grow into datable teens after three or four episodes.

It would be very un-PC to suggest that a father is not easily dispensed with.

Seems to me that whatever tendency in the legal system that there may be to favor mothers over fathers in terms of child support (etc.etc.) is older than "PC" and probably has nothing to do with academic leftists.

Legal system? We were talking about a sit-com screenplay.

Recall the furor when Dan Quayle dared to criticize Murphy Brown?

Yeah, legal system. The comment right above yours mentioned things like "joint custody" etc., so, you know, I made the connection. Actually I don't know what you all are talking about Friends as I never watched it attentively enough to pick up on a lot of these details.

I went to look up the speech in which Quayle hilariously suggested that Murphy Brown was somehow helping to erode the moral strength of welfare mothers. This lack of strength, Quayle said, is the reason for urban poverty (or "anarchy", as he called it), and that it could best be corrected through sanctions aimed at penalizing people on welfare. I found the text on a website placed just above an ad for a video entitled "The Beast of Revelation Identified". (If anyone wants to read it, just type "quayle murphy brown" into google and it should be the first hit.)

Quayle's comment on Murphy Brown was :

"It doesn't help matters when prime time TV has Murphy Brown - a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman - mocking the importance of a father, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another 'lifestyle choice.'"

Of course the hoopla was all for nothing. Quayle was blowing smoke and anyone paying attention must have known it. Like the whole PC thing, it was a totally inconsequential statement that everyone had a lot of fun deploring. But, on the other hand, you have to hand it to Quayle for his unbelievable presumption, chiding a character who really was something of a hero (the first, really, as far as I know) for a lot of women trying to get by with a child and a career. These are the same mothers, remember, that Quayle considered to be immoral and the ultimate cause of anarchy in America. It really was fabulously offensive when you think of it.

Salon backs me up:

I did tune in for the final episode and, well ... ummm ... a few things really stood out: Where was baby Emma? I know Rachel's baby was with her mother, but it really looked as if she was moving to Paris without her daughter. And then there's Chandler and Monica, new parents home just a few hours with their less-than-a-day-old twins: Does anyone know of even one first-time mom or dad anywhere who would wander across a hall to another apartment leaving behind their two infants?

And still on the topic of the babies on the show: twins, a "pleasant surprise," in 2004?

Finally, the teenager (Erica) who gave up her babies to Monica and Chandler didn't seem to have any kind of an interior struggle with the whole "giving babies away" process.

Were all the writers on this show unmarried, childless morons?