When Murphy Brown revealed that she was pregnant on the much-watched season premiere of the popular sitcom that bears her name, her colleague and cohort Jim Dial may have scored the best zinger of the evening when he summed up the feelings of the characters in the show as well as the producers writing it and the viewers watching it:
"Oh good Lord, this could be the worst decision anyone's made in television since Rhoda's wedding!" he cried. "We thought we'd say it before anyone else said it," Diane English, the creator and executive producer of "Murphy Brown," said laughing last week.
Only a naive producer navigating the mercurial seas of television would not be haunted by the lessons of "Rhoda." The beloved hapless single woman of the '70s, Rhoda was suddenly married off. Viewers flocked to watch the wedding episode, then ran off and never came back, since the producers had irrevocably changed the one thing about Rhoda that viewers loved most -- her single status and how she dealt with it.
For CBS, "Murphy Brown" is its pride and joy and the flagship of a strong Monday night lineup. It makes the network money. Here's why: Amid a gaggle of goofy, insufferably cheery sitcom heroines, Murphy Brown, played wonderfully by Candice Bergen, is a beacon of wit and reality. Would the deliciously cantankerous Murphy Brown soften into a misty-eyed TV mom? Everyone was asking: Would she lose the one thing that few other funny women on television today credibly have -- her edge?
"Certainly there was a lot of talk about that," English mused. "My creative team and I were thoroughly convinced that we were making the right decision. The network never came to us and said, 'Don't do it.' And I know they heard it from a lot of people -- from sponsors. To their credit, they never mentioned it to me until after it was over."
Everyone watched the season premiere, curious to see how Murphy would handle her pregnancy. It was the top-rated show that week. "I knew we'd do big numbers the first night out," English said. "Relief came when four weeks later we were still holding on."
Now, more than a month into the new season, "Murphy Brown" continues to rest comfortably in the top 10. In last week's ratings it was No. 4 out of 89 shows.
"Some people accused me of doing this because it would be a sure-fire ratings grabber -- the season opener and the last show," English said. "Boy, you don't make this kind of decision based on ratings for two episodes -- after all we've invested in the show and the network invested in the show."
English believes the show has been a success so far because the show's creators have been true to the character of the show.
"Right from the very first episode, it was clear that this woman would not lose her edge," she said.
If all goes according to the writers' plans, Murphy will be as cranky and enterprising a mother-to-be as she is a television reporter.
She'll also have second thoughts and surprise realizations about the implications of her somewhat impulsive decision to keep her baby.
"She knows very little about what she got herself into," said English. "There will be times when she questions the wisdom of this decision. No pregnancy is problem-free."
English denied that the pregnancy was simply a change for the sake of change. "We have stories on the board for years that don't include kids," she said.
But they did want to change Murphy a bit -- to prove that she could change some. "I think the main reason was that we were writing about a woman in her forties. There's this misconception about people in general at that age. They don't change. They're baked. They're done, and they just go along until they die. We were looking at this character that we'd fallen in love with and thinking, 'How do we want to change her?' Well, we don't want to marry her. And she's at the top of her profession. She's not struggling. What change is left for her? This was the answer for us: to put W.C. Fields in a dress -- and that's who Murphy is -- with a baby was fraught with comedic possibilities."
But they didn't want to change her too much. So no husband. Murphy, in the season premiere, nixed both would-be suitors -- one of whom was the father of her child.
"She is independent and that we wanted to preserve," English said firmly. "Once you give her a child and a husband it is a really different show."
Of the 25 shows planned for this season, only four or five will deal mainly with Murphy's pregnancy.
"We'll do an episode with Murphy enrolling in Lamaze classes," says English. "We'll do a baby shower show. And we'll do the birth as the final show of the season."
Currently shooting is an episode in which Murphy has an amniocentesis test. "Jim is taking her for her amniocentesis," said English. "We picked the character who would feel most uncomfortable at a gynecologist's office."
English knows the sex of the baby, but she's not telling. You'll have to wait until the amnio show to find out.
However, throughout the season there will be references to Murphy's pregnancy. Corky, Murphy's colleague and a far more traditional woman, will use flashcards to coach Murphy on favorite children's characters, about which she is simply clueless. "Like the Cookie Monster and Big Bird," English explained. "Corky finds it appalling that Murphy can't tell one from the other."
But Murphy yearns for other reading tools for her child: "Now, if only I can find a pop-up version of 'All the President's Men,' " she says in one episode.
Murphy will start to show during the episode the week of Thanksgiving. "We begin the episode with her not being able to button her pants," English said. "She will go through denial. She thinks she'll be the woman who doesn't show until the sixth or seventh month, who only gains 10 pounds. In fact, the opposite will happen. We're going to blow her up."
In real life, Candice Bergen did gain a lot of weight when she was pregnant with her daughter. (Bergen is married to French film director Louis Malle.) "I think she got to 180," English said, chuckling, "and at one point her brother said, 'You might as well shoot for 200.' "
So the anguished prediction of Miles, Murphy's boss, on the season premiere that his star reporter would blow up "like a casaba melon" will come painfully true.
"I think they'll have to carve out a little space in the anchor desk for her," English mused.
If you think the producers' decision to keep Murphy's baby was as spontaneous as Murphy's, think again.
"It was something we had talked about right from the beginning," English said, recalling that it was "kind of a group decision" and that it initially came up the first season. "It was something out there to be mined. But we said, 'Let's see where we are.' "
It's not uncommon among the writers of any show to think of provocative story ideas for characters right at the beginning of the first season. But generally producers would rather be cautious at the outset. At the end of "Murphy Brown's" second season, English recounted, the writers made the decision to introduce the pregnancy -- at the end of the third season. That, of course, was last season's cliffhanger episode in which we saw Murphy observing the results of a home pregnancy test.
"We didn't think the show was strong enough {in the third season}," said English of the decision to wait until this, the fourth season, to play out the pregnancy. "We thought that the show was still developing its voice. We thought the audience was still developing. We didn't have their total confidence."
There had been foreshadowings of Murphy in Babyland -- in the first season, Murphy and single colleague Frank talked about having a child together by artificial insemination but then decided against it. The show's star was as intrigued by pregnancy initially as the writers were.
"Candice brought it up in the first season and we talked her out of it," said English. "And then when I did come back to her with the idea, I wouldn't say she just threw her arms around me and jumped up and down. She thought about it for a couple of days and then said it was a good idea. I wouldn't do it if it weren't something she was comfortable with. She was really on the edge of the diving board, but I think she wanted to jump in."
Although Bergen is excited about it now, English said, "I know that there are people who advise her who had some serious reservations."
Obviously most viewers have gotten over theirs. English's mail has increased from a dribble of about 10 letters a week -- "usually just when people are pissed at me" -- to a couple of hundred a week. And most of it is favorable. But some people are unhappy.
"There were a significant number of letters right at the beginning from people who were disappointed that Murphy chose to be pregnant," said English. "Some of the right-to-lifers were disappointed she took a strong pro-choice stand." (In the first episode, Murphy made a point of saying that women have a choice -- interestingly, she never used the 'a' word -- adding, "At least they did the last time I looked. I haven't read the newspaper this morning," to studio audience applause.)
"And some pro-choice people were disappointed that she didn't have an abortion," English said. "But basically both groups applauded us -- the right-to-lifers because she chose to keep her child and the pro-choice people because she made a stand. We showed that it was an extremely difficult decision for her."
English said she also heard from some single professional women who had chosen not to have children -- " 'How could you betray us? Murphy was the only person on TV who doesn't have a family and doesn't care,' " she said, summing up their point of view. "These people are guilty of a certain reverse sexism. ... It's as if the working mother is not as capable of doing her job -- her brain gets kind of soft and she doesn't care about succeeding so much anymore."
Neither English nor the show's other executive producer, Joel Shukovsky -- the two are married -- will be around to nurse Murphy's new baby. They will leave the show at the end of this season. They are already developing a new half-hour situation comedy for CBS that is "still in the formative stages," according to English.
"Murphy Brown" will be turned over to people who have been working with English and Shukovsky these past few years.
"But I can assure people it certainly isn't going to become 'Mother Knows Best.' It certainly won't be a program about a mother and a child. This little baby is going to have to fight for time. Its mother is going to be a working reporter."
The possibilities are endless. Maybe Eldin, Murphy's perpetual, almost live-in house painter, will be the nanny. "I think if he's not the official nanny, he'll be the male presence around the house," said English. "He has a little more knack for handling babies than she does."
Diane English is herself 43 and has never had a child. "I don't think I was ever one of those people who woke up and said, 'I have to have a child,' " she mused, noting that Murphy was like that too. English laughed. "I'll wait and see how she does before I make any choices."
