TV sitcom babies: A boost or a bust?

LOS ANGELES - There's a very visible baby bump on the set of

How I Met Your Mother

- belonging to Alyson Hannigan, who plays Lily - but no one (on the show) is paying it much attention.

The show's writers, however, are considering a device much belabored in sitcom land: the addition of a baby.

No due date yet - and for some fans, that's OK. Much of the appeal of the CBS sitcom, now in its sixth season, derives from the question of whom Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) will ultimately marry. But suspense can hold viewers' interest only so long.

Baby talk has loomed over the series for a while, with longtime couple Lily (Hannigan) and Marshall (Jason Segel) flirting with parenthood much of this season. Hints stretch back to last fall, when, in a flash-forward, Ted tells his kids how his friends quit smoking: Lily stopped once she started trying to get pregnant and Marshall quit when his son was born. If the stork doesn't come this season, it's bound to eventually.

"I think we'd be super-cute with a baby," Segel said during a set break. "We'd be like those people in the photos that come in picture frames."

Still, the show's producers are proceeding with caution.

"There's fear: Will it limit us? Will the show lose something?" admitted executive producer Craig Thomas.

And there's that teeny, tiny issue of shark-jumping: In prime time, infants have a mixed record.

Some felt Murphy Brown lost her snarky edge after she gave birth. Others thought Mad About You got only more maddening after married couple Paul and Jamie welcomed a daughter. Then there was Roseanne, which added a fourth kid - named Jerry Garcia - to its household in its seventh season.

"I think it's thought of as a potential death knell to a show," Thomas said. "But at the same time, the series is all about growing up, so to not address it, to not see this couple who has been together since age 18 get to that point, would seem dishonest."

Scour the television landscape and youngsters are rampant. A little tyke was recently added to NBC's The Office, shortly after Jim and Pam got married. Dexter welcomed baby Harrison, while in another Showtime series, Weeds, Nancy tries to protect her newborn from his drug-lord father. Fox's Raising Hope centers on a cherub-faced bambino. In CBS's Rules of Engagement, now in its fifth season, Jeff and Audrey Bingham (Patrick Warburton and Megyn Price) are using a surrogate.

Stork visits are a ploy that dates to TV's early years. Mary Kay and Johnny, a late-1940s sitcom that followed the exploits of a young married couple, incorporated Mary Kay Stearn's real-life pregnancy and baby into the show. And then there was the famous birth of Little Ricky on I Love Lucy.

TV historian Tim Brooks plays down the notion that adding a tot is a catalyst for a show's demise.

"It does two things: It gives the actors somebody to bounce off of, and it tends to bring in women, particularly younger women, which is who advertisers want to reach," he said. "It's a way of slowing the inevitable decline and erosion of a show. It all depends on how a show incorporates the baby."

Sometimes, the kid is added to liven up an aging cast. Angel Cohn, managing editor of the blog Television Without Pity, cited Seven (Married With Children) and Emma (Friends) as examples. But often the child gets lost in the shuffle. And there are inherent problems with baby characters, such as when they age rapidly over a short span of time, while other family members don't (as in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, where Little Nicky aged from baby to preschooler in a matter of months).

With 100-plus episodes of How I Met Your Mother under her belt, Hannigan said the timing is logical for TV's loving married couple: "I love that this show has always dealt with them as a real couple. Real couples at this point in their lives are either having babies or talking about having babies."

Thomas acknowledged that they considered bringing in the baby story line when Hannigan was pregnant in 2008. Hannigan, for one, is glad they opted against it.

"It was too soon," she said. "Just the vast amount of time we spend in MacLaren's [Pub] . . . it would really affect the baby. Oh, and the show."