What if

Last week, I finally downloaded the last season of Big Bang Theory (yes 10 years after everyone else), and I have to say I was extremely disappointed in the finale. Why was Penny pregnant?  After 11 years of her saying she didn’t want children and in a way sort of validating the choice of those women who feel the same way.  ‘Maybe I want money and a nice body’ is how she put it, and more profoundly it was talked about, dealt with, accepted and then in the last show, just like that she’s not only pregnant but no mention of any of the fears she had before.

Why is it that that’s always a woman’s happy ending?  Eat, Pray, Love, what happens at the end?  She meets someone, and I get it, she wasn’t looking and then life just happened and blah blah, (they broke up by the way), but why is that the ultimate happy ending? And that seems to always be the case for women’s happy endings.

I know in 200 year-old stories that’s what women had to look forward to and I know when one reads a romantic novel, we always want the classic boy-girl happy ending, but it shouldn’t always be about that, but it seems that when there’s a woman in the equation it’s the only possible ending.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been in love and it’s wonderful and just recently I’ve had my heart broken and I would have given anything for ‘that happy ending’. But would it really be enough?  Or would it just be the satisfaction of the moment and the idea that that’s how it’s supposed to be?  What if Elizabeth Gilbert simply kept eating and  meditating in Bali and found inner peace and happiness through that and only that?  (not that I wouldn’t go for Javier Bardem myself, I’m just saying). What if Leonard and Penny built a life together and felt fulfilled in it just the way it was, and Penny kept her great body?   What if there was another formula for happiness?