The new AMC drama The Killing is a merciless, riveting slog through despair and the unrelenting Seattle rain as two homicide detectives are obsessed with trying to solve the murder of a teenage girl and the girls parents are floundering in an ocean of grief, trying to comprehend what seems unfathomable.

Large families – think Kate Gosselins crew of eight, the Duggars 19-kid-family and Nadya Sulemans dozen+ – have been depicted by pop culture as old timey circus acts, something for which youd pay admission at a county fair in order to enter a shadowy tent and marvel at this oddity.

One of the big moments of this seasons The Good Wife was when betrayed political spouse Alicia Florrick decided to do a TV interview in which she said she forgave her politician husband for straying. Her interview was considered to have sealed her husbands bid to recapture the states attorneys office.

She has finally had enough. The character modeled on the likes of the wife of the former New York governor, Silda Spitzer (who stuck by her husband after he resigned his office amid a call girl scandal) and other politicians wives whose husbands publically cheated on them and humiliated them, has been pushed too far.

Characters struggling with infertility and those contemplating adoption seem to be all over the primetime TV landscape these days. And not many of them, at least as of this writing, seem to be succeeding in the family-building business.