"It's not something Leslie and I talk about," Apatow assured me over the phone, going on to explain that he relies far more on Oprah and her therapist, Harville Henrix, than his own marriage, when writing. Nonetheless, Apatow directed my attention to an appearance Mann made on the Jimmy Kimmel Show that contradicted nearly everything he said. At one point, Kimmel asks Mann if Rudd is playing Apatow, and Mann responds, "I guess so, yeah, a little bit, I guess so, yeah." Mann said she was not playing herself, but described Apatow's writing process as participatory, explaining that they had a lot of "coded conversations" over a number of years during which "Judd would say things he would be afraid to say to me, his wife, that he wouldn't be afraid to say to the character, Debbie." At another point, Mann does not dispute Kimmel's assessment that this is "a real puppet master situation." Finally, Mann says, "I do feel like, you know, he's very quiet, and he holds things in, and I do feel like he may be capable of killing me." She goes on to joke that she grows suspicious when home alone.

Regardless of whether Apatow himself has ever wished his wife dead, the sentiment is not so outlandish. According to the National Marriage and Divorce Rate Trends for 2000-2010, about half of all marriages in the United States end in divorce. Despite this frequency, there is still a stigma attached to divorce. Perhaps because of this stigma, Apatow's characters choose not to fantasize about divorce, but widowhood.

"There's no failure involved," said Benjamin Karney, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he also conducts research at the Marriage Lab. "They all have an unstated fear of screwing up, and of taking responsibility for failure." Karney compared it to people who fantasize about suicide. "People like to think, 'That person will miss me and regret treating me so poorly.'"

There are few options available for married people: Put in the work it takes to get through difficult times, don't put in the work and suffer through a bad marriage, or initiate a separation. If one member of the couple dies, however, there is no choice to be made: They can escape their partners and be blameless.

Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown, said the dialogue remind her of a joke her mother enjoyed telling. When asked if she ever contemplated divorce during 71 years of marriage, "She loved to say, 'Murder, yes, but not divorce.'"

Tannen wrote the book, You Just Don't Understand: Men and Women in Conversation, which spent nearly four years on the New York Times bestseller list and, 22 years later, is still assigned in universities and therapists' offices around the world. "I see them frustrated by the same old things, and the extreme expression of that frustration is murder," Tannen said. "They're putting things into words that normally aren't said, and I'm sure the audience will laugh."