New weekly covered shows

Due to us deciding to binge Vegas after season one is finished and us dropping The New Normal, we have added Modern Family, How I Met Your Mother, and The Office to our weekly shows. Modern Family is never going away (see: Emmy wins even in its worst season), How I Met Your Mother is popular and requested on this blog, and The Office premiere was pretty good. Plus, it's the last season and the old showrunner is back, promising to earn viewers' attention again. We'll give them a chance.

The New Normal- Baby Clothes

Pic By Nick Step (http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickstep/5923245617/) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

This episode needed to move forward from establishing premise and message. It didn’t. We feel like this show would be a better movie. Where are they going from here? At some point, won’t they repeat all the jokes? We liked the pilot because it was funny and entertaining, but since then, we’ve been getting bored watching this “controversial” show do all the things that better shows have done before it. What this show is doing is not completely working. It belongs on televisions ten years ago. 

This week, Bryan bought Shania a shirt that showed her stomach, so a boy in her school took notice of her. Grandma found them making out in a closet and raised hell. She got the boy’s parent to talk to him about sex, and she got Goldie to realize that she needed to protect her daughter’s innocence. Bryan bought clothes for the baby, but David wanted to wait to do that until all the tests were in and they were sure the baby would be healthy and brought to term. Finally, he caved.

Also, a mean man in a fanny pack started berating David and Bryan for being gay in public. David and Goldie ignored it, and Bryan yelled back with some pretty good comebacks. At the gym, David cracked and punched a fellow gay guy for making fun of a mentally retarded person who turned out to be a bigot himself. Jeez! People are NOT that mean outside of a frat house or high school football team, are they? The most homophobic person we know is still nice and friendly to gay people’s faces. We know there are some real jerks, but they aren’t around every corner like in this show. Right?

The only thing we loved was the fact that Bryan confronted the bigot in a frog hat. We want one of those hats. We also liked that the grandma was right about something, for once, and that she’s seemed to have thawed a little toward the boys. If we were David, we wouldn’t have had the clothes taken back. Keep them boxed up and store them until the day comes. 

There weren’t that many good one-liners in the episode. The episode seemed to be telling us that ignoring hate isn’t good enough. We think it’s the best option. What do they want? Rules against it in local gyms? Actually, that’s not a bad idea. And we agree that you should stand up for your friends when you see hicks hating on them. But really, there’s not much else you can do. At this point, we only love Shania and the actor playing Bryan.

The show had its protagonist defend a mentally retarded person from being made fun of…after the show made fun of the mentally retarded person. Yep, that’s how you know it’s the same creator who did Glee. Redheads, babies with Downs, babies with defects, CNN anchors, people with tattoos, and people who take the bus are also targets for this show’s jokes. We like the lack of political correctness, but on a show that preaches political correctness for one group, it doesn’t fit.

Also, the tone was really uneven. Post-Modern Family. Will and Grace, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, this show isn't needed. What would better serve gay people are shows like Grey's Anatomy grafting in gay characters who are just normal people who love each other, rather than stereotypes. You can't hate Callie and Arizona. You just can't. Also, movies like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang having gay men who are just a lot of straight men. It needs to be not a big deal. It needs to actually be treated as the new normal, emphasis on the normal. Also, these mainstream shows reach your audience that needs to be softened. The New Normal preaches to the choir. 

Ryan Murphy is stuck in the past. He needs to focus on projects like American Horror Story. We love when his shows get preachy about beauty and that industry. That's the issue that's still an issue in the media. The media is defending gay people right and left. The first season of Murphy's Nip/Tuck made Ern not ever want to have plastic surgery. She was a teen when she watched it. That's a good job well done, making a teenage girl go, "Oh...looks really aren't that important." Don't worry Ryan, if we ever meet the fanny pack-wearing dude who hurt your feelings, we'll punch him for you. 

We don't see things changing, so we are nixing this show from our schedules. We've replaced it with the upcoming Chicago Fire for now.

Episode grade: D

The New Normal - Sofa’s Choice

Pic By Nick Step (http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickstep/5923245617/) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The pilot won us over, but can the second episode keep us? It’s not like this TV show is breaking ground with its nontraditional family. Modern Family has already done it. The shows are different in that Cam and Mitchell are a gay couple that are difficult not to love, and the show treats them as if they are normal. You can ignore the show or not. It is doing its own thing whether you approve of a “lifestyle” or not. It doesn’t care what you think.

On this show, characters are constantly pointing out that the gay couple is abnormal and the show goes out of the way to send the message that if you don’t like them, you’re a bigot. We like the way Modern Family does it better, but you have to admit that The New Normal mines the situation’s humor more by having Bigot Grandma deliver Sue Sylvester-style insults. We need this show to get less preachy and just do its thing though, or it’s going to date itself. The show should be less self-righteous for something that revels in stereotypes about gay men.

No one had to explain the Grey Gardens reference to us. That girl had it DOWN. We wish the writers had given Goldie a different dream. Hers depresses us. Goldie has four years of college and three years of law school. What is she going to do to feed her kid in the meantime? If she takes a job on top of that, it will be tough to spend time with her kid, let alone maintain a social life as well. Shania will be in her teens by the time Goldie can provide for her. Favorite line: “Those fruits are like cannibals. All they eat is fruit.”

Episode grade: B

New show - The New Normal, pilot

Pic By Nick Step (http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickstep/5923245617/) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

There’s another show up early on hulu.com! This is a Ryan Murphy show. Oh yay! That means the first season is going to be really good and it will only start sucking next year! On this show, Bryan Collins is like a grown Kurt Hummel. His partner is David Murray, a doctor and sports lover. He’s the level-headed one in the relationship. Nene Leakes is an assistant or something working for them. We’re so glad she’s on this show. She’s surprisingly funny and good as an actress. She isn’t great, but she has an amusing way about her. Bryan is making a videos for his future child. He says, “This video is to show you how desperately you were wanted and how much we love you.” He sells the line and we tear up.

David and Bryan meet Goldie Clemmons, a single mom whose man just cheated on her. Her daughter is Shania Clemons, and they also have a racist grandma named Jane Forrest. The grandma is played by Ellen Barkin, who has really aged since we last saw her. But we should be so lucky to look that good at 58. We loved Goldie’s reaction when she caught her man cheating. We also like little Shania’s reaction to her great-grandmother: “Nana, you’re a bigot. I’m unfriending you right now.” Shania is not annoying at all. She’s a sweet little nerd child. Sometimes she’s too wise for her years to be believable. Like in the beach scene.

Goldie dreamed of being a lawyer before she became pregnant at 15. “I wanted to be a lawyer. Wear expensive suits, be independent, and not need a man.” Oh, honey. Being a lawyer is more work and more stressful than pleasing a man. Fact. If you want to argue with us, Erm will take off her clothes and make a sandwich while you do 40 hours of research and then stand in front of someone, be it boss, client, or judge, who will probably end up yelling at you. At least raising kids gets you JOY. Goldie decides to become a surrogate mom to carry David and Bryan’s baby, much to her grandmother’s disdain. We liked the grandma character. It’s not cartoonish. Honestly, we know enough people like that to be able to say that real bigots are actually WORSE.

We don’t like the show’s title. It’s more of a political point and persuasive phrase than a title. We know this show is making the point that straight people sometimes have babies as an accident before they are ready and while they are still children. Gay couples plan, want, work, and fully prepare for their children. The argument makes a heck of a lot of sense. The show is funny. Remember Sue Sylvester’s best one-liners? Ryan Murphy stopped giving them to her and put them on this show instead. We didn’t like all the jokes about how they don’t want a fat child. Gwyneth Paltrow guest starred as the egg donor who “looks a lot like Gwyneth Paltrow.”

At the end of the episode, Bryan and David wait for the results of a take-home pregnancy test and present Goldie with a present. They want to help make her dreams come true too. They picked out a blue suit for her to wear when she is a lawyer. For court, you want to go for black or grey. Nothing attention-getting or cute. But she could wear the blue one around the office. Maybe. The episode ends on a cliffhanger. We don’t know if she’s pregnant. We know she will be though, right? We can’t believe someone would boycott this sweet show that isn’t a threat to anyone at all. One of us goes back and forth on the homosexuality issue (and the other firmly supports gay rights), but even Ann Romney can enjoy Modern Family, so we can too. This pilot was cute, funny, well-constructed, and not at all awkward in tone.

Episode grade: A-