THE New Normal

[JoeKv99]

...is quite possibly the worst show ever on TV...And I saw "My Mother the Car." It sucks so bad it made the stupid commercials in it look like Downton Abbey. And Andrew Rannels looks like an elephant stepped on his face.

Everyone involved should be ashamed and enter a convent under a vow of silence to atone.

I'm going to go take ANOTHER shower.

[SNAFU]

Saw the pilot on Hulu and agree with you 110%. Perhaps Utah banned it not beause they hate Gays but because they have some taste.

To this day I remember My Mother the car and the episode where she had to prove she could stop on a dime!

[FindingNamo]

I never saw The Book of Mormon, but on the Tony performance I thought Andrew R was very likeable. Is he being directed to be unlikeable in this? I took an instant dislike to him. Like the way I did the first time the visage of Justin Kirk appeared on a screen in front of me.

Rannell's speaking voice is really grating. The guy who plays his partner doesn't have a pleasant speaking voice either. Perhaps my antipathy is the result of the two required speech and voice and articulation classes at college. I think the rest of the cast is likeable.

This is not the worst show I have ever seen by far. I will give episode two a chance.

[Wynbish]

I didn't think of it as that bad, but I'm a biased Georgia King fan. I just wish there was more comedy and less "we are good! Think like us!"

[strummergirl]

That little girl inhibiting Little Edie. So pandering but so great.

I am concerned about Murphy thinking he is Norman Lear. Barkin and NeNe are so set up as Archie and Cousin Maude but I cannot take the racial jokes even for the sake of tension.

[FindingNamo]

Episode two made me laugh more than the pilot. The voices of the gay guys are going to give me a seizure like that guy with Mary Hart. Not Kramer, but the real life one.

I thought the flashback scenes were great. I thought Little Edie was great. I think the Reese Witherspoon gal is much more realistic and likable than the real Reese Witherspoon.

I think the dumb ex-husband/boyfriend has been done to death recently. I don't mind the Ellen Barkin material, and she sells it. I am sure they will drop the direct addresses to the camera faster than you can say "Sex & The City Season 1."

[PalJoey]

I loved My Mother the Car. I can still sing the theme song--from memory, not from Googling the lyrics:

Ever-body knows in a second life
We all come back, sooner or later!
As ever-thing from a pusSycat
To a man-eating alligator!

Now you might tink this story
Is more fiction than it's fact,
But b'lieve it or not,
My mother dear
Decided she'd come back!

As a car!
She's my very own guiding star!
A nineteen twenty-eight Porter!
That's my mother dear!
She helps me through
Ever-thing I do,
And I'm so glad she's here!
My mother, the car!
My mother, the car!

Oh, and I thought the first two episodes of The New Normal were funny. I love Andrew Rannells

[Bettyboy72]

It's ok. I'd like to see a middle class gay couple for once. I think part of the reason gay people have a PR problem in society is they are always expected to be trendy, witty, fey, wealthy, and snotty. Still don't care for Rannells character.

"Come live in our beautifully appointed guest house total stranger with child and racist, homophobic psychotic grandmother."

Meh.

It's definitely a cute show but it's cloying. Heteros will eat it up because it's safe enough for them.

[FindingNamo]

We can thank The Advocate for the creation of the wealthy/disposable income myth.

[Dollypop]

With sitcoms you have to give them time to do all the exposition--and that often takes a few episodes. For the most part the cast is good. Now the show has to decide whether it's going to be a comedy or a perpetual sermon on equality.

I'll give it a few more viewings.

[EricMontreal22]

I'ma little surprised that it seems to be getting fairly good reviews--the take in the other thread about it on here seemed to show more people disliking it than liking it... http://broadwayworld.com/board/readmessage.php?thread=1050180&boardname=off&dt=43&boardid=2

I can't really blame Rannells. I have noidea how he could possibly play the role, as written, and make it appealing.

"Now the show has to decide whether it's going to be a comedy or a perpetual sermon on equality. "

I guess my problem with Ryan Murphy's writing on equality, is I don't buy it. He is obsessed with it, and showing how everyone is different, etc, but like with Glee he wants people to laugh at stereotypes in a kinda mean spirited way, and still feel good about themselves for embracing equality (jokes like in the pilot when the little person speaks about choosing to have a child and then drives off in a toy car--that's just dumb). If his shows were truly politically incorrect, equal opportunity comedies, I think the message he wants could still go through and the tone would be more consistant--or do a sentimental "we're all the same" series, but mixing the two just doesn't work for me. It's like on Glee when he spends half an episode making jokes about a repulsive Jewish stereotype, and then at the end of the episode lectures the audience not to judge people by such stereotypes.

[FindingNamo]

I'm sick to death of the exposition argument. The plot has been completely understandable since before the first episode aired. Modern Family, for one, had a perfectly constructed pilot.

[Dollypop]

Well if you ARE "sick to death" of the exposition argument, maybe you'll watch it again and drop dead in front of the television.

[Jon]

God, what an annoying show. The kid doing Little Edie was funny for 30 seconds. Barkin is over the top. Rannells makes Sean Hayes on Will & Grace look understated.

[ZiggyCringe]

I thought it was funny. I'm not sure "Middle America" even knew who little Edie was, but I laughed my butt off at that (really terrific little actress) doing a spot-on Little Edie impersonation.

I'm also impressed that Ryan seems to not care anymore. Boys can kiss on TV, and (although Salt Lake City and the mormons aren't airing it), everyone else is, with no protests. The "New Normal" really is the New Normal.

I feel like a gay Virginia Slims ad. We've come a long way, baby!!!

[EricMontreal22]

The exposition argument doesn't mean much to me either--Dolly, I don't mean to pick on you, but I'm curious why you think sitcoms need more leeway with their pilots than dramas? I always thought the basic premise of sitcoms traditionally can be set up in the first 5 mins... Granted, watching the second episode today, I realized I'm still confused by some things (so she IS married to that idiot who always cheats on her--I assumed he was just a boyfriend? Is he the father or not?), I guess I'm not watching close enough.

Rannell's said on Fallon that the girl actress was the one who showed Ryan Murphy her impression as she was such a fan of the Grey Gardens musical, so he wrote it in. I think it went on way too long, as well--and it seemed like they had to spend too much time explaining it to the audience (when One Life to Live did their Grey Gardens parody, they just assumed people would get it or wouldn't and left it at that :P ).

Ryan Murphy has said the show is loosely based on his life and his attempts to have a child with his husband, which kinda worries me. In the same piece he said that the two main characters *are* essentially Kurt and Blain from Glee all grown up--which says it all.

[Dollypop]

Eric, "exposition" is really essential if we're going to know who the characters are and how they will relate to one another. I really think it takes a few weeks for all the pieces to fit together and for that "well-oiled" machine to start functioning the way it should. I recall the first episode of "Welcome Back, Kotter" as being rather disjointed, but after a few weeks it became a really good show. The same is true for "Will and Grace". The very first episode had nothing to recommend it (other than the gorgeousness of Eric McCormack), but a few weeks into its run, Karen's voice became higher and the ball really started to roll.

[wickedfan]

I'll give Murphy credit. The second episode was better than the first. Only slightly, though. Barkin went from being the only highlight of the pilot to being one of the many things I can't stand. I don't blame her, though. Her character is so awfully one note. Rannells, meanwhile, has done the opposite (going from one of the things I couldn't stand to being one of the few highlights).

There was a ton more heart to this episode, it wasn't nearly as cynical. I feel like that helped with the humor (at least when Barkin wasn't on screen). Plus, that little girl does a DAMN good Little Edie. Like, 2050 Grey Gardens revival good.

[SonofRobbieJ]

I guess I stand alone in my praise of Andrew Rannells.

During the first minutes of the series, we see him become genuinely overwhelmed with emotion when he's recording that video to his child. I think that bought him a lot of leeway in the characterization going forward. He can go relatively far out because (like he did so masterfully in BoM) he grounded it in a deep truth. I also appreciate that the gay couple treat each other kindly.

Though I certainly don't think it's the best show on television, I don't understand the vitriol...unless it's just Ryan Murphy backlash.

My Mother the Car? Whigga, please.

[JoeKv99]

Sitcoms need exposition- as the TV Genius Sherwood Schwartz once said "Puzzled people cannot laugh." My Mother the Car handled all that exposition in a song- as did the Brady Bunch or Gilligan's Island. Thirty seconds and BLAMMO here's the show.

And who has a fully furnished, impeccably appointed, recently remodeled two bedroom guest house standing empty? Ryan Murphy isn't even trying to be realistic. You might as well give the gay boys a spaceship and a time machine and make this show interesting.

[SonofRobbieJ]

^ I know several people who do. They're rich. Which is what these characters are. We can argue that it perpetuates the myth that all gays are white and rich (an argument I'm not unsympathetic to), but a fully furnished guest house in LA is actually not that unheard of. At all.

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

The characters are just so incredibly unlikable and unrealistic! And I'm not exactly sure what we're supposed to think of Rannells' character, he's not funny enough or ridiculous enough for us to think he's out of his mind (in the way that we always knew that Megan Mullally's Karen Walker was totally nuts), but he also has no complexity whatsoever. I also didn't buy at all that these two people would be a couple, even with that terrible flashback they did last night. And seriously, they have a two-bedroom "guest house"? Who are these people?
The best comedies have brilliant ensembles: SEINFELD, FRIENDS, WILL & GRACE, SEX & THE CITY, ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, MODERN FAMILY, 30 ROCK, etc. This show has awful actors all around, the woman who plays the female lead is so insanely boring and one-note, and who told Nene Leakes she can act? What an unoriginal take on a one-dimensional stereotype of a character. Barkin is great but she's stuck with the poor man's version of Sue Sylvester.
Ryan Murphy is probably the least talented, most successful writer working in Hollywood today, ugh.

[PalJoey]

I guess I stand alone in my praise of Andrew Rannells.

No, you don't. I join you. And I think that opening monologue to the baby was beautifully done, as are many other little moments in which he shows self-awareness of his superficiality.

And, while I agree that the idea of two gay men being rich enough to have a 2-bedroom guesthouse underscores the incorrect notion that all gay men are rich, I happen to know an LA couple who lent their guesthouse to the pregnant mother of their yet-to-be-born-and adopted baby. (However, it was not their sperm and she was not a surrogate. She was a single woman and they arranged to adopt her baby when it was born.)

So the guesthouse thing is real, at least in this one case.

[uncageg]

I watched it last night for the first time. While I didn't find it to be as bad as I thought it might be, I got the feeling that it is trying too hard. Rannells' character was really annoying until the end. I hope that isn't going to be the "formula" for each episode. The best part was the little girl taking on the persona of Little Edie. I saw Rannells on Jimmy Fallon and he said to do it was actually the little girl's idea and they went with it. She was flawless.

[JoeKv99]

Well Robbie I guess the rich are very different from you & me (well, me at least.)

[SonofRobbieJ]

I'm certainly not going to argue that! They are different from me (and, I'm guessing, you). But...the fact of that guest house is not really all that out there for the specifics of this couple (OB-GYN and successful television writer). If I'm ever lucky enough to have a (successful) tv show and need to relocate to LA, I'd certainly buy a house with a guest house similar to what we saw last night. I've actually thought about this. Which is probably some early sign of dementia, but there ya go!