Patrice Greanville

If you like to wallow in the most absurd and actually offensively stupid form of escapist television, not merely sprinkled but crammed with clichés; if you think an affluent, self-centered, insular gay couple’s tediously trivial bourgeois concerns are the stuff of great comedy (or drama); if you think clueless direction can salvage SNL type tasteless repartee…then NBC’s “The New Normal” (TNN) may just be the ticket for you. 

Frankly, I came to this much ballyhooed NBC outing expecting a bit more, not a great deal, of course, knowing full well that great television is rare these days, a medium where the bankruptcy of our pasteurized version of reality dominates all channels.  I watch Bravo’s “Real” Atlanta Housewives, and I do get a fair share of laughs—especially now that the “Booty Video War” between the alternatively unjustifiably insecure and egomanic Kenya Moore and wily, capitalistic Phaedra Parks has taken off…and where Nene Leakes and her outsize personality constitute one of the main draws.  RHoA has some redemptive value. If nothing else, it is an unwitting window for amateur political anthropologists into an unknown territory for whites, the vapidity of an emergent Black bourgeoisie, indistinguishable in all major disgusting aspects from its similarly revolting white model.

Since Nene, never shy of superlatives about her own progress, has been proclaiming for a while that “she has arrived,” that she’s now “rich” (her innocence in this regard is touching) and a “star”, we were a bit concerned. We like Nene, she’s frank, and would not want her to fall flat on her face.  But what we saw on The New Normal did not give us much hope for the longevity of this show…unless the incomprehensible taste of American audiences once again proves us wrong and the show becomes a phenomenal success. Nene can act, or, rather, she can play Nene rather well, but then again not much is required from a show that prefers base histrionics to actual performance. And her character, Rocky, is clearly still in development. But the crucial flaw is TNN’s sheer mediocrity. From the word go The New Normal rings brutally insincere, again, hardly surprising for American television, so often willing to portray an insouciant, pampered existence supposedly defining the life of the hoi polloi in the good ole United States. But its capital sin, deeply woven into its fabric, is that TNN is terminally unfunny. Yes, folks. Contrary to what many PC critics adduce to justify their dislike (see comments below), TNN is not so much offensive as it is boring.  In its present configuration—promotional noise aside— The New Normal doesn’t even cut it as defensible escapism.

Are we being too nasty? Other critics share our doubts. Ross Bonaime, of Pastemagazine.com, observes:

When these characters on The New Normal get large, they don’t become funnier, they become irritating to an almost unbearable level. This week it was the trio of Jane, Rocky and Shania in “The Goldie Rush.” In their story this week, Shania is getting picked on at school, so Jane and Rocky’s solution is that she should take on some tips the two of them learned from a pair of drag queens. If you outdo the other kid’s insults and win, you’ll become the queen bee of the school. Great lesson to teach a kid.

It just seems like the writers of The New Normal decided the best thing to do was team up its two weakest characters with the hopes that this will increase their likeability. There’s no real reason for Rocky and Jane to be BFFs, but here we are, watching them going on their own misadventures and befriending drag queens. It’s such a weird combination of characters, but just throwing them together doesn’t make them any more interesting. 

In the final analysis our core disgust with TNN is largely anchored in the fact that it presents gay people —the same demographic that Hollywood liberals promoted so heavily as a wedge issue, as preternaturally devoid of serious concerns, a harmful stereotype gays have been fighting to shake off for a long time. Unfortunately this is something of a natural choice for the creative vermin that permeates so much imperial television these days.  Have we lost our sense of humour? No. Must everything be weighted down with topical heviosity? Categorically no. But an expensive collective production like a television show, expecting to capture some of the ever scarcer mental focus in a dislocated public mind, should at least work hard to justify its existence.  This in an age —need I remind you—that can be fairly categorized as the end of the line for humanity and planet earth. Squandering mass communications time is simply criminal—and the fact that this is almost the norm does not make it any less criminal. Martini, anyone?

—P. Greanville is TGP’s editor in chief.

It’s not surprising that networks are metaphorically clawing each others’ eyes out to work with Ryan Murphy, the co-creator of “Glee,” “American Horror Story” and his latest effort, “The New Normal.”He’s proven time and again that he’s a master at pushing the media’s buttons and getting coverage for his shows, and the programs themselves reflect his relentless ability to attract eyeballs by any means necessary. Murphy’s shows make a lot of noise, and to nervous networks worried about standing out in a cluttered pop-culture landscape, that quality grows more important every day.But beyond the heat and the hype, is there anything recognizably human in these intentionally provocative shows? Are they merely constructs designed to gin up and savvily exploit controversy, a cycle that Murphy is able to repeat again and again while the networks haul the lucrative results to the bank? Or are his shows merely feedback loops designed to cynically challenge and then confirm viewers’ least charitable impulses?Those questions matter quite a bit when it comes to “The New Normal” (previews at 10 p.m. ET Monday, officially premieres at 9:30 p.m. ET Tuesday on NBC), which Murphy created with Ali Adler. More than any of his previous shows, “The New Normal” rests on the assumption that a broadcast-network sized audience will latch on to the emotional aspirations at the center this comedy, which tells the story of a gay couple and the surrogate they hope will bear a child for them.The thing is, if viewers can’t make real connections with the hopes of these characters, there won’t be any Top 40 songs, latex freaks or plastic-surgery disasters to distract people from that fact (though I wouldn’t rule any of those things out if the comedy’s ratings are weak).On the positive side of the ledger, “The New Normal” does have some witty lines and the cast is solid (attention “Real Housewives” fans: NeNe Leakes is surprisingly good as a supporting character). The comedy is a slickly made piece of entertainment, and the shamelessly sentimental moments aren’t too eyeroll-inducing, thanks mainly to the skills of Georgia King, who plays a Midwestern surrogate named Goldie, and Justin Bartha, who plays David, the quieter half of the lead couple.On the less positive side of the ledger, “The New Normal” features a whole bunch of Murphy standbys, which, if you’ve been following his work since “Nip/Tuck” premiered a decade ago, are starting to seem pretty threadbare.Unsurprisingly, a laundry list of stereotypes are deployed and “abnormals” are mocked throughout “The New Normal’s” first episode; it’s like a season of “Glee” in concentrated form. In the pilot alone, there are disparaging or racist references to Jews, Chinese people, those who aren’t thin and a disabled man; a woman refers to herself as a “whore,” and Leakes’ character comes dangerously close to being a sassy stereotype.There’s no doubt that Andrew Rannells’ character, Bryan, is a compilation of gay stereotypes: He’s fussy, superficial, obsessed with looks, celebrities, dieting, designer clothes, etc. Rannells does what he can with the character, but, in the pilot, the attempts to make Bryan something more than a cardboard cut-out seem half-hearted at best. It’s hard not to fear for Goldie’s potential child, given that Bryan views the acquisition of it as a form of accessorizing.Where “The New Normal” really excels is in deploying questionable or flat-out objectionable attitudes and then (haha! It was just a joke!) “taking them back.” The show gives most of the problematic lines to Ellen Barkin, who plays Goldie’s unrepentant grandmother, Nana. Other characters call Nana on her unpleasant behavior, so it doesn’t matter. Everyone can be bitchy, judgmental and mean, as long as they reveal secret pain later, right?Maybe not. It’s not just that, in the aggregate, all these comments create a mean-spirited tone. Maybe that’s what the show’s creators are after — a cashmere baby blanket wrapped around jungle-red talons. It’s not even that these kinds of moves allow Murphy to both take the underdog’s side and briskly take down the underdog whenever it suits his purposes, which becomes dispiriting over time (and led me to eventually give up on “Glee”).

Ultimately, Murphy’s patented brand of ju-jitsu is tiresome because it’s predictable. Murphy’s creative philosophy seems to revolve around the idea that nothing succeeds like excess, and maybe that’s true when it comes to deploying shocks on “American Horror Story.” But “The New Normal” needs to work in a more linear and emotionally direct fashion, and there’s not much about this NBC pilot, which is fueled by a mixture of cattiness and slick manipulation, that reassures me on that front.

When it became clear that the brittle, idiotic stereotypes of “2 Broke Girls” weren’t part of a passing phase, critics didn’t have a problem bashing that show, but a multi-camera sitcom on CBS may just offer a more tempting target. Also, in fairness, it took some time before it became clear that “2 Broke Girls” not only didn’t want to fix its problems, but didn’t think it had anything to fix. But I wonder how much of a pass “The New Normal” will get; it shouldn’t get much of one if it continues to display a certain kind of sanctimony while frequently being ungenerous and unkind.

We’ll have to see if “The New Normal” doubles down on its uncharitable impulses, but if past is prologue, we’re in for a lot of fat jokes and cruel asides about anyone who isn’t good-looking, well-to-do and white. Chances are a lot of the humor will continue to revolve around Nana’s (tee-hee!) naughty racism, Bryan’s judgmental pronouncements and the aw-shucks naivety of Goldie (what can you expect? She’s from Ohio!).

I get that “The New Normal’s” first duty is to be funny — and it is, at times — but, long-term, it needs viewers to invest in the lives of the central trio. We have to care about what they’re going through for some the humor and all of the pathos to land. But is the show truly interested in exploring emotions beyond token scenes that might as well be labeled, “Here are people having feelings now”? That remains to be seen.

Ryan McGee and I discussed “The New Normal,” “Guys With Kids” and “Sons of Anarchy” in this week’s Talking TV podcast, which is on iTunes and below.