NBC’s The New Normal is a delightful show about a not very ordinary gay couple trying to have a surrogate daughter with a strange woman who has an oddball child and an unbelievably bigoted (and funny) grandmother. NeNe Leakes is also somehow involved. As much as it would like us to believe that this is the way the world works today, like most Ryan Murphy shows it is a celebration of the oddities within all of us. Therefore this weekly feature is both a celebration (and indictment) of all the abnormality contained within it.Normal: Shannen Doherty being a bitch, getting in fights, or making weird commercials for online colleges.
Abnormal: Shannen Doherty making lemonade.
Normal: Bryan being a bitch, getting in fights, or making a weird show that looks a lot like Glee
Abnormal: Bryan making lemonade.
Normal: Collecting famous baseballs.
Abnormal: No gay man unironically collects balls.
Normal: Fantasizing about giving your daughter an exotic name.
Abnormal: A white, middle-class gay man fantasizing about giving his daughter the exotic name of an African-American singer.
Normal: Not wanting to make your daughter another “Influential Women” day at her school.
Abnormal: Your child is obsessed with Grey Gardens and has a Little Edie Beale costume in her closet and you don’t even think for a second that maybe that is what she should dress as.
Normal: Not wanting to know the sex of your unborn child.
Abnormal: Finding out that your surrogate mother is having a boy because she used the wrong pronoun in front of you because her misogynistic OB/GYN blurted out to her she’s having a member of the superior gender.
Normal: A father getting excited about having light saber fights with his son.
Abnormal: A father getting excited about having light saber fights with his son and then showing that excitement by doing a Judy Garland leap and putting his hands in front of his mouth. And he’s the butch one?
Normal: Little boys having light saber fights.
Abnormal: Even prissy sissy future gay boys sometimes have light saber fights. Just ask my brothers.
Normal: A 30-something gay man knowing all the words to Cher’s “Half Breed.”
Abnormal: A 20-something straight girl knowing all the words to Cher’s “Half Breed.”
Normal: Gay couples composed of two men.
Abnormal: Gay couples composed of two men, one of whom fulfills all the traditional gender roles of a ’50s sitcom mother.
Normal: Taking your purse wherever you go.
Abnormal: Leaving your purse at a football game in the middle of Los Angeles while you go to get a coffee and asking a gay guy to watch it. How are you even going to pay for your coffee if you have no purse?
Normal: Little boys feeling bad that they used to memorize the TV Guide.
Abnormal: Memorizing the TV Guide is a very useful (if not outdated) skill and it seems to have brought Bryan much success. Why get all upset?
Normal: Being in Arsenic and Old Lace in high school.
Abnormal: Oh wait, every high school in America does Arsenic and Old Lace
Normal: A bunch of tweenaged football players going to their coach’s house for pizza.
Abnormal: A bunch of tweenaged football players going to a gay couple’s home for pizza when those gay men are not their coaches and they are not supervised. Who remembers Penn State?
Normal: Having a mural in your nursery.
Abnormal: Having a mural of creepy circus animals that look like they will devour a baby in your nursery.
Follow Brian Moylan on Twitter @BrianJMoylan
[Photo Credit: Fox]
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