THE New Normal- Page 8

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 9/20/12 at 4:53pm

Oh and PJ's stripping GIF of him is from his cameo role (as a kinda superficial, gay man) in the very funny Bachelerotte. In that context his fat comment, etc, in that film didn't bother me. Actually as the now gay ex boyfriend of the lead in Girls, it doesn't bother me either (Ryan Murphy in that awful Vogue interview says he loves Girls and wish he wrote it--I';m glad he didn't, I could just imagine what it would be like--I wonder if he cast Ranndell based on his small role on that?)

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 9/20/12 at 6:07pm

I didn't understand the "quoting a song from Cabaret" line because she didn't quote a song from Cabaret. She kind of paraphrased it, but if you consider paraphrasing quoting something you could find song lyrics in everything people say. And if you're writing dialogue for someone you could actually have them quote it correctly and not paraphrase it.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 9/20/12 at 6:12pm

I forgot about that but it, of course, drove me crazy! I guess Ryan just assumed he knew his Cabaret by heart when he wrote it, and obviously doesn't. As you say, it wasn't a quote (and even if it was, it's kinda a weird one given the context of the original song in Cabaret). And I won't just chalk it up to trying to make it look like Bryan is an idiot, but I'm sure Murphy would have some excuse like that, if asked.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 9/20/12 at 6:51pm

LOL! I paused the show and looked at my roommate like "Huh?" and we both say there for a minute or two just looking at each other with the little gerbil spinning the wheel in our brains until we got it. At least ONE gay man on the staff should have said something about that.

[Wynbish]

Posted: 9/20/12 at 8:16pm

The ending still bugs me. I know it was supposed to come across as an "aww, Nana and Bryan are bonding" moment, but it really just was a victory for Nana. She's not the only one who thinks/says some of the things she thinks/says! SHE'S the New Normal!

Seriously, it'd be like having an anti-violence show, then joining in some fist-punching at the end.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 9/20/12 at 9:59pm

Welcome to Ryan Murphy's world.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 9/20/12 at 10:06pm

It would have been better if they did an accent and maybe pulled their eyes into slits. Maybe next week!

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 9/20/12 at 10:55pm

Shania really shoulda chimed in with a few "ching ching chongs".

And yeah--it did bother me, and made no sense (even giving the benefit, as someone suggested, that Bryan was merely cutting her off showing her that he already knew the punchline and so it was a tired and old offensive joke--but Murphy's not that subtle). But as said, that's exactly what Murphy does when he deals with "real" issues.

[Addison D.]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 10:27pm

Good (as in well-conceived) bad review of 'The New Normal' from Phillip Maciak at Slant.com.

"If, however, the pilot ended with a title card that read, "Paid for by Americans for Mitt Romney," it wouldn't necessarily be surprising. All the teary-eyed monologues about love would be revealed as the seductively faulty logic of the depraved, and we would realize that we're supposed to be identifying with the bigoted grandmother played by Ellen Barkin the whole time. Instead, The New Normal is a nominally progressive comedy with more gay jokes and regular old racism than Gallagher's stand-up act."


Slant magazine review

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 10:39pm

When Barkin's character calls Bryan a "salami smoker," should we laugh? It's the only joke in that space, and, tonally, it doesn't seem like Murphy wants us to cringe. When she says a lesbian couple looks like "two ugly men," is it meant as gritty realism? Short of providing a laugh track, every one of these bon mots is set up as a laugh line, and I think it's fair to ask why. Is The New Normal really so cynical that it either feels viewers (a) can only handle a gay couple glazed in orthodox bigotry or (b) will take laughs any way it can get them? What's worse is not necessarily the jokes themselves, which are fairly banal homophobic slurs, but that the series presents them to us with such eagerness and pride.

Thanks for posting this. It really speaks to almost exactly how I feel about this show.

[Addison D.]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 10:56pm

Yeah--me too.

I am not as familiar as some of you guys seem to be with Murphy's entire oeuvre. I watched 'Will & Grace' primarily for Megan Mullally, but I was rarely offended by the show--just a little bored when Karen was off-screen. I'm not a faithful consumer of 'Glee', but I have seen some episodes--or at lest scenes--that I found deeply moving, maybe more for the fact that I'm amazed and grateful that I 'lived to see the day' etc. than for any finesse or nuance in the writing.

But neither of them prepared me for the banality, offensiveness and sheer bad taste of 'the New Normal' The link and posts earlier in the thread regarding the show's use of Lesbians as an easy target for humor were, I think, spot on. It's all well and good for us (gay men) to joke about the mullets and the fanny packs in the privacy of real life. But to teach America that Lesbians are an acceptable target for humor is just SO not cool.

[Addison D.]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 10:59pm

Phyllis---I just went back and realized that YOU posted the link that I liked so much to the review which commented on the Lesbian "humor".


We appear to just be preaching back and forth to each other...

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 9/22/12 at 12:32pm

That's fantastic--and exactly how I feel.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 9/22/12 at 12:36pm

Me too, I'm afraid. And this sums up perfectly my response to Rannells's character:

"I could go on at greater length about how dismally the charming, if maybe too theatrical in this context, Rannells is wasted on the gay stereotype he's asked to play. (Bill Hader's Stefon on Saturday Night Live is arguably a more nuanced queer character.) For example, Rannells's Bryan decides he wants to have a child when he sees a cute one at Barney's. He wants to have a baby the same way he wants to buy a pair of designer pedal-pushers. Gays are so funny. I hope they achieve marriage equality!"

Obviously the fault is Murphy's more than Rannells's, but that's why I don't share the attraction that so many on this thread feel for him.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 9/22/12 at 3:39pm

As a gay man, I do feel something of an obligation to take a look at our portrayals in entertainment, especially on network tv shows that have huge media blitzes. Sure, I have my anti-Ryan Murphy biases, but it's not like I'm not up front about them. I wish I could like this (and plenty of other shows/movies I swim against the tide on) but for the may reasons I've outlined, I just can't get on board. But this, like Glee before it, just seems to be throwing out so much nonsense and stereotype (that it wants so hard to be "anti-stereotype").

As for Rannells, I like him in his Book of Mormon performances, but the only other things I've seen him in are this and Girls (well, that and Bachelorette). And I did not like Girls, either (for reasons I outlined in the Girls thread, not just because other people liked it), and I didn't like him on that, either. Like New Normal, I think that show is just about a bunch of people in various shades of awful.


Updated On: 9/22/12 at 03:39 PM

[canmark]

Posted: 9/22/12 at 6:44pm

Just watched episode 2 online, and I thought it was pretty good (loved Shania doing Little Edie!). It's a half-hour sitcom, after all, and I think people want it to be more than it is.

Ellen Barkin's character is tiresome to me, but I do like Nene's character.

On to episode 3...

[HoldThatThought]

Posted: 9/24/12 at 8:53pm

I get daily podcasts from npr.org. For those of you interested, they recently did an interview with Rannells. This link is from their weekend update podcast which includes part of the interview with Rannells, Bob Dylan, and a piece on training dogs for search and rescue:

http://www.npr.org/2012/09/22/161550296/fresh-air-weekend-andrew-rannells-bob-dylan

this link is the full interview with Rannells:

http://www.npr.org/2012/09/10/160879686/andrew-rannells-gay-and-serious-in-new-normal

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 9/24/12 at 10:19pm

I heard the whole interview with Rannells and Terri Gross. I wonder if he feels the episodes that have aired have lived up to what he thought the show was trying to do when he read the first script.

[strummergirl]

Posted: 9/24/12 at 11:19pm

Ryan Murphy is an unabashed GIRLS fan which makes a lot of sense. He wishes he created Hannah Horvath (no, seriously when New York Magazine had a show-runners survey, that is who he put as a character he wished came from his mind). I've been waiting for the GIRLS fandom to spill over into the New York scenes of GLEE, but not yet except for maybe the fact Kurt and Rachel got an apartment in Bushwick even though they are taking classes and jobs in Manhattan, but Brooklyn is its own cliche at this point and Glee is in its vortex of reality bending in ways it one-ups itself episode to episode. Andrew's character Elijah in that is like night and day compared to this even if his sexuality being sort of obvious in GIRLS was a joke touched upon multiple times.

The Show-runner's survey Murphy did also notes his affection for Norman Lear sitcoms which I think he is really trying to do here and he seemed to liken his relatives to Norman Lear characters in the Vogue article that also served as inspiration for this show and clearly his other works.

Edit: Let me also note that I am a fan of GIRLS too but I can see what Ryan liked about it and think, 'I wish I wrote that.'. I agree with Eric though that there is no way he could have executed the scenes or written the scenes the way Lena Dunham did. Updated On: 9/24/12 at 11:19 PM

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 9/24/12 at 11:35pm

I was one of the people who made a fuss about HBO putting on yet another show with four white women, YET AGAIN, and then Jordan pointed out nobody was holding a gun to my head making me watch it. I realized he was right and never watched another episode and I think my life is better for it. I did like the clip Gross played of Rannells on the show though.

I think one of the problems with The New Normal is that a guy in his early-30s is the mouthpiece for a creator 12 years older than him. It all sounds a little off.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 9/25/12 at 12:26am

Maybe Ryan should watch more of this instead of GIRLS:

http://youtu.be/AlFCKZkeBrg

[ljay889]

Posted: 9/25/12 at 9:56pm

Tonight's writing is nauseating.

[NYadgal]

Posted: 9/25/12 at 9:57pm

Well, that episode was subtle.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 9/25/12 at 10:58pm

It's like watching Opposite World Julia Sugarbaker written by Opposite World Linda Bloodworth-Thompson. I mean, I totally reject the false equivalencies that the script let Ellen Barkin get away with and I really loathed the straw man anti-abortion argument ("Goldie wouldn't BE HERE!") which any but the most vapid person can shoot down. Ergo, it was not shot down by any of the characters.

Having said all that, I laughed. But I still feel as if it's not coming from a place I trust in the way I trust Partners is. For now.

[NYadgal]

Posted: 9/25/12 at 11:03pm

I laughed, too. Despite myself.