Should You Watch “The New Normal”?
Ryan Murphy and Ali Adler’s “The New Normal,” a sitcom about a married gay couple who hire a single mom as their surrogate, premiered last night before settling in to its usual 9:30 pm tonight. I watched the first episode. I laughed once or twice, usually at reactionary remarks uttered by the Ellen Barkin character, the grandmother of the surrogate. The gay couple consists of David, patient and wise, while the other dude, Bryan, is TV’s gay usual, a white Yuppie clotheshorse who wants to buy a baby like he’d buy a gossip rag at the supermarket check-out. White and well-groomed is apparently the only kind of same-sex union with which network TV is still comfortable.
