From the twisted imagination that spawned the pro-gay high school show “Glee” comes another new sitcom that is poised to take the gay agenda even further. Aptly-named “The New Normal,” the show depicts a gay couple’s quest to have a child via a surrogate mother and the awful conservative grandmother who dares oppose them.
The show premieres on NBC in September, but it already shows the stamp of its conservative-hating creator Ryan Murphy. The show sets up a typical TV comparison. The gay couple in the show is portrayed as loving. And the “small-minded” grandmother who is against her granddaughter serving as their surrogate mom has “Callista Gingrich” hair, is a “bigot” and must be from the South. Throw in pro-Obama comments and you have a show.
Actress Georgia King will play the ‘gay friendly’ surrogate mother who dreams of a better life with more money. She underlines the show’s theme when she says she has no qualms about her unborn child growing up in a non-traditional family. “A family is a family,” she said in the trailer while the couple is shown in bed. “And love is love.”
The series will follow a gay couple, played by Andrew Rannells (“Book of Mormon”) and Justin Bartha (“The Hangover”) on their quest to start a family together. In search for the perfect candidate, they are told by an adviser that whomever they pick is nothing more than an “easy bake oven, with no legal rights to the cupcake.”
Initial press for the show has been generally favorable, despite awkward promotional stills that feature male characters with baby bumps. Lesley Goldberg of “The Hollywood Reporter” predicted “Modern Family” like success for it down the line because of character similarities. “The New Normal's duo could be a window into the early years of their Modern Family counterparts,” she said.
The grandmother, played by veteran actress Ellen Barkin, gives Murphy a chance to target conservatives and therefore is portrayed as a callous and homophobic bigot. This is evident throughout the trailer. Not only does she admit to thinking her own daughter was a “fibroid tumor,” but she goes out of her way to offend the only black character in the show played by NeNe Leakes of “Real Housewives of Atlanta.”.
Barkin’s character was initially confused meeting Leakes’ character and adamantly opposed the involvement of a black woman in the process of impregnating her grand daughter. Leakes’ character responded by bashing opponents of the gay agenda. “Last time I checked it was 2012,” she said. “So why don’t you take your Callista Gingrich hair cut and your racist mind back to the past or the South where it belongs.”
Murphy, the openly gay creator of “Glee,” “Nip/Tuck” and “American Horror Story” has publically expressed his aspirations to push past the boundaries of sex depiction on television. Even “Glee,” once called a “nonpartisan funfest” by Tim Goodman of the “San Francisco Chronicle,” consistently put its teenage characters in explicit situations. Sex and violence were far more prevalent in “Nip/Tuck” and “American Horror Story.”
As the website explains about “The New Normal,”: “These days, families come in all forms - single dads, double moms, sperm donors, egg donors, one-night-stand donors... It's 2012 and anything goes.” It’s a Ryan Murphy propaganda show. Anything goes is correct.