The New Normal

There's a lot of things I used to believe I wouldn't see in my lifetime.  Things that have happened in my lifetime.  As a child growing up in the 70's I never thought I would see the Berlin Wall fall, the U.S.S.R. dissolve, being openly gay in the military, an African American becoming president, and gay marriage (at least for a short time in California).  This week, a new show premieres on NBC, called "The New Normal", a show about a gay couple that want to have a child through surrogacy.  For those of you that may not have seen it, this isn't the first attempt to put surrogacy on prime time.  Ming Na starred in a very short-lived series called "Inconceivable", a medical drama about a surrogacy firm, that helped gay couples become parents (patterned after the surrogacy firm we used).

"The New Normal" is supposed to be a comedy, which doesn't at first glance seem to bode well for such a serious topic.  And the surprise here, for me anyway, is that the topic is the experience I've tried to document in this blog, about the process of becoming a parent as a gay couple.  I was a little taken aback at how lightly  some of the very serious topics were played in the pilot episode.  It was a very heart wrenching process for us, to select an egg donor, and to have it played as joke just seemed wrong.  I think also the Ellen Barkin character while, she does show how bigoted, homophobic, and racist people can be, isn't as funny as they want her to be, and I found too many of the scenes contrived just to show her as bigoted, homophobic or racist.

But the good news is by the second episode, they were able to breathe a little bit of life into the characters. They're still a little single dimensional, but it's improving, and I might actually like some of them by the third or fourth episode.  The challenge will be to keep a mainstream audience interested for that long.

But as I said when I started this blog article, there are certain things I didn't think I'd see in my lifetime.  A show that actually shows what I went through in my life to become a parent was certainly one of them.