The new NBC show The New Normal has had a lot of controversy before a single episode has aired. A Utah affiliate of NBC has refused the air the show, which has caused claims of censorship by some. Some feel it is forcing immoral activities on kids, again being criticized without a single episode being aired.

I just finished watching the first episode of The New Normal. The best way of describing the show is this; imagine the last episode of Will and Grace. Think if someone took that last episode, went eight years into the future with that, then re-imagined slightly the original show. That's what you have with The New Normal.

You have the stable Will, the flamboyant Jack, a ditsy Grace, her child now eight from the last episode, Karen is now Grace's mom and is bitter because she has to work, and Rosario now works for Jack and is black. I guess the last part kind of fits since Jack once married Rosario for her to stay in the country. The premise of the show is David and Bryan (Will and Jack) come to the decision they want to have a baby. Through some minor comic adventures they meet single mom Goldie (Grace) who they feel would be perfect as the surrogate. All seems to be going well until Goldie's mother Jane (Karen) shows up. Despite being a bit intimidated by her mother, and with the encouragement of her eight year old daughter Shania (Grace's baby) she decided to continue being the surrogate for the couple.

There are two glaring problems I have with the show. The first one is just a simple problem of sitcom silliness. According to the premise, Goldie is a waitress in the Midwest, kind of drifting in life. She sees a lesbian couple on the street with a baby. Her mother makes some crude comments (more on that later). When her mother takes her home because she doesn't have her name tag, she sees her boyfriend having sex with another woman. When mom goes to confront the boyfriend about this, Goldie decides, with the encouragement of her daughter, to take the car and drive to California. Meanwhile Bryan is in a department store, sees a baby and decides he wants one. A weak bit of prodding had David agreeing.

A lot of the plot of the pilot has to do with incredibly inconsistent events happening. Bryan see a baby in a department store and think it's good to get one? Even though he has no clue about how to care for a baby. As David says, getting a baby isn't something you can return to Barneys. The eight year old Shania acts like a typical sitcom kid who is far smarter than the adults around them. Bryan's assistant Rocky is the typical sassy mouth black woman who can roll her eyes, swivel her neck and say snappy one liners before leaving the room. Her presence in the show is questionable. The mother, finding out that Goldie took her car and drove to LA, comes out to LA and we have to assume she will now be living out there, thus leaving the Midwest on a whim much like her daughter. We're just supposed to accept semi-rational people do these things.

Speaking of the mother, she is the second problem I have with the show. If you go on YouTube and watch the first season of classic shows like All in the Family, Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons and even Good Times, you might be a bit shocked at the 'spicy' dialog they use in some instances. Let's just say politically correct had a whole different meaning in the 70s. Jane has the mouth of a 70s character, I would say possibly close to Maude, but she is written like a little kid who learned new naughty words and is trying to see what she can get away with. If she were toned down slightly, and by that I mean not trying to use some ethnic or gender slur combination in every sentence it might make for a refreshing character. Characters on those sitcoms in the 70s didn't spout racist or sexist terms every 5 minutes. They might say a word in an episode, which made it nervously funny. By the time Jane meets the gay couple and calls them sausage smokers, it wasn't a shock nor was it funny. She had insulted everyone up to that point, from the lesbian couple at the start of the show, to the Asian girlfriend of Goldie's ex-boyfriend, to the boyfriend and pretty much everyone she met except for the child Shania.

If this had been a fresh show it might have been a better show, but a literal retread of Will and Grace makes The New Normal the Old Boring.