The New Normal

When I delved into my past looking for tv shows I specifically didn't like, I didn't expect so much vitriol. I was supposed to kill this with hours of meditation, art therapy, and religion. So with this, I'm moving back up the scale of Cooper's Likability. Today's show is a show that I surprisingly like. Will I finish season 1? I doubt it. Have I been okay with every episode seen so far? Yeah. I really have.

Yes, there are three pregnant people in this picture.

People.

The biggest jump this show took was the two gay leads. I didn't think it was going to make it. In fact, I was pretty sure this show was going to take a flying leap and land face-first like I think Glee did (in my happy place.) And while one of them is the absolute stereotypical homosexual (that Nowhere was conspicuously absent of), the other is a normal dude who happens to be gay. 

It touches on a lot of issues that normally, would make this show somewhat un-watchable for me. Young sexuality (Shania, the little girl, falls in love with a boy, is kidnapped by her grandmother, along with the boy, and taken to Planned Parenthood) teen pregnancy (two out of the three female leads were teens when they had their kids, the other is a kid), political divisions (the mother is a staunch republican who actually manages to stay just barely likable by being more than just the stereotype I'd expected her to be), and of course, the center of attention is Goldie's surrogate pregnancy for the two gay men. 

I expected this show to run right up to the screen, climb on top of THE BIGGEST soapbox, and start screaming its lungs out. It does have some of that, sure. There are moments you don't expect from this sort of attitude, however. It isn't afraid to swing both ways. That's this show's greatest value. The aforementioned kidnapping ends with the boy's mother being very glad it happened, because she didn't know when she should talk to her son about sex, and it prompted that conversation. 

It isn't exactly funny (rarely does it get laughs from me, in fact), and it isn't exactly great. It may have very well already earned its place in history though, and that's the best reason to give it a go.