The ‘new normal’ is boring

When I first heard the creator of Glee was producing a new television show about a gay couple and their quest of a baby, I was equally impressed and skeptical.

While having gay characters on TV is not groundbreaking, portraying two gay men as a family unit is still a new concept.

Yes, for years, we’ve been laughing along with Mitchell and Cameron on Modern Family. The duo has won the hearts of millions of Americans, but their relationship is not the foundation of the show, and it has not been without controversy. For those of you who weren’t paying attention or who might have forgot, many LGBT critics cried foul when it became evident Mitch and Cam were not nearly as – or not at all – publically affectionate as their straight counterparts.

It was later revealed Mitchell was uncomfortable with PDA.

So here we are, four seasons of Modern Family later, and Ryan Murphy has declared there is a new normal in America and their names are – oh wait, I can’t remember their names.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m ecstatic NBC has given its approval to a series about two men who love each other – and show it often in each episode. They’re handsome and committed. They’re rich and sophisticated. They’re successful and cultured. They’re perfect.

And that is exactly the problem.

The gay couple (the main characters, the new normal) is as forgettable as a cul-de-sac in Highlands Ranch.

What makes matters worse is that this is not the case with the supporting cast of Goldie, Shania and Nana (or Jane).

Goldie is a third generation teen-mother with a deadbeat husband. Shania is the quirky kid and moral compass, and Nana is the overprotective – and bigoted – grandmother who just wants to protect her family but goes about it all wrong.

It’s as if the gay couple – their names are Bryan and David (thanks, Google) – were an afterthought. Maybe this is Ryan Murphy’s sinister plot. Make every quality about the gay couple as boring and mundane so that people not only forget the characters, but also their sexuality.

“Look, honey, that couple is just as boring as us,” a husband in Ohio says.

“They’re gay? I just thought the well dressed woman had a deep voice.”

Instead of celebrating their unique qualities, their hardships, their victories, and instead of making Bryan and David broken, Ryan Murphy has made them overused hollow clichés.

Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting for a moment that Bryan and David should go around waiving a Pride flag – the exact opposite. We need to have some emotional, memorable response to their plight of wanting to be a family. Not a gay family, but a family. My heart broke for Goldie, not Bryan and David, when it was suggested she might not be pregnant.

At times, I believe it’s Goldie who wants the Murray-Collins family more than the Murray-Collins family. Bryan, it seems, just wants to shop for baby clothes and talk sass with his assistant (NeNe Leakes).

Maybe I’m being too harsh. We’re only five episodes in, and the story arcs are showing progress. We’ve seen Bryan’s and David’s progressive beliefs and race relations challenged. We’ve learned about David’s overprotective mother and Bryan’s strained relationship with her and his own.

I want The New Normal to work, and the series has been picked up for a full season. But in the cutthroat world of TV, one bad week could spell doom for what could be a poignant game-changer.

Our community, closer than ever to relationship recognition and broad cultural acceptance, needs characters on TV who not only accurately portray our struggles as gay men and women, but also as fathers, sons, mothers and daughters. We need to be shown in the larger context of society, in the larger context of the family unit.

That’s why Mitch and Cam work so well on Modern Family.

Our community has been through Stonewall, the AIDS crisis, DOMA and is now entering a post-modern-modern-family era. We live in a state where one in every four self-reported gay and lesbian couples is raising children. And that number is expected to climb every year.

Ryan Murphy is right, there is a new normal in America, in Colorado. I just don’t know if his TV show is it.