- Network: NBC
- Series Premiere Date: Sep 10, 2012
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Critic Reviews
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[A] witty-but-poignant look at what it means to be a modern family.
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At its best, it plays like a Woody Allen film, something you may notice most when secondary characters stop and explain themselves to the camera.
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Bartha and Rannells's characters display yin/yang neuroses that keep their characters interesting, but as Goldie, the would-be surrogate, Georgia King is unfortunately bland.
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A little bit screechy, a little bit preachy, NBC's The New Normal is nonetheless the best comedy of the season--a season short on innovative comedies.
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This heartwarming show just might become the sitcom success NBC so desperately needs.
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It's fast and funny. As long as Ryan continues to mix humor from the cute and the curdled sides of the aisle, this show will entertain.
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The New Normal finds its game when it's funny without trying so hard and sweet when it should be.
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A fairly promising new show with a lot of humor, solid performances, a snappily written script.
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The color, pace and performance are vibrant, often crazily so. [10 Sep 2012, p.39]
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I'd give The New Normal a slight edge because it's tighter and more assured, but the bigger, odder "Go On" ensemble bears watching too--for a few more episodes, at least.
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It is an arch comedy with a soft heart behind its scrim of fast-paced patter.
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The New Normal is at its funniest when it's most outrageous; other times it feels as if it might have worked better as a one-shot movie than a weekly TV series.
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As you'd expect from co-creator Ryan Murphy (Glee), the tone can wobble from sappy to flamboyantly snarky, but there's a real emotional undercurrent that makes Normal a good fit with Matthew Perry's new sitcom Go On.
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[The} New Normal won't be for everybody, but there's enough here to suggest it can connect with a loyal core, enticing some to stick around and see what develops.
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The New Normal is sweet-natured, in the way the characters mingle their lives together; but the jokes, they are mighty spotty.
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The lack of cynicism is at least a bit unusual in the current sitcom universe, conferring novelty and a genuine, rather than confected, sweetness.
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Go beyond the in-your-face, outrageous title here, and you'll find a somewhat sweet show struggling to create some real laughs.
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The comedy is all over the place in tone, bouncing from broad and silly to poignant and real to silly again.
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NBC's The New Normal has its share of stereotypes and crass jokes that straddle the line of bad taste. But it's also sweet and, dare I say, funny.
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Much about the pilot felt flat or programmatic to me, but much was likable as well, especially the nonchalant tenderness between the male leads. And the cast is good.
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This one tries so hard to set up its premise that at times it ends up feeling more like a PSA than a comedy, which can be annoying if you're already on board with same-sex marriage and gay parenting.
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The New Normal needs to take a deep breath, get off the soapbox and get funny fast. The right elements--talented cast and showrunner--are already in place.
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For now, it's a disappointing polemic that mainly offends by being lazily or awkwardly executed more often than not.
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The execution in this case is too shrill and scattered to get any of his points--or jokes--across.
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Murphy and Adler opt for the caustic in a series that probably had its best chance of success playing it more subtle and more sentimental, tossing in the barbs judiciously.
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The New Normal humanizes stereotypes without ever quite making them seem like people.
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The New Normal needs to work in a more linear and emotionally direct fashion, and there's not much about this NBC pilot, which is fueled by a mixture of cattiness and slick manipulation, that reassures me on that front.
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For now this show is much more normal--read: mediocre--than it seems to think it is.
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The New Normal wants what "Modern Family" is having. But if we're going to catapult from "South Park" to a Hallmark movie, we need a smoother ride.
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The New Normal is a nominally progressive comedy with more gay jokes and regular old racism than Gallagher's stand-up act.
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The problem is--as is ever the case in sitcoms with no future, and this is one of them--vapid writing and characters drawn according to formula.
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Where Modern Family is sweet and funny, The New Normal is cheap and hectoring.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 74 out of 121
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Mixed: 15 out of 121
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Negative: 32 out of 121
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Sep 11, 2012
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Oct 4, 2012
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Sep 28, 2012