I did enjoy the show and, like Sean Saves the World and Partners, both of which I also found to be as good or better than shows that were renewed for another year, The New Normal may have been axed for reasons other than just their ratings.
That said, unlike the other two shows I mentioned, The New Normal seemed a lot less focused. In the highly successful Modern Family, the show manages to shift focus between the several family components while keeping a common thread for each episode, and they do it well. Not as successful with TNN
In The New Normal, that common thread was often too tenuous if it existed at all. I enjoyed the main gay couple and their interpersonal as well as more general gay-related issues, both those issues used for humor and those that were emotionally painful.
I usually enjoyed the Ellen Barkin character and, although I generally lean way to the left politically, I found some of her well-delivered rants to be fair criticism of some dearly held beliefs or behaviors of those who consider themselves Liberal. There were a few times when her rants, especially in the earlier shows, may have crossed the line into what sounded too much like very real, not at all humorous, bigotry.
Obviously the show was heading in the direction of two gay men becoming dads and all the joy & trauma of parenthood, both typical and unique to same-sex couples. So the surrogate mom was a practical necessity, but the character & the actress who played Goldie, in my opinion, were rather bland and added little to the show's appeal. Actually I thought her estranged husband, Clay, although somewhat marginalized in the plot development, added more to the show's appeal than she did.
But the killer for me ... in the negative sense of the term ... was the little girl, Shania. Maybe in some After School Special format or main stream family show, she would have been considered cute and precocious, but I'm guessing the primary audience for a gay themed show like this does not include grade school children or Middle Americans resting after a hard day at the factory or plowing the fields.
The kids on Modern Family fit in beautifully with the pace of the show and would appeal to those who might be expected to watch such a show. Shania was just an annoying waste of show time. Maybe I'm projecting my feelings onto more people than is warranted, but when the Shania character appeared to be more than incidental to an episode, I definitely started jabbing the fast-forward button or went on to the next episode altogether. Watching her prepare for and perform in a grade school assembly was a little too Sesame Street for me and the sort of thing that is a leading cause of glazed-eye syndrome.
I think with a little effort and redirection, the show could have been saved rather than axed. Hope the two main characters can make a comeback in something better aimed at its target audience.
