As I’ve mentioned before, I’m currently going through the work of latest platonic crush
Andrew Rannells, and that included revisiting this short-lived Ryan Murphy
show. I hadn’t seen it since it first
aired, and my main recollections of it were frustrating, a show that could be great but almost insistently
wasn’t. Watching it again, I still see
some considerable flaws with the series, but my estimation of the good parts
has increased quite a bit.
David and
Bryan have a good life. Successful jobs,
nice house, and a loving partnership – all great, but they’re ready for even
more. When the two decide to have a
child together, they hire Goldie, a sweet young mother who’s also ready to take
her life somewhere new, to be their surrogate.
As they prepare for their coming baby, the guys’ family expands more
than they’d initially planned, with Goldie, her precocious daughter Shania, and
her bigoted nana Jane becoming a major part of their lives.
I’ll
start with what the show has going for it.
I absolutely love both Bryan and David.
Though both are drawn broadly plenty of the time (especially Bryan,)
there’s also a lot of genuine heart in their characterizations, and their
relationship is one of my favorites for same-sex couples on TV. There’s some fun humor (who doesn’t love
Shania’s Little Edie impression?), the show takes on some interesting topics in
(at times) fairly thoughtful ways, and there’s a sort of old-fashioned
family-sitcom quality to the show that I appreciate. It’s nice to watch this same-sex couple deal
with time-honored sitcom tropes like aggravating in-laws or baby-name debates
like any other TV couple would. The
acting is also terrific – Rannells’s Bryan and Justin Bartha’s David are the
MVPs, and Georgia King brings a real earnest quality to Goldie.
Unfortunately,
for all its good qualities, the show can also be Ryan Murphy at his Ryan
Murphy-est. Jane is an even nastier Sue
Sylvester, seemingly incapable of getting through a conversation without
denigrating entire communities of people.
Granted, the show as a whole is pretty saccharine, so they need a little
sharpness somewhere, but Jane is just toxic.
Also, heavy-handed much? The show
could cause frequent concussions from the way it hammers home its points. It often employs the Glee tactic of topical theme episodes, and while these can come off successfully (the episode
where Bryan worries about his ability to connect with a hypothetical
“conventionally”-masculine son is a great example,) they can also get
ludicrously preachy and repetitive. A
number of episodes come across very “this episode is brought to you be partisan
politics/breastfeeding/the Boy Scouts of America,” and that gets super
annoying.
All in
all, it’s still a frustrating show. This
time around, I was prepared for the annoying parts, and so wasn’t quite as
bugged by them, which allowed me to enjoy its positive traits more fully. Still, for all that I do honestly like it,
I’m left wishing it were the show it could’ve been, more so than the one it is.
Warnings
Language
(including homophobic and racist insults,) drinking, a bit of sexual
content/references, and some thematic elements.
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