The Book of Rannells: The New Normal: Season 1, Episode 9 – “Pardon Me” (2012)

The first of several New Normal holiday episodes (there’s a Halloween episode that technically was made first, but it got preempted in the original airing, and that’s the order it was put in on the DVD – I decided to just go with it, continuity be damned.)  Decent middle-of-the-pack episode, I’d say, with a reasonably-laid-out plot and some good one-liners.

In lieu of their normal Thanksgiving tradition of not celebrating and staying far, far away from their families, Bryan and David decide to have a small Friendsgiving with Goldie, Shania, and Bryan’s assistant Rocky.  When Bryan and Shania’s attempt to get an organic turkey – unbeknownst to them, still alive – results in them getting squeamish and “pardoning” it at the last minute, Shania gets the idea to start a new tradition of inviting relatives they’ve had their differences with and similarly pardoning them over dinner.  You can imagine how well this goes.

A cozy Friendsgiving, even with the added twist of live liberated turkeys in the backyard, is likely to be light on the drama, so it makes sense for the story to throw in unpredictable elements like Jane, David’s divorced parents, and Shania’s dad.  While there’s a lot here that’s very sitcom-typical, albeit with Jane’s own potent brand of awfulness, it mostly works.  Even something hokey like Bryan and Shania saving the turkeys works for me because 1) I enjoy the things Bryan and Shania get up to together, 2) it’s admittedly in character for Bryan to make a big impulsive decision like that, especially with someone egging him on, and 3) it helps that Bryan almost immediately realizes it was a dumb thing to do but is basically just putting dealing with it on hold until after the holiday.

That said, most of the story beats are pretty predictable, even if the show livens them up with some good lines and amusing character moments.  Also, it’s a good demonstration of the adults going out of their way to cater to Shania, even beyond the whole thing with the turkeys, which Bryan has close to an equal part in.  This isn’t the first time we see it happen, and it’s certainly not the last – if this is an indication of how the guys are going to parent, that kid is gonna run circles around them.

Rannells makes the most out of Bryan’s best lines, my favorite being his heart to heart with the turkey farmer (played by Toby Huss, a.k.a. Bos from Halt and Catch Fire!), admitting that he assumed the actual slaughtering would be carried out in “some secret poultry Guantanamo” where the customers didn’t have to see it.  Absolutely absurd, and he just sells it; I continue to be impressed with Rannells’s knack for pulling off utter nonsense lines.