The Book of Rannells: The New Normal: Season 1, Episode 12 – “The Goldie Rush” (2013)

Kind of an uneven episode, but overall, it mostly comes out on the side of being enjoyable.  It’s notable for featuring an appearance from one of Ryan Murphy’s favorite people:  Matt Bomer (in addition to The New Normal, Bomer also appeared on Glee, was nominated for an Emmy for The Normal Heart, and of course, appeared onstage with Andrew Rannells recently in the Murphy-produced revival of The Boys in the Band.)

David and Bryan start thinking ahead about further family planning, deciding how many kids they want and when.  Along the way, they run into Bryan’s ex Monty (played by Bomer,) who’s giving up his partying ways and ready to settle down, and they consider fixing him up with their family planning guy.  Meanwhile, Jane and Rocky try to help Shania deal with the mean girls at school.

By and large, entertaining.  Matt Bomer is used to good effect, even if a significant chunk of that is fawning over his good looks (I like Goldie saying she knows Monty’s gay but admits to “confusing feelings” and, when David suggests Monty put on a shirt, Bryan fluidly replying, “David, there isn’t time!”)  He does a nice job as an affable, slightly-dim former playboy.  Shania’s plot is also amusing, especially when we’re treated to a quick sidebar education on the art of “reading.”

Additionally, there’s some pretty good Goldie stuff in this episode.  She’s got a mini-arc going on figuring out where her life is headed, and this story shows her taking some steps in that direction.  We do see the guys being a little clueless with her here, but while the pointing-it-out part is laid on pretty thick, I think it’s reasonable that it happens – Bryan and David are nothing if not single-focused when they get on a particular idea, and I buy them getting ahead of themselves.

Decent showing for Rannells.  We get the return of Flashback!Bryan and his Johnny Bravo hair, who awesomely wrote Smallville spec scripts before he made it big.  I’m also utterly charmed by a cute scene of him and David discussing Monty while they take turns doing sit-ups, especially Bryan’s cheesy “love you!” grin after transparently pretending he remembers nothing about having had a sexual relationship with Monty.