Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Today’s Bit of Procrastination

I watch entirely too much TV.

It’s a well-established fact that my husband and I are huge consumers of entertainment. We gorge ourselves on books, on television, on Broadway shows—basically anything that has a modicum of (pop) cultural value to it, we’re there, reading it, watching it or listening to it. Why I didn’t become some sort of critic is a mystery, as I spend a goodly portion of the day that I’m not writing or cooking or walking the dog gobbling down some form of entertainment.

So when writer's block had me in a knee-crippling head lock the other day…and, let’s face it, today, I decided to check out the up-and-coming television shows that were trotted out earlier this week for a look-see from the industry. (This is actually a timely blog because up fronts, as they’re called are a big deal. And that, my friends, is a well-tortured piece of rationalization as to why I’m watching clips of television shows and not working on my second book’s outline. Welcome to my world.)

Anyhow, what I discovered in my research/procrastination is there are several good shows I’m eager to squeeze into our already-full dance card of viewing. But there’s one in particular that I thought I’d share with you/write about to make myself feel like I’m actually being productive today when really I’m ready to bang my head against the wall with my writing.

And that is The New Normal. I’ve been interested in seeing what this one was all about because one of the leads dazzled in Book of Mormon, which I’ve seen an embarrassing number of times. The tagline for the show is: “Two gay dads and a baby mama create a totally new kind of family comedy.” It’s an unfortunate sentence of marketing, really, because when you watch the trailer you’ll see that it’s so much more than the offhanded one-liner would imply. It appears to have such gorgeous heart, so much real emotion and such beautiful sentiment—the kind of stuff that isn’t summed up easily in a sentence. Still, how do you produce a show that looks and feels like such a grand-slam home run from the trailer and then dress it up in a cheap one-liner of a wrapper?

Let’s hope the show is as amazing as the promo suggests. The cast looks incredible, the writing (from the short video I viewed, anyway) is sharp and the story, oh, the story…well, it looks gorgeous to me. Yes, I can be horribly sentimental, but that’s ok.

It makes me a good audience.

1 comment:

  1. Sounds like it's going to be an awesome show. Will definitely have to watch it! :)

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