New Show Recap: The New Normal, Episode 1.03, “Baby Clothes”

We open with Bryan and Shania pawing through a pile of baby clothes that Bryan has bought. David comes in and mentions something about how they promised not to start getting excited until after all the tests came back. Bryan pleads with David, but to no avail, Bryan must return the clothes.

David is apparently a robot. Or, you know, a gynecologist who’s aware of all the horrible ways pregnancy can go wrong. Nice work on consistent characterization there. Shania asks to keep a skirt and Bryan gives her the go-ahead. Bryan asks David when he’s allowed to start getting excited and we cut away to them with the fertility service coordinator.

Fertility coordinator (seriously, I’m searching for a better title or a name for this guy and having not a lot of luck) goes through all the tests they typically run while Goldie and Bryan stare at him, deer in the headlights style. David then adds a couple tests of his own. We do find out that the first ultrasound to hear the heartbeat is coming up though. Yay! After leaving the office, Goldie says she’s going to the outlet mall on the bus. Bryan tells her she can’t ride the bus because “the only people who take the bus are high school dropouts, single moms, and bottle blondes.” Goldie: “You literally just described me.”

At the outlet mall, Bryan is trying to sneak some more baby clothes purchases and seems to be slowly winning over David. They have a little schmoopy moment and are accosted by a man shopping with his wife and kid who asks them to not kiss each other in front of his daughter because he shouldn’t have to explain that to his kid. Bryan confronts him, mentioning that they’re going to have a family of their own soon and the guy says, “That’s disgusting.” Bryan and David are visibly hurt by the exchange. Later, Bryan is upset that David won’t defend them and says that ignoring people isn’t going to help once their child is exposed to those attitudes.

David discusses his anxiousness about the baby with a colleague about the baby, who has been in a similar place with his own kids about focusing on the medical markers rather than the experience. David then overhears a man call a guy with Down Syndrome a retard and confronts him. The guy says, “What’re you going to do about it?” and David punches him. Then the Down Syndrome guy calls David a fag. No one’s covering themselves in glory today.

After this, David arrives to the ultrasound upset about what he did and what Bryan said about standing up for themselves is clearly weighing on his mind. Goldie then confesses that she heard the guy in the outlet mall and feels guilty for not standing up herself. They all have a moment together, and after a fairly intense close up on the transvaginal ultrasound wand, they hear the baby’s heartbeat. David tears up, and it’s clear that he’s ready to start looking forward to their child.

The guy David punched has agreed not to press charges, and we learn that he’s also gay! And just got engaged! He and David start talking excitedly, but their memberships are permanently revoked because of the physical violence thing. However, the Down Syndrome gentleman gets to stay because there’s no policy against hate speech. On David’s way out, he sees a tiny baby track suit, and goes home to tell Bryan he was right. He bought the baby track suit!

While all this is happening, Shania goes to school wearing the baby skirt as a crop top. This attracts the attention of one of her male classmates who’s wearing a tiny child fedora. Even though Shania is initially skeptical of his kindness towards her, she seems to enjoy the attention. Nana goes to get Shania from school and catches her smooching her new fedora-ed friend in the cloak room. She flips, and drags both children to Planned Parenthood for birth control. The girl at the desk decides to call the police as Shania does her best to mentally to escape the embarrassment of the situation. Later, there’s a meeting between Shania’s teacher, Goldie, Shania, Nana, Fedora Kid and Fedora Kid’s mom about Nana kidnapping Fedora kid. Also, this is not the first time Nana’s abducted someone to make a point. I’m less than surprised. Fedora kid’s mom is actually pretty sanguine about all of this, and says she and her son had an honest conversation about sex. Nana confronts Goldie about Shania growing up and needing more information than she has now. Goldie says Shania’s only nine and it’s not time yet. But Nana hits harder on the “generations of teen mothers” theme and Goldie agrees to talk to Shania.

Goldie, Nana, and Shania come over to return Shania’s baby skirt/crop top. Nana has also bought them some baby clothes, but it’s a onesie that says “Please Help Me!” Bryan and David invite the ladies to stay for dinner and Nana asks why they didn’t decide to adopt a little girl from China because “With six you get eggroll” she and Bryan finish together. Which, OK, Nana starting to see how she can fit in with these guys and that’s good. But this is also a pet peeve of mine with Ryan Murphy. He’s got his types of intolerance he finds objectionable and never OK (against gays, against the mentally disabled), but characters that we’re meant to find relatable and otherwise tolerant like Bryan will engage in these weird bouts of casual racism. It’s supposed to be funny, I guess, because Bryan doesn’t mean it? But Nana probably does? This hurts my head. Anyway, Nana might be growing to accept this and that’s good overall. The end.