The New Normal - Season 1 Episode 18 - Recap and Review - Rocky Bye Baby

Recap and review of The New Normal - Season 1 Episode 18 - Rocky Bye Baby:

The New Normal is a bit of a hit-or-miss episode. It isn't that it's tonally inconsistent, but that it lacks any real flow. We simply move from one scene to the next, and it ends rather abruptly. That said, it's not like the episode entirely misses the mark. "Rocky Bye Baby" demonstrates some of the show's typical heart, and that serves the episode well. But there was just something lacking here, a directionless sense about the episode. Perhaps it has to do with the central premise: while donating the extravagant gifts they received from Rocky (NeNe Leakes) and Jane (Ellen Barkin) at a baby shower to a foster care center in town, Bryan (Andrew Rannells) and David (Justin Bartha) are bitten by the adoption bug. We know that Bryan and David aren't going to get to adopt the baby girl, and the episode feels a bit purposeless as a result. This is not to say that every episode should have a plot that must result in some life-changing outcome, but the episode took an awful long time to get where it was going, such that the conclusion felt really rushed. However, I give the episode credit for its last-minute subversion of expectations, having Rocky decide to foster the little girl. Rocky rarely gets enough to do on the show, and the prospect of watching how motherhood changes her could make for some great comedy television.

Credit: NBC

The A-plot is centered on the aforementioned decision to adopt, but there are some pretty solid gags in the lead-up to the plot actually starting, such as Rocky's insistence on throwing a baby shower, along with the ridiculous gifts the two men receive, from a bassinet made of organic walnut, to a mink Onesie with which Bryan is loathe to part. There's some decent comedy once they get to the foster care center too, as they're accosted by a fast-talking, wise-ass little kid named Malcolm, who's annoying far more often than he is funny, though when he's funny, he's genuinely so. However, all of this is window-dressing for the exploration into Bryan and David's preparedness for parenthood, as they debate going back on their decision against adoption. For a few moments, there's a genuine question of whether or not Bryan and David are jumping the gun in their eagerness to become parents, and even though I thought, going in, that there was no way they'd actually go through with the adoption of the little girl, the episode does a good job teasing out the possibility. It also helps that we're closing in on the end of the season, so it makes sense that change could be forthcoming. Yet it's not to be.

Credit: NBC

When Rocky and Jane discover that Bryan and David donated their gift, they plan an Ocean's Eleven style heist to get their gift back, complete with a sleek montage of the plan coming together, in the episode's best sequence. However, once there, Rocky sees Nicky, the same little girl Bryan and David had considered adopting, and falls in love. By episode's end, Rocky's own personal story has taken a dramatic change, as she's pretty much a mother now, and Bryan and David are thrilled at the prospect of their kids growing up together. It's also the culmination of Rocky's character arc that is built up in the episode via a brief flashback to her first meeting with Bryan as his body wax specialist. Rocky had stated she wanted it all: success, a high-paying job, and a family of her own. She pretty much has all three now, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't gratifying to see her actually achieve her goals by working her ass off to get there. It's a poignant story, even if the episode surrounding it wasn't really up to snuff, for me.

There's also a plot in which Shania (Bebe Wood) teams with her father, Clay (Jayson Blair), to give Goldie (Georgia King) the baby shower she never had. It basically amounts to a handful of scenes, including a flashback to Clay's jerky years as an uncaring father-to-be, but the storyline mostly works by centering on Clay's gradual development as an all-around good guy. Coupled with Shania's precociousness and sweetness, the story manages to be fairly resonant, despite not a whole lot actually happening.

Credit: NBC

And that kind of sums up "Rocky Bye Baby" for me: not a whole lot happening. It's not that anything it does is necessarily bad, it's simply that it all feels strangely insubstantial, like you could have cut out this episode entirely and not missed a whole lot, if anything at all. Granted, it's much harder for a sitcom to tell an engaging, serialized story from week-to-week, given the half-hour format and the fact that comedy is inherently more difficult than drama. Oftentimes, a sitcom will ditch story just to make a go at being plain ol' funny. But even by that measure, I didn't really care for "Rocky Bye Baby." Some of it was funny, but it almost felt like a perfunctory effort. That said, this episode doesn't really diminish my faith in the series. I can't think of a single comedy in history that landed every joke and every story every single time. But I suppose I've come to expect more from this show, as it's frequently been a solid half-hour of comedy and heart.

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