The New Normal: Pilot (1.1)

Despite every show on Ryan Murphy's resume arriving with a fully-formed gay sensibility, he's unusual in that he's never been renowned for creating gay characters that proved particularly positive. Gay men are either swishy sex freaks or over-earnest victims, gay women are flexible, and bisexuality is a phase. Or, for women, something to be used to grab a guy's attention. All of which makes The New Normal, Murphy's sitcom about a gay couple and their surrogate, something of a risky move. He's an auteur who seems to believe he's an instigator of some kind of grand social change, and while there are certainly factors to somebody like Glee's Kurt Hummel that are overwhelmingly positive, a lot of his work with gay characters leaves a bitter aftertaste, pandering more to cliches and stereotyping than anything else.