Despite a shaky start, we have high hopes for The New Normal, which officially debuted last night on NBC (tonight, the series’ second episode will air in its regular Tuesday time slot). As discussed in our fall preview, we felt the pilot a touch too didactic and the characterization teetering on offensive, but we’re hoping these things even out because the show’s talented cast, inclusive premise, and promise for sitcom-defying weirdness promise to far outweigh the bad. If you’ve followed TV news the past month, then you’ve probably heard about the backlash from One Million Moms, and then of course the Salt Lake City NBC affiliate’s decision not to air the show, behavior not entirely unusual in the scheme of TV sitcom history.

When networks have introduced “new normals” in decades past, the initial response wasn’t always warm — nor was the execution always perfect. But bit by bit, the sitcom has evolved, eroding the notion that a family can only look one way, and we hope the pattern continues. Click through for an abridged looked at some of these most boundary-breaking families, from the Ricardos on through the Lear era, and to the “anti-family” shows of the late ’80s that cleverly left us fumbling for a firm handle on what it means to be “normal” anyways. … Read More