Modern Family

I had never even heard of Modern Family until last year’s Emmy awards when the show and its actors were nominated in nearly every category and won Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series (for the pilot episode), and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series (Eric Stonestreet). It was the first time an ABC show has won for Outstanding Comedy Series since The Wonder Years twenty-two years ago. And then the even more influential advertising of word of mouth on my college campus took over and I decided that even though the premise didn’t really appeal to me I had to know what it was all about just to be a part of the cultural conversation. So I dedicated the past two weeks to watching every episode of the past two seasons. (Which means that in my head I am hearing this review in Gloria’s thick Columbian accent.)

The premise is another mockumentary about a very modern family where the sixty-something patriarch Jay Pritchett, played by Ed O’Neill (Married With Children), has recently divorced his wife and remarried to a sexy Columbian woman half his age who is also divorced and has an unsettlingly precocious preteen son. The other branches of the family are Jay’s grown up son and daughter. His daughter is a high strung MILF (ask Urban Dictionary) who is married to a buffoon and has three children: an unsettlingly sexy sixteen year old daughter, a definitively middle child genius fourteenish year old daughter, and a preteen son who walks the line between genius and suicidally stupid. This branch plays the part of the typical sitcom family where the wife is in control, the husband is an idiot who is afraid of his wife, and the kids – well, the kids are actually refreshingly well rounded characters. Jay’s grown up son is in a gay partnership and in the pilot we see them bringing their new adopted daughter home from Vietnam. For the next two seasons that child proceeds to maintain the exact same expressionless face and lack of movement. (I have speculated that she is just a very life-like doll.) I’m not sure if her lack of personality is intentional or just a sign of really boring directing.

I was initially turned off by the concept of the gay couple – not because of any views against gay couples but because I am sick of every television show and movie feeling the need to create the token gay character in a cliché and politically correct manner. I can only respect the character choice when it is used for a reason other than the creator’s desire to appear inoffensive. But, oh my goodness, I love these characters. For the first season they were pretty much the only part that made me laugh out loud. The more flamboyant, sensitive, stay-at-home-dad was raised on a farm in Missouri and was a starting offensive lineman on his college football team and is the first one to react physically to protect his family. The other is the breadwinning lawyer who is slightly more in touch with reality. Both are riddled with homosexual clichés – but so are most of the gay men we know. However, they don’t seem like caricatures. They feel like very real and complex characters and I appreciate it.

Now, to be perfectly honest, it took me a good whole season at least to warm up to this show. I just didn’t see what the big deal was. Things didn’t start getting good in terms of writing until the second season. For the most part all I could see was the very typical, done to death, infuriatingly predictable family sitcom shot on a three walled soundstage that was being given all this critical acclaim for its intelligence because it was being filmed the same way as Arrested Development  and The Office. Granted, it did make the typical sitcom more bearable – especially since it was minus that ridiculous canned laugh track – but also because it gives the viewer a more up close and intimate view of the characters’ lives. However, the caliber of writing gradually picked up. It went from just having its few clever and unpredictable moments in the first season to consistently making me laugh and feel engaged with the plot rather than shouting out (correctly) what was going to happen next and rolling my eyes when the family members had their heartwarming feel-better chats at the end of the episode that reminded me a little too strongly of Full House (I’m dead inside, okay?)

The show has really come into its own and I now think it is worthy of at least some of its acclaim. However, I sincerely hope that its positive reception stems from its writing and the fantastic acting from every member of the cast rather than just the fact that they have a gay couple and are shooting in a style that makes it appear more intellectual and everyone wants to jump on the “I’m hip and modern” bandwagon rather than actually thinking about what they are watching. Because what they are actually watching has a bit more dimension than that.