Network: ABC
Time: Wednesday, 9:00-9:30
Cast: Ed O'Neill, Sophia Vergara, Rico Rodriguez II, Julie Bowen, Ty Burrell, Sarah Hyland, Ariel Winter,
Creators: Christopher Lloyd, Steven Levitan
Summary: This show follows three individual families that make up one larger family. There's one nuclear family: husband, wife, and three kids. There's one gay family: two boyfriends and an adopted daughter. And there's one divorcee who's now married to a much younger woman and raising her young son. The story has a documentary feel to it, with all the characters doing confessionals and speaking to the camera either by themselves or with their spouses.
Review: As a general rule, I'm a much tougher critic of a one-hour show than a sitcom. For a sitcom to be good for me, all it has to do is make me laugh a few times and not bore me. I don't have to like the characters. Oh, sure, it's nice when I do, but it's not essential. Generally in a sitcom, characters are fairly static anyway. Look at Friends or Seinfeld as an example. The characters age, sure, but they don't actually *grow*. There's little personality change between Chandler of season 1 and Chandler of season 10. The audience expects their characters to be a certain way every time they watch the show. Whereas the Josh Lyman in season 1 of the West Wing is a much more relaxed, humorous character than the Josh Lyman in season 7 who takes the weight of the world on his shoulders.
The point of that mini-rant is that, unlike dramatic television, a sitcom's greatest weapons and biggest liabilities are snappy dialogue and good jokes. Without both of those, nothing else in the show matters.
Modern Family has the whole package. Right from the start, you are walking into a funny show. It's set up like a mock documentary (read: mockumentary), with The Office-style confessionals to the camera. These confessionals can be solo, but usually each couple is together. It's better that way because it allows them to play off each other.
And, boy, are they good at that. I don't know who was in charge of casting for this show, but they managed to find a set of actors with the kind of chemistry most shows can only dream of (so good, infact, it made me end my sentence with a preposition). From the first episode, we're supposed to believe all these people are related--a father and his two children from one marriage, each of their families (one heterosexual, one homosexual), his new wife (who's roughly his daughter's age) and her son from a previous marriage.
And I buy it. For awhile we only see each individual family and their troubles. There's Claire, who's trying to raise a teenage girl (Haley), a pre-teen girl (Alex), a pre-pre-teen boy (Luke), and a husband (Phil, who, frankly, is the least mature of all of them). The entire family dynamic is real enough that I turned to my viewing partners and said, "If I had had an older sister, I'd have been exactly like Alex." Sure, they're wittier and the comebacks are snappier than most families are, but, at least in the case of my family, it gives us something to aspire to.
The point of that mini-rant is that, unlike dramatic television, a sitcom's greatest weapons and biggest liabilities are snappy dialogue and good jokes. Without both of those, nothing else in the show matters.
Modern Family has the whole package. Right from the start, you are walking into a funny show. It's set up like a mock documentary (read: mockumentary), with The Office-style confessionals to the camera. These confessionals can be solo, but usually each couple is together. It's better that way because it allows them to play off each other.
And, boy, are they good at that. I don't know who was in charge of casting for this show, but they managed to find a set of actors with the kind of chemistry most shows can only dream of (so good, infact, it made me end my sentence with a preposition). From the first episode, we're supposed to believe all these people are related--a father and his two children from one marriage, each of their families (one heterosexual, one homosexual), his new wife (who's roughly his daughter's age) and her son from a previous marriage.
And I buy it. For awhile we only see each individual family and their troubles. There's Claire, who's trying to raise a teenage girl (Haley), a pre-teen girl (Alex), a pre-pre-teen boy (Luke), and a husband (Phil, who, frankly, is the least mature of all of them). The entire family dynamic is real enough that I turned to my viewing partners and said, "If I had had an older sister, I'd have been exactly like Alex." Sure, they're wittier and the comebacks are snappier than most families are, but, at least in the case of my family, it gives us something to aspire to.
Then there's Mitchell, who lives with his boyfriend Cam. In the pilot episode, they just adopted a little girl from Vietnam, and they (read: Mitchell) are worried about how to tell his father, who's just accepted the fact that Mitchell is gay. This is another realistic relationship. They have their stereotypically gay quirks, but it's refreshing to see that even they know when they take it too far. It seems that homosexuality is the new "in thing" to have in a television show. See Glee for an example of what happens when all the gay characters are unashamedly flamboyant, and you'll see, as I do, that's it's refreshing to see a gay couple that acts more like real people.
Finally there's Jay, Mitchell and Claire's father, who lives with his new wife Gloria and her precocious grade-school son Manny. This is a point to consider later, that Mitchell and Claire's stepmother is roughly their age, and their stepbrother is the same age as Claire's son. Ed O'Neill is probably the only name I recognized going into this show, and he delivers spectacularly. His wit is dry, his demeanor is gruff, and his bluntness is balanced with a dash of sweet.
All of this combines to give the first episode a lot of laughs and a heart-warming ending that makes you realize that all families are dysfunctional in their own way. Because, when you get to it, all these related characters make up a pretty normal family. They have their craziness, but, really, what's normal anyway?
Rating (this episode):
[1] Run in the other direction
[2] Don't bother
[3] Worth a watch if you've got nothing better to do
[4] Definitely try it out
[5] A total keeper
[1] Run in the other direction
[2] Don't bother
[3] Worth a watch if you've got nothing better to do
[4] Definitely try it out
[5] A total keeper
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