Modern Family - Fears

Network: ABC
Time: Wednesdays, 9:00-9:30pm
Cast: Ed O'Neill, Sofia Vergara, Julie Bowen, Ty Burrell, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Eric Stonestreet, Rico Rodriguez, Sarah Hyland, Nolan Gould, Ariel Winter

Summary: Each of the families discuss and confront some of their fears.

Review: For a half hour show, Modern Family really packs a lot into each episode, yet does it in a way that makes sense and doesn't overwhelm the viewer (unlike, say, Parenthood's first episode).  This episode had stories involving Jay and Manny facing their fears of roller coasters, Haley going for her driver's license test (for the third time), Alex going to a school dance, Luke and Phil exploring under the house, and Mitch and Cam's fear that Lily's first word was "Mommy."  All that in 30 minutes, and still enough time to delve into a side story about Lily's pediatrician (played by the awesome Suzy Nakamura, who was Sam's original assistant Cathy on The West Wing).

And each story was not only well-rounded (beginning, middle, end), but coherent, funny and sweet all at the same time.  I love the sweet side of Modern Family.  Most sitcoms, even the family ones, focus so much on being funny that they don't have the same heart-warming effect Modern Family has.  And I'm not sure this kind of sweetness has a place in every sitcom.  After all, could you imagine The Big Bang Theory if Sheldon and Leonard sat down and talked out their feelings at the end of each episode?  Or Seinfeld if Jerry had a voice over at the end talking about what he'd learned from that episode?  It wouldn't work at all.

But Modern Family makes it work, which is why I think it's one of the (if not the) best sitcoms in at least the past two decades.

Plus it's funny.  Even the characters that aren't particularly likable (Phil) are still funny to watch.  And it manages to encompass several different types of humor.  Phil is the master of the awkward humor that I don't particularly enjoy but everyone else seems to like.  Mitch and Cam do the gay humor really well, but find the right balance between flamboyant homosexuality and an honest, wholesome couple.  And Jay relies more on a dry wit and sarcasm, especially when dealing with his precocious stepson.

This episode was just another in a long line of solid episodes from this show.  Ultimately, I don't think this one will stand out in my head the way the one with Luke's birthday party does, but it still deserves a high rating for generally being excellent.  This show has been nothing but consistent so far, and I look forward to it every week to see what they'll do this time.

Favorite lines:
Jay: I'm not afraid of anything.
Gloria: What about pigeons?
Jay: Oh, yeah, I don't like them.  They're shifty.

Jay: (about Manny) I could have guessed he'd have trouble with roller coasters.  That kid gets woozy at barbershops when they spin his chair towards the mirror.

Phil: We're like Ponce de Leon and his son... little Ponce.

Rating:
[5] Excellent
[4] Good
[3] Average
[2] OK
[1] Bad

Modern Family - Up All Night

Network: ABC
Time: Wednesdays, 9:00-9:30pm
Cast: Ed O'Neill, Sofia Vergara, Julie Bowen, Ty Burrell, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Eric Stonestreet, Rico Rodriguez, Nolan Gould, Sarah Hyland, Ariel Winter

Summary: When Gloria encourages Jay to get along with Javier, Manny's father, he gets a little carried about with his male bonding.  Phil has a kidney stone and proceeds to milk it it for all it's worth.  Mitchell wants to use the Ferber method to get Lily to sleep, but Cameron has a lot more trouble with it than he expected.  Guest starring Benjamin Bratt.

Review: In the last few months, this has easily become one of my favorite shows on television.  It's one of the few sitcoms I've ever watched where I've really grown attached to the characters, enough so that I truly care about what happens to them.

I'd like to say this episode was the best so far, or that it wasn't quite up to par, but the truth is, there hasn't been a single episode I haven't loved, and there hasn't been one that I thought really rose above the rest.  Modern Family is consistently great, and this episode was no exception.

We've heard talk about Manny's father in several episodes, and I certainly had an impression of him going into this episode.  I imagined he was a smooth-talker, deadbeat dad who showed up just enough to keep his son's hopes up.  And... I was pretty much right.  Benjamin Bratt, who I adore, did an excellent job portraying Javier--and showing Jay exactly how easy it was for Gloria to be seduced by him.  The downside to this was that they didn't have time to show much of the relationship between Manny, his father, and his stepfather.  I would have liked to see more tension there, maybe a little possessiveness on their parts.  Instead, the episode focused on developing the relationship between Jay and Javier.  It was probably my least favorite of the three storylines (which makes it sound much more negative than it was).

Next up was the Dunphy family drama.  Phil had a kidney stone and, being Phil, acted like he was dying from it, leaving the family no choice but to call in the hot firemen to take him to the hospital.  I'm not really sure why firemen came to take him to the hospital, but we can ignore that minor plot hole in favor of the far funnier idea that Claire paused in caring for her ill husband (and a kidney stone is something he could legitimately get worked up about, even if he wasn't Phil) to put on a nice shirt and heels to impress them.  The family dynamic was great in this story, from Luke's fear that he would have to be the man of the house, to Phil's overdramatic line, "If I never wake up, I'd hate for the last thing you ever said to me to be a lie," to all the ways Phil thought Claire could pay him back for lying to him.

And then there was my favorite story: the Ferberization of Lily.  Mitchell wanted to use the Ferber method to get Lily to get herself to sleep (which basically consists of letting her cry herself out instead of cuddling her every time she fusses, obviously within reason).  Cam has... difficulties with this.  Most of the episode deals in short spurts with Mitchell trying to stop Cam from picking Lily up every time she cries.  But the best part came when Mitchell finally confronts Cam and tells him he's tired of always being the bad cop.  There's such a realism to Mitchell and Cam's relationship; it's always funny, but, in the end, it's usually the sweetest part of the show.  I appreciate a sitcom that takes a gay relationship and doesn't overdo it.  So many shows make the characters overly flamboyant and the relationship really tacky.  And Modern Family certainly has its flamboyant moments.  But the relationship is always real, and it's much more like you'd expect a committed relationship to be than most sitcoms offer.

The only thing this episode was lacking was the part where the whole family comes together in the end.  It wasn't necessary, and it wasn't something I missed until I looked back and thought about it, but it's something I've enjoyed about the other episodes, the big, happy family bit.

What this episode did have that most of the others don't, however, were interviews with the kids.  In fact, most of it was dominated by them.  The theme of the day was, "What do my parents tell me to do that annoys me the most?"  I think we can all, no matter how old, relate to that.

Favorite line:
Cam (after a small scuffle causes Mitch to hurt his ankle): "I'm sorry I hurt you."
Mitch: "No, no, don't be.  I could just have easily have hurt you."
Cam: "Well, it's cute that you think that."

Rating:
[5] Excellent
[4] Good
[3] Average
[2] OK
[1] Bad

Modern Family - Pilot

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.

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