THE FAMILY IS MODERN; THE JOKES ARE OLD-FASHIONED: Since Alan isn't covering it any more, I thought I'd put up a thread here on Modern Family. I really was of two minds about last night's episode. On the one hand, if I were compiling a list of plot devices that really should be put out of their misery, it would include at least four from last night: (1) walking in on parents having sex; (2) the mis-sent email; (3) the child's friend who is more important to the parents than to the kid; and (4) the impossible reservation/ticket. You can grimace and do one of those from time to time, but putting them all together in a single episode (along with the comedy-of-errors miscommunication gag, which at least is versatile enough not to make my list) just seems lazy. It's like ordering a sitcom off of a dim sum cart.
On the other hand, you can't fault most of the execution. Gloria's plaintive "I sended ... come back" was perfectly delivered, and the show really pushed the boundaries of what you can imply with the blocking as the kids opened the door and again with Luke's comment about it. So even though I thought the plotting was lazy, the Cam-Mitchell plot was grating, and Manny's absence was regrettable, the other two stories made me laugh pretty hard.
Another thought as I was typing this: the popularity of this show is a bit strange, because the show's viewpoint is so narrowly dialed into a narrow demographic -- the well-to-do West LA professional. Cam and Mitchell's status obsession, their repeated use of Lily to promote their own interests, the preschool application story that Sepinwall hated so much, and the Jay-Gloria relationship, to name a few examples, are all things that I associate so much with daily LA life and that I see far less of where I live now. Are those things really relatable outside of LA?
All of these are sitcom cliches, perhaps, but the execution is so flawless that I can't complain. I laughed, I was entertained. It's not Fawlty Towers or Arrested Development, and the highs don't match the best Office or 30 Rock episodes, but it's the most consistent sitcom on television. We can say Manny was missed, but the overly-precocious-kid archetype is just as much off the dim sum menu as anything else in the show.
ReplyDeleteYes, these are not flyover-country families. It doesn't bother my inside-the-beltway sensibilities. Part of the show's success is the 21st-century fragmentation of the audience, so a well-executed SWPL sitcom that appeals to the niche of upper-middle-class blue-staters has a shot at being a top-twenty hit, when those same ratings would've gotten it canceled quickly twenty-five years ago.
It plays awfully well in NYC . . .
ReplyDeleteHighly relatable.
ReplyDeleteThere was a lot to hate about the episode: I called the "he's allergic!" twist as soon as the spill accusation was made, and we all saw the Glora-Phil-Claire miscommunication from a mile away. The latter, at least, was extremely well-executed ("coopcakes"?) (okay, not as good as "Jay is senile/bad golfer" last week, but still pretty good) and yes, I'm glad we now know that Phil and Claire prefer a sexual position which shares a name with what I believe remains the fastest selling debut album of all time.
(Also, c'mon: Charlie Palmer owns the Vegas restaurant with the flying wine angels.)
Best thing about the episode was the scene with the three kids at the gas station. Just very human and warm and decent.
SWPL?
ReplyDeleteI've always thought it was strange that so many sitcoms were so NYC-centric -- the everyday struggles of the city started to pop out of the shows I've always watched, like a map gaining actual relief, after I moved out here. It's proabably the same way for people watching California-based stuff -- the LA-centric aspects bleed into the background as we associate our own locales to their travails. Everybody has a local mall, hotel, lookout point, etc -- and if they don't have a house, they did, or they wish they did.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the thing that works for everyone about Modern Family is that it the life of the well-to-do is frequently free of our regular struggles. Phil, Mitchell, and Jay, as providers, each have stresses of their own that come with their positions, but they're all good at compartmentalizing so that they are rarely part of their interactions with their households (see Claire's lecture about how Phil never tells her about the hard parts of his job). In an economy where so many are having trouble even finding work, much less putting themselves and their families in nice, comfortable homes/schools/minivans, with breathing room, yards, etc.... It's almost like a low-bar form of wish-fulfillment, for a huge demographic.
It's a thought, anyway.
(For my part, every time I see those houses, I drool. Look at all that SPACE!)
ReplyDeletePedantry alert: all we know is that the position is in the repertoire. We can't really say "prefer" from a sample size of one.
ReplyDeleteI know Alan hated the preschool thing, but it's depressingly relatable in NW DC, which I am finding has a serious supply and demand problem on that front (especially if you think preschool shouldn't cost as much as your legal education did)
ReplyDeleteStuff White People LIke
ReplyDeleteThe thing that I thought was the most LA was the (very realistic) way that the parents have tried to use their daughter to improve their own social standing. I laughed off most of the ridiculousness of LA, but one of the few things that I really found revolting was the way that kids' birthday parties were treated as networking functions. And openly, too. No bones about it.
ReplyDelete"Part of the show's success is the 21st-century fragmentation of the audience, so a well-executed SWPL sitcom that appeals to the niche of upper-middle-class blue-staters has a shot at being a top-twenty hit, when those same ratings would've gotten it canceled quickly twenty-five years ago."
ReplyDelete-If this is true then why oh why couldn't Pushing Daisies make it????
I'm still bitter, ABC. Still bitter.
I totally agree with everyone. I hated the Mitchel and Cameron storyline--I can't stand the "everything just keeps getting worse, please just tell the truth now" sitcom stories. (I don't know how I ever enjoyed Perfect Strangers. I guess it was because I was seven). And the idea of a strawberry juice box is so contrived. I don't know why that bugs me but it does.
ReplyDeleteBut the rest of it was so expertly put together that it didn't matter that the nuts and bolts of it were a little tired. And, yes, daring--visually, and with the double entendres positively flowing out of Gloria's mouth.
I have never even been to LA, and have spent very little time away from the East Coast at all. And I'm not a parent. And I'm not wealthy. So the setting is foreign to me in most ways, but that doesn't bother me at all. Perhaps there are things I miss, the way I sometimes think details in HIMYM would be meaningless to non-New Yorkers, but I don't know enough to know I'm even missing them. I guess I kind of just accept their lifestyle as presented without thinking much about it. It probably doesn't hurt that each and every character is so well drawn.
Without getting political, the reason that we're a 50-50ish nation notwithstanding the huge swathes of red on the electoral map is that a huge portion of the country lives in the urban areas we're talking about. To be sure, only a subset of the urban demographic will like Modern Family, but that's probably true of most major-network sitcoms, right?
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised nobody has mentioned the other trope that jumped out at me: The "Three's Company"-style mixup at the Dunphy home when Jay and Gloria arrived. That said, I loved the episode. It's just so well-done. "Whatever they were doing, it looked like Dad was winning."
ReplyDeleteI watch both The Middle and Modern Family and from my perspective in the Great Lakes (I was going to say fly-over country, but I really, really, really hate that term. It's lovely here too), the Middle just hits too close to home too often. Modern Family is just plain funny. I was talking to my dad today and my parents just started watching season one and enjoying it. His favorite character is Cameron and they are worried Phil is too broad, but they love it. My dad's twin also watches and loves--and he's Wisconsin conservative (eek, not politics, just to demonstrate wide-appeal). He doesn't watch the Middle because it makes him too sad. This week's episode, where the family was desperately worried over a $200 mistake, is exactly the thing that would hit far too close to home to my extended family for it to be funny. On the other hand, the kids on Modern Family were funny and dear this week. I don't think I need to know the family is in L.A. to enjoy the humor.
ReplyDeleteThe reason I find it interesting is that overtly Hollywood-centric shows (the shows about the making of TV shows or movies) tend to find almost no audience. This is a subtly Hollywood-centric show (that is, it is a show about the very specific world in which TV creative people live, where parents would murder people to get their three-year-olds into the Center and where every third couple is a 60-year-old man and 30ish woman and where people cheerfully pimp their kids out for career boosts without it even dawning on them that there might be something wrong or strange about that) that gets many times the viewers that overtly Hollywood-centric shows get.
ReplyDeleteI did mention it -- "the comedy-of-errors miscommunication gag." [period, close quote]
ReplyDeleteWell, did you have to be so subtle about it? :) (I'm pleading Powerpointitis here: It wasn't in the numbered list, so I didn't see it.)
ReplyDeleteI was thinking along the same lines as Kate. I watch The Middle and Modern Family and I kind of like that I fall somewhere between the two. That said, I love to watch both. And I believe that every city probably has a portion of society that falls into the LA habits you mention. I know there's a certain amount of that even here in little ol' Austin.
ReplyDeleteI think that we can't underestimate the appeal of family to this show. All the rest of my family but me (three more siblings + mom and dad) live very close together and are all up in each others business in a mostly healthy if probably annoying way and I think a lot of the comedy of big close family reads to my very non-LA, non-urban family. Sure some elements here and there are urban/wealth fantasy for them, but Kate and Kenedy jane and Paul point out how that can be a nice calgon sort of thing.
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, I want to copy the gay dads decor so bad.
me too, Paul -- so much space! Claire's kitchen is the size of my entire apartment.
ReplyDeleteI'm watching this week's episode for the first time, and I'm sorry, but "Whatever it was, it looked like Dad was winning," erases all wrongdoings of genre cliche. I'm starting to enjoy Luke most of all of them, week-to-week.
ReplyDelete6 minutes later, and everything everyone is saying is killing me. This show wins on so many levels, so often. Why are we looking for something to go wrong with it? It's clear to me that the writers took this premise as a loss on a bet or something, and they stone KILLED IT. This is craziness. Luke and Gloria could hook up in this episode, bringing their suddenly-ten-year-old baby into the mix, and I think they'd find some way to roll with it.
ReplyDeleteI really can't picture this show jumping the shark yet.
Completely agree -- right down to the Perfect Strangers reference.
ReplyDelete@Russ Sorry, trying to be sociological, rather than political; I'm perhaps the reddest person here (albeit a purplish red), and I'm MF's biggest defender. I agree that many of the characters and their attitudes are straight out of West LA, but unlike "Action!" or even "Arrested Development," the show tries very hard to make those characters plausibly relatable outside of the NY/LA/DC urban nooks: nobody actually works in Hollywood (Jay seems to be in some sort of manufacturing or wholesaling gig and has decidedly middle-American steak-and-potatoes tastes notwithstanding the trophy wife), nobody's Jewish, only one of the four speaking kids is a collegiate striver, Phil could just as easily be in Wisconsin (or Scranton) as LA. Mitchell and Cam are very gay and very LA, but they're never more than a third of the show, and it's almost offset by the fact that Cam is considerably more, er, robust than any gay man I've seen in LA. Even with respect to Jay's trophy wife, the show made it very clear that the marriage ended because the first wife left him for selfish reasons.
ReplyDeleteI don't think we're disagreeing, Ted. And I wasn't trying to suggest that the show will track to politics per se. As you know, even "blue" states tend to be at least 40% red, and vice versa. My point was just that a show can be aimed at coastal elites and others like them and have quite a power base, especially in today's balkanized media environment.
ReplyDeleteAs someone from NorCal, it's not all that "LA" ish to me most of the time. Other than they have large houses and aren't worried about money, but that's more like "we're just gonna ignore current-day reality because that's depressing and we're on television" than "we're rich LA people." As someone else said, none of them work in entertainment, they all seem to do stuff that anyone anywhere else would be doing. Other than Phil the realtor having financial trouble in about 2 episodes (meanwhile, in real life my mom's realtor friend lost his own house, ouch), which made me wish he had a different career or they kept on pretending that it was non-recession time. Cam and Mitchell do have the social climber thing going on, but that's about it.
ReplyDeleteI still relate to it more than I do any New York show, which are all pretty foreign to me. I wonder if they are so foreign to most of the rest of the country living in the burbs?
As someone from NorCal, it's not all that "LA" ish to me most of the time. Other than they have large houses and aren't worried about money, but that's more like "we're just gonna ignore current-day reality because that's depressing and we're on television" than "we're rich LA people." As someone else said, none of them work in entertainment, they all seem to do stuff that anyone anywhere else would be doing. Other than Phil the realtor having financial trouble in about 2 episodes (meanwhile, in real life my mom's realtor friend lost his own house, ouch), which made me wish he had a different career or they kept on pretending that it was non-recession time. Cam and Mitchell do have the social climber thing going on, but that's about it.
ReplyDeleteI still relate to it more than I do any New York show, which are all pretty foreign to me. I wonder if they are so foreign to most of the rest of the country living in the burbs?
Also Cam is a Midwestern farm boy at heart! Lest we forget football and farm animals.
ReplyDeleteSo I had a weird moment when I read this yesterday. I hadn't seen the episode yet but decided to check out the comments. I googled to find out what the fastest selling debut album of all time is called and the first thing that came up was Susan Boyle! And I thought, Susan BOYLE has an album named after a sexual position?!
ReplyDeleteIn case you're wondering, no, she doesn't. Her album is called "I Dreamed A Dream," which ended up being funny anyway when I finally watched the episode last night and heard Phil say to Claire, "YOU weren't there when we started." Maybe it is a position, after all.
Since I moved to New York about five years ago, I've noticed just how many shows are set in New York, how many jokes use New-York-centric punchlines, how many photo shoots use Brooklyn as a background, how many articles just happen to quote someone who lives in NY. I sometimes wonder how people who have never lived in New York City would feel about the HIMYM episode where they had to go see Woody Allen, or if what feels like distinctively New York comedy would translate.
ReplyDeleteI'm someone from a "Modern Family" so i relate. Though the jobs and lifestyles may be "LA" the sentiment at the center of the show isn't. I've got people I'm related to that don't even know about because the web of my family tree is so screwy. And all of those relatives are in families that are all a little different. On the show you've got the two gay dads family, the mom-and-dad-and-2.5-kids-in-the-suv family, and the step-father married to a woman much younger family. In my family I've got the one parent families, the two parents both re-married to other people families, the never got married but together 30 years families and so on. But we're all related in one way or another and we all come together as one big family, just like the show. I love that this show is about something other than a single parent or a standard family. Because that's all that's ever done, and I can't always relate to those.
ReplyDeleteHell, there's a certain amount of that in littler ol' Amarillo, TX. Trophy wives and status-conscious gay couples absolutely aren't limited to LA, there is competition to get into the top day care (though, admittedly, not to the extent you'd see elsewhere), and kids are used by their parents. Maybe it depends on the crowds you run in (and some of my closer friends are those status-conscious gay couples), but there's very little on Modern Family that I don't find relatable to some degree. And maybe aspirational relatability doesn't matter with this show, because my sister, who has no interest in that kind of lifestyle, loves it just the same.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I think was commendable about this episode that no one's mentioned was it showed Phil as a competent husband. Usually he's being a doofus, but the "it's not that big of a deal" dialogue was really pretty convincing showing an aspect of that relationship that probably needs to be there for Claire and Phil to make much sense.
ReplyDeleteWhen did Alan stop reviewing MF?
ReplyDeleteAlan would occasionally give reviews to the effect of "This episode isn't as good as the show could be." The show apparently appeals to enough low-brow folks, and the quality of commenter is lower at Hitfix than his old blog, so every such post would result in dozens of flames demanding that Alan stop watching the show if he didn't like it, and Alan got justifiably sick of it.
ReplyDeleteI live in Kansas, in a suburb of Kansas City - my Indian husband and I both enjoy The Middle and Modern Family. The Middle certainly hits closer to home for me than my husband, but not in my current life - more from my childhood (the 70s/80s decor DEFINITELY hits the right notes) Additionally, many of the jokes surrounding parenting on The Middle REALLY hit close to home - those are usually the funniest episodes.
ReplyDeleteAnd Modern Family? Yes, there are definitely many aspects with which I relate. It is set in LA, sure, but that doesn't prevent me from relating to it just because I live in a state with bloody red politics (although, to be fair, I am Libertarian) Or maybe, that is just because I live in a big house and have a trophy foreign husband. That's worked out very well for me.. ;-)
So it was because of Cam's snowball of lies that they were in that pit?
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, since we're talking about LA, thanks again to everyone for the LA recommendations. We visited most of the recommended neighborhoods, wound up going our own way for meals, and had a generally great day. We're not going to move there, as it turns out, but we're definitely not against visiting again soon.
ReplyDelete