Modern Family is the best sitcom on TV
When the commercials first urged me to watch ABC’s rookie sitcom Modern Family, my approximate reaction was “I’d rather die.” It just looked so, well, lame. Another stupid family sitcom about stupid family situations, now “freshly” updated to include the terribly cutting edge notion of gay people and minorities. If it was 1992, perhaps I’d be intrigued. But it’s not, so…yeah. However, a funny thing happened on the way to the snark forum…I watched an episode. I must’ve been sick, or drunk, or sick and drunk, but somehow Modern Family wound up on my TV screen. And it was pretty good. I kept watching, and it progressed. Now, eighteen episodes later, Modern Family is the best thirty minutes on television.
Don't love me.
This is, admittedly, qualified praise. Sitcoms suck right now. The most popular is Two and a Half Men, which I can only assume people watch because, with the downturn in the economy, drinking a bottle of Drano has become too expensive an alternative. Men gets viewers, but so would televised cancer if you put Charlie Sheen and a funny little fat kid in it, so let’s not hand out any awards. No, the only challenge to the quality sitcom throne is 30 Rock, and it’s a very funny show. Hysterical, even. But as a viewer it doesn’t let you in, doesn’t want you to give it a hug, and that’s where Modern Family pulls ahead.
30 Rock, Tina Fey’s show within a sketch comedy show, has got to be the most inside program on television. It’s fast, quirky, and extremely intelligent. All great qualities, but not necessarily ones that get millions of Americans to click on over. Recent episodes have included jokes about elite secret societies, the tone of Huffington Post articles, and screenwriting format cues (“Smash cut to….”). Let me be clear, those were great jokes. But how many people get them? And can you be a capital G Great American Sitcom when you leave so many people in the sidelines? Watch this:
Fantastic. Hilarious. Written the hell out of. But dense stuff. It’s media satire, political satire, elitism satire, and I think…satire satire all at once? Tons of brain but not a lot of heart, 30 Rock may be the true postmodern sitcom. Seinfeld’s wit plus The Office’s self-awareness. But Modern Family picks up a different lineage: The Cosby Show, All in the Family, even, dare I say, I Love Lucy. Very simple stories told very, very well – with a little bit of heart. Very hard to do.
Modern Family is, of course, about a family. A large one, that has a lot of “modern” (ok, it’s an annoying title) permutations: a gay son who lives with his football loving male partner, a perfectionist daughter with a goofy husband and three wisenheimer kids, and an old school but sensitive patriarch who married a busty Colombian. The cast is filled with people you’ve seen before, but the break out star however is one you haven’t. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Manny Delgado.
He’s Frasier meets Don Juan, except twelve and Colombian. I never thought a recipe as old “precocious pre-teen” could yield good results – but trust me, Manny is aces. In fact, that’s Modern Family – classic sitcom elements, written really well, and given a nice twist. The large c-c-c-razy brood is about as sitcom as sitcom gets, but Modern uses the mockumentary format to give it a spin. Characters addressing the camera, giving snide little interviews – it’s so Office-y it’s almost cliche, but applied to an old-fashioned show it feels fresh. It gives the show a different tone, a more complex one that can appeal to 30 Rock sophisticates and those not on the inside. Modern Family is everything 30 Rock isn’t, it’s simple, light and breezy – and it has a real soul. Nineteen episodes ago, I would’ve though that was insult. Sometimes I’m a real dummy.
Even Two and a Half Men fans know that’s funny, right?
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It’s true. Thank you for speaking up for this show; I had the same journey of discovery with it. I also had to learn to be really quick with the remote — so as to catch the last 30 seconds of Modern Family, but change the channel right before the abominable Cougar Town starts.
[...] True Slant has a review of Modern Family, here are the highlights: [...]
The premise of this show can definitely provoke eyerolls from both sides of the aisle, but the writing and acting just prove to us, once again, that we have more in common than not.
Assuming of course that we all live comfortably upper middle class lives… (my only complaint!)
The show is brilliant. Sometime after Valentine’s Day, my wife and I picked up the pilot on Apple t.v. We watched the first two episodes, chuckled a bit, went to bed and went to work the next day.
On my way home the next day she texted me “Don’t you dare start Modern Fam before I get home.” We caught up in mainline fashion and now watch new ones in *almost* real time (buffer for an hour so we can skip commercials).
Yeah, it really sneaks up on you. You don’t realize you love it until all of a sudden you’re counting the days to the next episode. There are few shows I do that with.
In response to another comment. See in context »It’s a great show. I think the cast is what puts it over the top; it’s a great commentary on the complexities of family life these days. I LOVE Eric Stonestreet as the partner of the gay son. He is absolutely side-splittingly hilarious–a lovable diva. Kudos to the casting director on this one.
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