Stuart Heritage
Monday 24 September 2012
While much of the post-Emmy chatter revolved around
whether Homeland deserves to hit Mad Men, is one thing beyond doubt. As for
comedy, Modern Family, winner of four awards last night - outstanding comedy
series, best supporting actor, best supporting actress and outstanding
leadership - is by far the best sitcom currently on television public.
For those who have yet to see an episode, Modern Family follows the life of the Pritchett family - patriarch Jay (to a lush, much younger Colombian woman married), brother Mitchell (who adopted a Vietnamese baby with her boyfriend) and sister Claire ( married to Phil and mother of three children) - their everyday mishaps are allegedly recorded by a European documentary crew.
It sounds a rather fragile premise but Modern Family got two big things going for it: its occupation and its ability to sound off. In a particular episode, you are likely to get the dark (a minor character recently died), stupidity (Phil and his son Luke hunt for gold, because of their home) to find, complicated social commentary (struggle Jay continued his gay son accept), impressive Baroque slapstick (almost every episode at least one carefully choreographed pratfall) and because it is an American sitcom, some trash endings where everyone learns an important lesson, and caresses.
Still Arrested Development, Modern Family has a number so big and so talented that it is almost impossible to identify a break-out star. Always threatened when Phil Ty Burrell, a buffoon Tiggerish sitcom in the classical form seems to the show, Cameron Eric Stonestreet, Julie Bowen Claire or Manny Rico Rodriguez steal - or even the toddler Vietnamese - will be Barnstormer in a level of performance in this area.
There are signs that the rate could also be the key to losing Modern Family, in this experiment, 10 main characters give something meaningful in a single episode of 22 minutes do without repetition or reduce each person a stereotype sometimes a struggle. But if it works well, there is nothing to touch. Often the best episodes of Modern Family are in the three different stories merge at the end, like Halloween or Fizbo the second row of the first.
Of course it helps that Modern Family is not really much in the way of competition. It was not an American family sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond convincing since, and the rest of the current harvest is past years culminated (Half Men, The Office, 30 Rock) to the niche for wide impact correspond Modern Family (Community, New Girl) or the worst thing ever on television in the history of the medium (2 Broke Girls).
But to keep up a strong opposition, Modern Family management their own. It might not be long - half the cast are children, so it could succumb to Outnumbered syndrome and get less funny with each series - so we should revel in while we can,. His Emmy wins were deserved.
