Is “Modern Family” really that good?

Wednesday, Oct 3, 2012 

A week and a half ago, "Modern Family" cleaned Emmy won Best Supporting Actor and Actress in a Comedy, Best Director of Comedy and Best Comedy for the third consecutive year. At the end of the program, which also includes a funny sketch alleged child actress Lily plays a bratty little diva, he felt like a big party organized in honor of "Modern Family".

 But as the series begins its fourth season - his first last week - "Modern Family" is the sitcom once was. His victories Emmy streak obscuring the moving average of the entire family comedy welfare.
It's easy to see why Emmy voters as "Modern Family": There is neither Tragically Hip or unhip.

It splits the difference between the old, backward, popular sitcoms anti-spirit of CBS and specializes in edgy, niche, "limit shear community, lower-rated comedies, that the Internet is possessed (" Parks & Recreation "", "girls" "Louie"). "Modern Family" is fashioned socially liberal yet, looked good, but really funny. It is not particularly innovative, but it is not even "Two and a Half Men."

Top episodes "Modern Family" will follow the soothing, but not cloying formula in the pilot where the Pritchett-Dunphy-Delgado-Tucker extended communities all ended in a pool. In a particular episode, various permutations of the great pair of times in the stories, hopefully, Echo and include each other, to culminate in a farce old family with love and madness, how to throw a random example, a super-competitive family pumpkin take. Tearful moments cut with zingers, or at least the gags.

But like "Modern Family" has grown older, his characters and their dynamics are mounted in grooves, discordant some more than others. Manny, hyper-adult of 13, things like, say, "Jay Want to soak my tea!" Remains a pleasure even if its material is cured, like everyone in shtick. Less pleasant and boring are adults. Four seasons in Jay is of masculinity and his son and the lack of it consumed his stepson. Phil "cool dad" Dunphy was buffoon, Claire Dunphy more than a shrew.

The relationship built up "Modern Family" as a liberal cause celebre sprouted feet of clay. Been Cam and Mitchell, the gay couples who happily settled with an adopted daughter, exposed in the past three years rays in a number of US shows where they have clearly demonstrated that homosexual couples be as dull and shabby as just. This is also probably a good social as sometimes tedious television.

Mitchell tense and the most flamboyant Cam argue constantly, the two experts to take offense. If they are, as they always do, they do it without physical affection. The outrage that the couple never kissed on the screen died after a Season 2 Episode stated that Mitchell is embarrassed by the public display of affection, but he his sister and his father more than he embraces her partner. "The New Normal" NBC may be disturbed, but at least kissing gay couple and be seen in bed together.

The killing of more comprehensive character was Gloria, a young wife and mother of Jay Manny. Sofia Vergara, who plays Gloria, has a Spanish accent thick crust of the earth, and, uh, the game Mountains. Ty Burrell, who plays Phil, she was one of the break-out stars of the first season, "Modern Family". Despite sent handling any equipment that was never provided, Vergara was giving stories become deeper, some of which she is struggling big laugh anyway. Playing a Latina fire, turning sheets regularly to predictable jokes "Latina fire": pronunciation, the violence of his native Colombia, she sees, she emphasizes prance around ridiculously high shoes is hot-headed and stubborn.! ! You can not pronounce "Luke!" She screams! She's really crying! If it's not quite on the level of "Two Broke Girls" it is only because some of them will make you laugh.

But the ultimate example of stealth malice "Modern Family" is the treatment of Claire Dunphy. Claire is a control freak, and the series continued, it became more. Monitor the smooth running of their family, they may blame and acute and authoritarian section. It is often emasculated her husband Phil goofball, a big kid, despite offering very little help around the house an irrepressible love with a guy has entered. (He runs to talk about how hot his mother-in-law Gloria is all the time, what cute, just is not scary, and one of the examples of how "Modern Family" often meet Claire and Gloria compared against other .) It may be repellent, and a horse, his children. It is understood by all Dunphys, Claire contain, what makes a family business and that it is not fun is.

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In a bow last season, Claire, a homemaker, ran for city council. Preparing for a segment of his family - hilarious, it must be said - they warned against the use of its regular network of condescending, angry gestures and vocal tics, some kind of roast his habits request. Not really help on election day, almost every member of Claire's family to him, a show of incompetence, for - unlike standard style "Modern Family" - there was no apology or consequences, with the exception of the defeat of Clare. Another consequence of last season featured Claire and her two daughters at the same time getting their periods and then become unbalanced and overly emotional. One speaker at the AV Club found that it was impossible to tell the difference between "time Claire" and you say "normal Claire."

Despite everything, I still love to Claire and I'm not the only one. Julie Bowen, who plays Claire, won his second Emmy in the past week, it deserves expensive: She plays on the paper, the unsympathetic character "Modern Family" and so does not have any shots or quibble while prickly, energy and talent pratfalls committed , How Sitcoms older, often end up being changing to accidentally inability of people: character remain more or less the same as the characteristics and peculiarities and jokes, and they are more or less stay the same. Claire knows she high-strung and heartbreaking, and they can not remember. It is constitutionally obliged to grow up. (I'd really curious to find an appropriate likability poll Claire and Phil broke to look at gender roles.)

The performance of Bowen and his Emmy wins isolate "Modern Family" for his cruelty, his character. However bad the show deals with Claire, the Emmy voters nor compassion for them, so it may not be so bad, right? But Bowen did what all actors "Modern Family" to do: the show comes with jabs and insults, by they are better, funnier, friendlier and more nuanced than the material given.