This is one of the funniest things I have seen in my life, hands down.
The finale was billed as a three-parter, which doesn't make sense given the previous two episodes were linked together when the family vacationed to Hawaii, and the finale was about a group photo back home. These were all amazing episodes regardless. I really wish I had something negative to say about the past season as a talking point, but it's been a consistent level of comedy from start to finish. Ed O'Neill never lost his comedic touch and the faint glimmers of Al Bundy still live on in Jay Pritchett. Ty Burrel is both adorable and retarded as Phil. Eric Stonestreet and Tyler Ferguson play the best TV gay couple ever with Cam and Mitch and it never stops being laugh out loud hilarious when one or both of them panic uncontrollably. Everyone is just into their role perfectly. Much like Community, the cast outside of the show acts practically like a family, and I think when you have a cast that are very good friends and lob jokes at each other off the set, you get actors that work naturally together. And for a show about a family, that is really essential for selling some of the crazier things that have happened on the show.
I keep my wallet in my front pocket, so that's what that is.
But back to the original point: the family sitcom has grown stale for a while. Watching an episode of The Middle before Modern Family comes on is like night and day, and one thing I've liked about the better new shows lately is they're adapting to a more updated form of comedy. Yes, you're always going to have your 2 And A Half Mens and things you label under Stuff Old People Love For No Apparent Reason, but there will always be people reinventing the wheel. I really don't think a premier season for has gone off this well in a while, I mean they renewed the snow in January, and on average gets 9-10 million viewers each week.
AND YET BETTER OFF TED GETS CANCELE- okay I need to get off that train, but I'm going to be bitter about ABC until the season 2 DVDs are released and I can watch the final two episodes.
Overall, Modern Family has a grounded basis in well-known sitcom stereotypes, but refuses to indulge in them. You can passively watch the show from the distance and point out, "oh that's the bratty kid, that's the nerdy kid, that's a dumb dad," and so on, but it isn't until you sit down and watch that you see that there is a lot of complexity to all the characters, and that is revealed only when they interact with each other. Phil trying to find something in the garage and tripping up is one thing. Phil trying to find something in the garage and tripping up as his wife reads the list to the symptoms of ADHD, matching Phil's actions, is amazing. If there are two or more main characters on screen or playing off each other (whether they know it or not, like the clip above), it's like comedic alchemy. You know the end result will be a work of art, even if you're unsure about the ingredients going in.
I died when I saw that scene where he is hunting the bird in slow mo to his partner singing ave maria. This is a ghost posting this comment.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I'll agree with you on it being a great model for the family sitcom resurgence... I will say I hate the way women are portrayed on the show and I also hate that cam and mitchell never get to do anything intimate except hug.
ReplyDeletecase in point Hawaii airport ep. when claire and Phil kiss when they are reunited after the whole passport fiasco while cam and mitch hug...because that's clearly all the gays do is hug. I know it's a little too "taboo" for ABC (a disney company), but what does that even mean anyway?
I make angry calls to ABC and ABC affiliates all the time. I'm an angry grandmother at heart.
Which female characters did you have a problem with? I know they toss Claire a few stereotype bits here and there (her not being able to work the remote immediately springs to mind), but to counterbalance that Phil is a lot worse off in terms of doing dumb things. Haley and Alex are boiled down to be copies of the bratty and nerdy sibling types, but I don't see them in any light other than middle and high school kids in a family. And to be fair to Gloria, after following Sofia Vergara on Twitter I wonder if they even hand her a script. The type of character she portrays is very similar, so most of her bits seem more natural to me.
ReplyDeleteOn Cam and Mitch, there was a interview about that from Tyler Ferguson, I wish I could remember the link or remember if this was just on twitter, but he did go into detail about that and made a good point: While yes, they are a gay couple on the show, this is essentially (and this is his words here) "bringing a gay trojan horse into America's homes." Now that the show's cemented itself in ABC's comedy lineup, I think they'll have a lot more opportunities to push the envelope in that regard.