BY JACOB AXELRAD
Daily Arts Writer
Published January 4, 2011
It was supposed to be original. It was supposed to be edgy. It was supposed to not suck. And yet, the winner of the 2009 Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series appears to be going the way of many sitcoms before it: boring and safe.
"Modern Family"
Season Two Midseason
Wednesdays at 9 p.m.
ABC
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Created by Christopher Lloyd (“Frasier”) and Steven Levitan (“Just Shoot Me!”), “Modern Family” tells the story of three factions of an extended family in Los Angeles through a “mockumentary” format. There’s Jay (Ed O’ Neill, “Married with Children”), the old-school patriarch, who’s married to Gloria (Sofía Vergara, “Madea Goes to Jail”), his beautiful, exotic and much younger wife from Colombia. Gloria’s son, and Jay’s new stepson, is the inquisitive young Manny (newcomer Rico Rodriguez). Jay’s daughter, Claire (Julie Bowen, “Happy Gilmore”), has three kids of her own with eccentric husband Phil (Ty Burrell, “Damages”). Finally, there’s Jay’s son Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson, “The Class”) and his partner Cameron (Eric Stonestreet, “CSI”), who have adopted a Vietnamese baby, Lily.
This dynamic made for hilarious storylines during its first year on the air. Claire’s jealousy of her very young stepmom, Jay’s rough adjustment to what he often referred to as “Little Colombia” in his house, Phil’s absurd approach to parenting and the way Mitchell and Cam struggled to raise a child. But a show must rise above its original premise in order to stay afloat and maintain originality.
Unfortunately, the most recent episodes have fallen victim to formulaic plot points and preachy, overly sentimental concluding speeches, which overshadow the quality elements that are still there. So let this serve more as a warning to the writers than anything else.
The second season started off strong. The premiere, “The Old Wagon,” dealt with themes of change and getting older through the metaphor of an old family station wagon that Phil refused to sell. While the three different families didn’t intersect as much as they had in the previous season, it was nevertheless an important reminder of the dysfunctional yet close familial bond that first appealed to viewers and critics alike. “Strangers on a Treadmill” — a nice little nod to the classic Hitchcock film — had Claire and Mitchell conspiring together to tell each other’s spouses the faults that bother them. This is the kind of screwball comedy the show should stick with.
But somewhere around the Halloween episode it became clear that this season lacked imagination. In an effort to get everyone in the family to play along with her plan for a haunted mansion, Claire bemoans the fact that Halloween is the one holiday that belongs to her, laying a guilt trip on the other family members in the process. Fast-forward to the most recent episode, “Dance Dance Revelation,” and we can see an eerily similar storyline. Once again Claire complains, this time only to Gloria, that planning her children’s school dance is the “one thing” that belongs to her.
Coupled with other overly touted plotlines and repetitive character quirks, “Modern Family” is in a slump halfway through its second season. Despite powerful acting from the main cast, as well as excellent guest performances (Nathan Lane as Pepper, Mitchell and Cameron’s larger-than-life friend; Celia Weston as Cameron’s overly touchy mother and Danny Trejo as the janitor at the school dance, to name a few) the show’s foundation is in danger of crumbling.
One might ask how the creative forces can fix this. For starters, they could do a bit more showing. The grand monologues about life and what it means to be a family with which the episodes still sometimes conclude are out of place and only hinder the show’s progression. One only needs to look to other examples of the “mockumentary” genre (like NBC’s “Parks and Recreation” and “The Office”) to see that this formula works best when used to enhance the storylines, not to bash the viewer over the head with sentiment.
