Modern Family
First comes love. Then comes marriage (or homosexual cohabitation, as the case may be). Then comes an adopted baby in a baby carriage. But that’s only part of the family dynamic on display in Modern Family. The show, done in a quasi-documentary format, focuses on three interrelated California families, loosely helmed by patriarch Jay Pritchett. Married to Gloria Delgado, a woman many years (generations?) his junior, Jay is now serving as a father to stepson Manny—and neither of them like the arrangement much.
Jay’s two grown children, Claire and Mitchell, are both raising families of their own. Claire is married to a well-meaning goofball (Phil), and the couple are cluelessly raising three children in the show’s most traditional representation of a nuclear family—but it’s the most laughably chaotic, too.
Mitchell life, on the other hand, is designed to demonstrate what love, support, rationality and good judgment look like … as he nurtures an adopted baby with his homosexual lover, Cameron.
Episode Reviews
September 30, 2009
TV Parental Guidelines Rating: tvpg
"The Bicycle Thief"
Phil decides to give his son a new bicycle, replacing the hand-me-down girlie one (its pink flowers somewhat camouflaged by black electrical tape) he’s been riding. But when Phil sees said new bike sitting on a street corner, unchained and unattended 10 minutes after he bought it, he decides to swipe the thing to teach his son a lesson.
The catch: The bike is actually someone else’s.
"I taught some random kid a valuable lesson by stealing his bike," Phil rationalizes.
Meanwhile, Jay and Manny try to fix a ceiling fan together while Manny waits for his much-idolized biological dad to pick him up for a trip to Disneyland. And Mitchell and Cameron take baby Lily to her first playdate—joining scads of mothers out with their tykes, too. Mitchell worries about coming across to the other moms as too gay.
"Paisley and pink," he says, critiquing Cameron’s choice of shirt. "Was there something wrong with the fishnet tank top?"
The episode ends sweetly enough: When Manny’s father skips Disneyland with his son to spend more time gambling, Jay decides to take the boy himself: "90% of being a dad is just showing up," he says. He’s right, of course. A critical part of fatherhood is being there—really, physically, being there—for your children.
But the episode’s saddled with sexual double entendres and situations (Phil winds up in the neighborhood femme fatale’s bedroom—an innocent act of neighborliness his wife misconstrues), a bit of foul language and some pretty snide snips: "He keeps us grounded," Gloria says of Manny. "Like fog at an airport," Jay responds.
That retort may not be nice when it’s directed at your son. But it’s more than apt—and not even a little bit excessive—when it comes to this show.