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 ABC 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.
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 together they are cluelessly raising three kids in the show's most traditional representation of a nuclear family—but it's the most laughably chaotic, too.
Mitchell, on the other hand, has been crafted to demonstrate what love, support, rationality and good judgment look like … as he nurtures an adopted baby with his homosexual partner, Cameron.
It's all an expression of what ABC believes a "modern family" is all about, and the results are both bitter and sweet. While we see the love and affection parents have for their kids—and for each other—the show can plow through some pretty problematic fields: Sexual double entendres run through episodes like loosed dogs, and many episodes are pitted with mild profanity.
Then there's the issue of Mitchell and Cameron.
It's interesting to note how natural the show's gay couple appears to be: While Cameron can be a caricature of stereotypical effeminacy, he and Mitchell are presented as normal people living an acceptable lifestyle. They merely want to be great parents to their adopted girl, and they try to support each other as best they can through life's trials and tribulations.
Those small facts speak to how much television has changed in your lifetime.
In 1997, Ellen made huge waves when the titular character came out as a lesbian. Will & Grace, a sitcom based on the relationship between a heterosexual woman and a homosexual man, came out one year later. Both shows created quite the stir—gaining notoriety for their simple "gayness." Both, in their own ways, pandered and felt self-conscious.
Now, shows routinely feature homosexual characters—so often, in fact, that not much is made of it. A recent study by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation suggests that people's attitudes toward homosexuality have become more favorable in the last five years. And a third of those surveyed said their attitude shift was due, in large part, because of the positive gay characters found on the tube.
"As the networks gradually add characters from all backgrounds and all walks of life to prime-time programming, more and more Americans are seeing their LGBT friends and neighbors reflected on the small screen," GLAAD president Neil Giuliano told USA Today in 2008.
Mitchell and Cameron, then, are now "just" part of the landscape. And that says a lot about how TV has changed and how it—by presenting shows like Modern Family—has helped normalize something society once shunned.
Episode Reviews
February 10, 2010
TV Parental Guidelines Rating: tvpg
"My Funky Valentine"
Phil and Claire spend a night in a hotel pretending to cheat on each other—with each other. The night nearly ends in disaster when Claire, who's naked underneath her trench, gets the coat stuck in an escalator. Jay takes Gloria to a comedy show and is humiliated by the comedian, and Cameron and Mitchell help Manny woo his pint-sized love.
A conversation about sexual massage oils get overheard by kids. Far too slick and "sophisticated" for his own good, a teen boy gives his girlfriend (Phil and Claire's eldest daughter) a huge photo of them lying on a bed together. (He's wearing just a pair of jeans in the shot.) He also tells Claire, "All women should look as tasty as you when they're old." Cameron expresses relief when he learns that Mitchell's shower-time shouting was just him practicing his courtroom speech. Similar sexual allusions abound.
Characters drink whiskey and martinis, misuse God's name a half-dozen times and say "h‑‑‑" once. Cameron dresses up daughter Lily for every holiday, and Mitchell says that he noticed she still had some "Martin Luther King behind her ear" during her last bath—suggesting that Cameron put the girl in black face.
September 30, 2009
TV Parental Guidelines Rating: tvpg
"The Bicycle Thief"
Phil inadvertently swipes somebody's new bike. Manny waits … and waits for his much-idolized 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.
The episode ends sweetly enough: When Manny's father skips Disneyland with his son to spend some more time gambling, Jay decides to take the boy himself. "Ninety percent of being a dad is just showing up," he says.
But the story's saddled with sexual double entendres and situations. Example: Phil winds up in the neighborhood femme fatale's bedroom—an innocent act of neighborliness his wife misconstrues. Also present is 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.