My Weekly Wonders: Modern Family

I must admit, I did not like Modern Family when I first heard about it.  This was partly due to the fact that it was an ABC comedy, in which at the time I had the idea that they could not make good comedies, but mostly due to my ignorance and stubbornness to not watch the show. I remember one year, Modern Family was winning a whole bunch of Emmy's and I was getting really mad because I thought they didn't deserve it. Now that I have actually watched and experienced the amazing writing on the show, I can now say that every one of those awards was completely deserved. This show is absolutely brilliant, and I'll tell you why.

Modern Family is based around three families that make up one big family. The first consists of a gay couple named Mitchell and Cameron who adopted a baby Lily, the second is a mother and father named Claire and Phil Dunphy and their kids Haley, Alex, and Luke, and last is Claire and Mitchell's father Jay and his much younger wife Gloria and her son Manny.  Confused? Don't be.  After you start watching the show, their family really feels like your own family. They do embarrassing things, hang out all the time, and are always there for each other no matter what they do to each other.  

Each family has their own unique characteristics, that when brought together, leads to almost chaos.  We find Mitchell and Cameron usually getting into small fights are so minute that it never threatens their relationship. Such as is in a recent episode when Mitchell brought home a trophy that he was really proud of, but the next day Cameron got out one of his old trophies. As you can see, Mitchell got a little sensitive, but realized he was overreacting and went looking for other trophies of Cam's. He then found a multitude of first place trophies in which he was very impressed with, but to Mitchell's dismay he also found a rodent crawling around and started violently stomping on the ground near the trophies as to which Cam thought he was doing to his own trophies. A lot of the "fights" Cam and Mitchell have are mostly just misunderstandings or a few hurtful words that were taken out of proportion.

The Dunphys also have an interesting dynamic. Phil is not always the brightest, and ends up looking to Claire a lot of the time for how to parent. The two together are hilarious, embarrassing, and definetly not the average parenting couple.  One of my favorite episodes that I like to tell people about is the time when Haley was trying to write an essay for college but was complaining to Claire about how she didn't have any obstacles to overcome in her life and told Claire that she was "too sheltered."  At first Claire was starting to get worked up about it, obviously agitated that Haley was not grateful for her well lived life. But Claire suddenly stopped and told Haley to get in the car "I have to show you something." Naturally Haley was very confused, but followed her mother to her car.  The two drive out a fairly far distance into what looks like the middle of nowhere.  It is there that Claire explains to Haley that there something she never told her and that she should get out of the car and look at the tree across the street.  Haley questionably gets out of the car and walks over to the tree. Claire then drives off, yelling out the window "there's an obstacle to overcome!"

Jay and Gloria's relationship can pretty much be summed up in this clip of that was in a recent episode.

Just with it's very well written scripts, Modern Family would've done very well. But too top it off, all the actors and actresses are amazing.  They are all, except for the kids, nominated for Emmy's every year. If you think about that, that's pretty crazy.  That's six people just from one show! Plus of course the show is nominated as well because it's so hilariously funny.  The amount of crazy and embarrassing circumstances these characters get themselves into will literally keep this show airing for many many years to come.