By Matt Kiernan
The new ABC sitcom Modern Family brings together the best of other hit shows Arrested Development and The Office, for a show that uses smart comedy to question, what is the normal modern family?
Main character Jay, played by Married With Children star Ed O’Neill, is a man who’s reaching the later part of his life, but has recently married a young, beautiful Colombian woman named Gloria Delgado Pritchett, played by Sofia Vergara. Gloria has a son named Manny (Rico Rodriguez), a kid who can sometimes care too much and tries to do good by others.
Jay’s son Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), who is a conservative lawyer, is paired up with the much more flamboyant Cameron (Eric Stonestreet). This gay couple with opposite personalities also have adopted a Vietnamese baby.
Phil Dunphy (Ty Burrell) is a father who thinks he’s cool with what’s “in” with his children’s generation, trying to be the best father he can be. Claire (Julie Brown) is a mother who decided to give up her career ambitions to be a stay-at-home mom to take care of her family.
The show is rounded out by the Dunphy children, Haley (Sarah Hyland), Alex (Ariel Winter) and Luke (Nolan Gould), who attempt to hold their own against their adult counterparts and are mildly successful.
Much of Family takes the set-up of The Office in that it includes interviews with the characters in-between scenes to give incite into what they’re thinking. This greatly benefits the show because it shows their reactions to the absurd situations they get themselves into, which may have not been captured otherwise.
The critic-loved comedy Arrested Development, for the most part, received very positive reviews while it was on the air. Modern Family is also seeing this from critics and fans, leaving one to wonder if both these shows are so similar, how is Family expected to succeed?
This doesn’t really have an easy answer, but what the characters on Family have over those on Development, is obvious love for one another.
Through all the selfishness that the characters on Development had, love could be seen if the viewer looked deep enough. The act of making this love more difficult to be seen was a strong fit for the Fox network, seeing as it has since its beginning tried to have a cutting-edge style.
ABC is a much more family-oriented network, so using an unconventional family setting, while keeping family-love much in the forefront, may allow the show to retain a strong following of viewers.
This week’s episode entitled, “My Funky Valentine,” will see the characters trying to improve their love lives on Valentine’s Day, with accidents happening along the way.
One can only hope that ABC doesn’t make the same mistake Fox did in canceling Arrested Development with Family, but then again, American audiences usually aren’t up for seeing witty comedy on television. Family is one of the best shows to be aired on ABC in quite a long time.
Modern Family airs Wed.’s at 9 p.m. on ABC.
