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The Lessons of Modern Family

My nine year old neice.

My sixty-something year old dad.

My brother’s thirty year old Venezuelan girlfriend.

…and at least 90 of my other friends on Facebook. Don’t believe me? Look!

Everyone loves Modern Family.

“It encompasses older & younger husband and wife… gay, hysterical men. Adopted children. It’s a cross-section of the new family in America.”. That’s what my mom said when I asked her why she liked Modern Family so much.

It’s different for everyone. Little nuances, like the constant ebb & flow of bickering and love between Alex and Haley, remind me of my little sister. I thought about my dad’s hoarding tendencies when Mitchell and Cam went to Costco for the first time. When Jay takes Manny around the neighborhood to sell wrapping paper, I thought of my mom taking me to every house in a square mile to sell my goods. You can bet I was the top gift wrap seller for two years in a row. I peaked young.

As we grow up, things change and people move away from you physically and emotionally. If you’re lucky, your family never will. The Dunphy’s and the Pritchett’s are a very lucky family. When I watch them every week at 9 PM on Wednesdays, a time slot once occupied by my other favorite show Lost, I feel like I’m returning to a familiar place.

Steve Levitan says that after Back to You was cancelled, he and Christopher Lloyd were struggling to come up with new stories. They would come into work and “start telling stories about what was happening in [their] lives. And it just started from there… from the pure place of, there are a lot of good things happening in our lives right now. A lot of interesting stories, everyday. Why don’t we just write about that? And when you start from a place like that, which is real and honest, a lot of good things tend to happen.”

Christopher Lloyd says the aspect of Cam not being able to say no to anyone comes from his wife. A lot of Manny was based on his two sons. Last year, his 11 year old son asked for a smoking jacket, so of course that was used with Manny’s character.

Regardless, Lloyd and Levitan didn’t have much hope for the script, then became a little more confident when the characters were cast and finally in filming, they saw what Modern Family could become. We probably won’t all get as lucky as the people in the cast or those working in the rooms behind the scenes. But hopefully we’ll each be lucky enough to spend our days with a family that drives us up the wall, and helps us when we’ve realized that was probably a terrible idea.

Just some casual college humor.

 

Be… our… Guest…

The Modern Family seems like such a welcoming bunch, who wouldn’t want to come over and hang out with them for a while?

Evedently, Hollywood agrees with me. In the last three seasons, Modern Family has casted some awesome guest stars, many of whom play pivot roles in the mythology of the show.

Shelley Long as DeDe Pritchett

Shelly Long, for example, plays Jay’s ex-wife and Claire and Mitchell’s mother. Long, is best known for her long-term role in Cheers as Diane Chambers. Her neurotic portrayal of DeDe Pritchett makes Claire look like a sweet baby bunny.

Nathan Lane, of Broadway and theatrical fame, has guest starred in at least 2 episodes of Modern Family, according to IMDB. He is mentioned regularly as one of Cam and Mitchell’s closest friends, Pepper Saltzman. His name is as great as his character.

Watch Nathan Lane bring his dramatic talent to Modern Family!

Comedian Fred Willard was impecably cast as Frank Dunphy, Phil’s father who visits the family in his RV. On the subject of fathers, Benjamin Bratt guest starred as Manny’s father. Having Bratt on the show gave a lot of depth to the relationships between Manny and Jay. Jay became fully aware of his protective ways and worried about how his father waltzed in and out of his life bringing presents and promising exciting things that never come to fruition.

Watch Benjamin Bratt in Modern Family!

Last month, Modern Family aired an episode packed with guest stars. Usually, bringing in too many guests can make the episode feel confusing, but Episode 7 titled “Treehouse” made me think “The more the merrier!” In this episode, Leslie Mann, Jennifer Tilly, Gilles Marini all guest starred. Leslie Mann played a woman who Cam tried to pick up after a dare from Mitchell that he couldn’t get a woman’s number. Jennifer Tilly played Gloria’s friend who tries to convince Jay and Gloria to go salsa dancing. Gilles Marini, of Sex and the City fame, acts as a friend of Mitchell and Cam’s at a boutique opening. Claire goes with them to the opening, as a Girl’s Night Out. She thinks he’s gay. He’s not. It’s a great episode.

Matt Dillon, Minnie Driver, James Marsden can’t be forgotten.

Matt Dillion as Claire's High School Boyfriend

James Marsden as a massage healer

Plus, a little birdy from Entertainment Weekly told me that Greg Kinnear will appearing in an episode next year as one of Phil’s real estate co-workers. Read about it here.

Analysis of Punkin Chunkin

This week’s episode “Punkin Chunkin” refers to a story Cam  tells about his childhood, a grandiose story about sling-shotting a pumpkin across a football field. The overarching theme of the episode is the battle between the Pritchett’s and the ‘Dreamers’ because Mitchell, Claire and Jay always tend to shoot down the ideas of their family members.

Scene 1- An old neighborhood kid, maybe 10 years older than Haley, has turned into a playboy billionaire. He and Phil had a very close relationship and Phil is excited to see him. Claire, not so much. A Plot

Scene 2- Cam & Mitchell talk to another couple and Cam attempts to tell the Punkin Chunkin story and Mitchell “wa-wa’s” it. B Plot

Scene 3- Manny makes a centerpiece for Thanksgiving. Gloria is showering him with praise and Jay confronts her about giving him unrealistic expectations. C Plot

Scene 4- Childhood friend, Kenneth & the Dunphy’s have coffee. He says he’s in town to buy a blimp. He says Phil has been his inspiration and he always asks himself “WHAT WOULD PHIL DUNPHY DO?”. A Plot

Scene 5- Alex and Haley are driving while researching Kenneth online. Haley looks over to Alex’s phone and dents the minivan on a trashcan. They blame the other. D Plot

Scene 6-Alex freaks out about not telling Claire about the dent. Haley devises a plan to make Claire not see the dent, but Alex isn’t buying it. D Plot

Scene 7- Cam is upset with Mitchell for making fun of his Punkin Chunkin story. Cam reflects back to his funny stories and Mitchell eludes to the fact that the story is made up, and Cam gets very upset. B Plot

Scene 8- Luke & Phil set up the tables at Thanksgiving. Phil tries to be innovative with the place settings. Luke wonders why they aren’t rich if Kenneth was trying to be like Phil. Claire shoots down his idea of the four bistro tables. A Plot

Scene 9- Manny has second thoughts about the centerpiece. Manny criticizes Jay’s rice pilaf. Gloria coddles him and stops Jay from telling him the importance of criticism. C Plot

Scene 10- Claire heads to the store while Alex and Haley stop her from seeing the dent in the driver’s door. D Plot

Scene 11- Phil tries to be creative with the napkins. Claire is critical and he lashes back at her. Tells Claire that she ‘squelches’ his success and shoots down her ideas. Claire reviews all the ideas Phil has had that has failed. They show a home movie infomercial called the Head-Scratcher featuring Phil and Luke. A Plot

Scene 12- Gloria, Manny & Jay get to the Dunphy’s and Alex works to hide the dent. Manny brings up the fact that Jay doesn’t like the centerpiece. He takes it as an opportunity to tell him the importance of knowing when people are lying to you and why it’s good to know what you’re good and bad at. Manny takes it harder than he shows.  C Plot

Scene 13- Manny walks into the house to acclaim from everyone for the centerpiece. Manny acknowledges that it isn’t his best work, because Jay had told him everyone was being too nice. Gloria yells at Jay for being too critical. Phil says he does it because he’s a Pritchett, calling out Claire and Mitchell as well. Claire tells Phil to get the Head-Scratcher to show everyone at Thanksgiving. It malfunctions. Cam brings out Mitchell making fun of his story. Everyone acknowledges that they thought the story was made up. Cam brings up the dividing line between the Dreamers and the Pritchett’s. They decide to go to a football field to settle the Punkin Chunkin story for once and for all. A, B, C Plots

Scene 14- Whole family at a football field with a slingshot. Jay, Claire and Mitchell stand to the side, commenting on the unrealistic views of their family members, and how they need their critical views to help them. A, B, C

Scene 15- Cam fires the pumpkin, and it goes about 10 feet. The Realists feel bad that the pumpkin didn’t go far enough and say that winning didn’t feel so good. Jay, Claire and Mitchell decide to go get more pumpkins to try it again. A,B,C

Scene 16- Cam Interview- Talks about how a lot of the time, the realists end up with the dreamers instead of with people from their same team. Mitchell launches the pumpkin and it goes really far. B Plot

Scene 17-Cam launches another pumpkin while Alex confesses that Haley hit the car as Cam’s pumpkin crashes into the same place in the car that was dented. D Plot

Great episode! However, it had a lot fewer scenes than I expected in the episode. I need to find better ways to interweave the stories.

7 Scenes centered around the A Plot

6 Scenes centered around the B Plot

6 Scenes centered around the C Plot

However, scenes 14-16 contained aspects of A,B and C.

4 Scenes centered around the D Plot

Before they Were Stars Part II

Sofia Vergara

Sofia is one of the only actresses in who has successfully transitioned from Hispanic Television to mainstream American television. She is Colombian and was discovered on a beach to do a Pepsi commercial in a bikini. She was hesitant but her mom insisted she do the commercial, which became incredibly popular in Colombia.

That commercial led to more modeling and commercial opportunities in Colombia and Latin America, though Vergara moved eventually to work with Univision Television. She starred in several shows and telenovelas like A Que No Te Atreves and the Latin American version of Desperate Housewives. In the American market, Vergara has also appeared in television shows like Hot Properties and  Entourage. She also had success in small roles in films like “Madea Goes to Jail”, “Lords of Dogtown”, and “Four Brothers”. After her contract was over with Univision, Vergara signed on to work with ABC and thus began her time in the fabulous role of Gloria on Modern Family. She just finished filming her first leading role in a motion picture, “The Three Stooges”, filmed in Atlanta.

Ty Burrell

For me, Ty Burrell is the most loveable character on Modern Family. Compared to many actors, Burrell’s career has been relatively short, yet during his tenure in acting, he has found a lot of success. After graduating from college in his native Oregon, Burrell pursued an MFA at Penn State and did a lot of work in on-stage productions.

He appeared in movies like Black Hawk Down, Dawn of the Dead and small roles on several television shows. In 2006, he began working with Christopher Lloyd on a CBS Sitcom Out of Practice, which was quickly cancelled. He again worked with Lloyd and Steve Levitan on the sitcom Back to You with Kelsey Grammer as a news anchor. That show was also quickly cancelled, but his history with Levitan & Lloyd allowed him to be cast as Phil Dunphy on Modern Family, which he received the Emmy for Best Supporting Actor in a Television Comedy, in 2011.

 

Before They Were Stars Part I

In Hollywood, you have to fake it until you make it. For most of the Modern Family Cast, the sitcom was the first taste of widespread success they had found in the entertainment industry.

Julie Bowen appeared in the first few seasons of ABC’s Lost, which happens to be my favorite TV show that has ever aired. Bowen played ex-wife to Jack Shepard, the main character in the series. They met when Sarah was the victim of a spinal injury. She was never suppose to be able to walk again, but Jack was her spinal surgeon and saved her, then became her husband. Their marriage ended badly. Sarah was the one who ended things, Jack contested the divorce. On the island, his failed marriage gave him a lot of guilt. In the first clip, we see Julie Bowen realize she has feeling in her legs. It’s a powerful emotional performance.

She also appeared television shows like Ed, ER, Boston Legal and Weeds. Below is a clip from Ed. From these and other clips of her acting past, I have noticed Julie Bowen plays powerful feminine roles, regardless of genre. She has a level of control in all of her characters that she has maintained consistently throughout her career.

Ed O’Neill is most well known for his role as Al Bundy, an suburban American father and shoe store owner on Married with Children from 1987-1997. In the clip below, O’Neill talks about how he landed the role. His character on Married with Children is similar to Jay Pritchett. Both have a very dry sense of humor, full of sarcasm. Bundy has much less patience and can be mean sometimes.

Ed O’Neill on “Inside the Actors Studio”

The first few minutes of this video shows that angry side of Ed O’Neill, when talking to fat women at his shoe store. Maybe this is what Jay was like in his former marriage. If so, I’m glad he’s with Gloria.

Al Bundy

Back to Where We Started From

I feel like my life has become consumed by Modern Family… and I don’t hate it. As I looked back at interviews with the Cast & Crew, I found the vision the creators originally had for the show has not changed since the beginning With that in mind, I decided to go back and watch the Pilot episode of Modern Family to see how the characters have grown and see how the writing has developed in 55 episodes.

In an interview, Julie Bowen talked about shooting the Pilot episode while being eight and a half months pregnant. They compensated by having her hold laundry baskets, stand behind counters and wear a large shawl. Amazingly, she had no sign of weight gain in other parts of her body. Lucky lady.

My thoughts:

1. Gloria has become less annoying as the series has progressed.
2. The writers have changed Mitchell’s relationship with the rest of the family. In the Pilot, we find out Mitchell didn’t even tell his family that he & Cam were adopting a baby from Vietnam. This seems a little outlandish. Mitchell and Claire have a great relationship. She would have been supportive of her brother becoming a father. Of course, Jay gets mildly uncomfortable with Mitchell being gay, but I think the rest of the family would have supported this situation from the beginning. When on the airplane with Lily, Mitchell gets extremely defensive and dramatic. That seems like an action more in line with Cam’s character. Now, Mitchell has become more rational to balance out Cam’s theatrics. I would assume the writers realized that the audience were uncomfortable with a character who felt so negatively about the rest of his family.
3. Some of the strongest moments in the Pilot episode are Phil’s ‘talking head’ scenes. I’m guessing this is because Lloyd & Levitan had worked with Ty Burrell on Back to You and knew how to write for his style of comedy.

Phil: I'm cool dad, that's my thang. I'm hip, I surf the web, I text. LOL: laugh out loud, OMG: oh my god, WTF: why the face...

A Name Can Be Misleading…

Well, I feel silly. For a long time, I assumed one of the writers of Modern Family was this guy, Christopher Lloyd.

The Other Christopher Lloyd, from Back to the Future.

In my head, it made sense. He understands physical comedy, he could be looking to step away from the screen and focus on more cerebral positions within the entertainment industry. However, I was wrong. Screenwriter Christopher Lloyd created Modern Family with Steve Levitan after a long career in filmed entertainment. Lloyd broke into Hollywood in the late eighties as a writer on Golden Girls. His father, David Lloyd, worked as a writer on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, and Cheers. He then joined his son, Christopher as a creative consultant on Frasier, where Christopher was an executive producer and writer from 1993 until the show’s finale in 2004. Christopher Lloyd was interviewed by the Emmy Archives after the first season of Modern Family. I’ve attached a short part of the interview below. In it, Lloyd talks about the process of developing the concept of Modern Family with Steve Levitan after the cancellation of Back to You.

Steve Levitan and Christopher Lloyd met while working on Wings in the early nineties. They then worked together on Frasier for a while. However, Levitan found much of his success as an Executive Producer on Just Shoot Me from 1997 to 2003. He went on to Executive Produce Stacked,  a Fox sitcom starring Pamela Anderson as a book store owner. After Back to You (a sitcom costarring Ty Burrell) was cancelled, the duo were still on contract to develop a show, and Modern Family was slowly developed as a commentary for the American family and its development. In the interview below, Levitan calls Modern Family a “sophisticated adult show about families”. It is a concept, evidently, that audiences have been craving for a long time and with the vision of Levitan and Lloyd, America seems to have gotten its fix.

Program Critique of “Princess Party”

From the title of the February 16^th episode “Princess Party”, a “Modern Family” viewer would assume the episode centers around baby Lilly, but only the last few minutes of the episode takes place at her birthday party. Instead, the audience watches the characters battle for and against their ex-loves, specifically a boyfriend, a wife and a clown. Add in Shelly Long and Matt Dillon and you would be crazy not to RSVP to this party.

The original matriarch of the family, Jay’s first wife and mother of Claire and Mitchell has been absent since the fourth episode of the series. In “Princess Party”, she returns and brings a storm with her, complete with the “Jaws” theme music performed by Alex. As much as the members of the family seem to irritate each other, DeDe has a special way of bringing that irritation to the next level. Shelly Long plays DeDe as a passive aggressive instigator. She drops condescending one-liners and makes everyone in her presence feel like whatever they are doing is wrong, until DeDe’s actions with Claire’s ex-boyfriend, played by Matt Dillon, points the blame back to her.

DeDe’s reign of terror began by inviting Claire’s former high school boyfriend and current limo driver to the Dunphy house. Though DeDe fails to mention Claire is married with three kids, Robby acts unfazed and still vies for her attention. Matt Dillon acts flawlessly, yet fully flawed as Robby. The audience can see how he could have been desirable when Claire was in high school, but Robby has hardly changed. He acts like a teenage boy when addressing Jay and reminisces about his antics with Claire in front of her family at the dinner table. Afterwards, Claire says, “Every time he opens his mouth I can feel my daughters losing respect for me.” By the end of dinner, the audience ends up sympathizing with Phil. The episode began with a Dunphy family meeting, minus Claire, to make sure the kids were prepared for their Grandma’s arrival. His devotion and love for Claire accompanies his every action in “Princess Party”. He starts to think DeDe never approved of him. Why would she bring around an ex-boyfriend of Claire’s? His way of revenge? “Phil: All those joke emails she forwarded to me months after I’d seen them? Well, no more polite LOLs for you, DeDe.”

Gloria’s actions at the birthday party are enough to make anyone from a blended family cringe. Xanax & Tequila: not a great way to impress your husband’s ex-wife. It’s not much of a stretch for Sofia Vergara, playing the sappy, dramatic, drugged up Gloria. It’s almost hard to watch, but Modern Family prides itself on the physical comedy and it usually works out. Except for Cam. He wants to reprise his role of Fizbo, the clown from the “Modern Family” episode of the same title. His storyline is the least realistic of the episode, though Eric Stonestreet finds a way to bring in laughs, as a clown or a court jester.

In the third and final act of the episode, the family arrives at Lilly’s Birthday Party.  Claire causes a scene at the Princess Party and yells at DeDe, “You just push people and push people!” Sound familiar Claire? When she shows up with Robby, Jay gripes, “What the hell is she doing?! He’s half her age!” A simple look back to his Colombian wife reminded Jay he should probably have kept his mouth shut. And the audience finally begins to understand how terrible their marriage must have been for Jay. Likely, Jay and DeDe’s divorce was the best thing that could have happened for this family. The show gets serious for a minute as Jay and DeDe discuss their vulnerabilities. By the end of the episode the audience could almost sympathize with DeDe, but she lashes out unpredictably. It is a welcomed moment in this comedy usually filled to the brim with witty dialogue, yet cut short by DeDe hysterics.

The dialogue and pace of this episode are well near perfect. The storyline is clever, conceivable and realistic for this family. Sometimes a party is not about a party at all, but all the problems that individuals bring to the event. Bringing in guest stars adds a dimension to the characters normally unseen. The audience learns more about the family’s past by bringing in an ex-wife and ex-boyfriend to see what the future could have been. With the possibilites, the “Modern Family” should be happy with their present.

Going West, or East.

Last week was the season premiere of Modern Family, and coming off of the FIVE EMMY WINS, there were high expectations for the episode.

The three families took a vacation to a dude ranch, and some seemed more able to handle the Great Out West than others. We met the characters after a summer, and not much had changed for the Modern Family.

Partners Mitchell and Cameron want to adopt another baby, a son, and Cam is afraid he isn’t masculine enough to have a son. To help him get over this fear, Luke helps coach him through doing ‘boy stuff’, including blowing up a birdhouse with explosives. Luke told Mitchell, “After this, we’re gonna have some angry birds.”  This show is too funny.

After the explosion, Mitchell ran to Cam exclaiming, “Cam! I did a boy thing!!”

Haley is trying to find love, in a wrong place, according to Claire. Her boyfriend Dylan proposes to Haley in front of the family and Claire flips out and Dylan disappears into the woods. His search effort becomes into the main conflict of the episode.

Hank, the main ranch hand adds comedic relief. He’s a typical cowboy and has nicknames for everyone in the family. Hank calls “Old Timer”, Claire is “Bossy”, Manny “Hollywood”, Phil “Buffalo Phil”.

Alex got her first kiss from a boy who lived near the ranch. Alex’s character is sterotypically known as the “nerdy sister”, so this was a nice change for her character. Also, the season premiered the new actress of Lilly and I think she did a really great job. Granted, how bad can a four year old act on camera? Her age shift will help with story lines over the season. Inevitably, Dylan decided to recant his proposal to Haley and stay at the ranch and work. “You’re a high school student,” he says. “I’m a ranch hand. It’ll never work.”

Claire was grateful for that.