Family tree
4/5
In a television landscape full of characters that don’t represent real Americans, it’s great to have a funny, in-depth look at the American modern family. Screenwriter and producer Christopher Lloyd and writer, director, producer Steven Levitan bring us a real look at this American family with ‘Modern Family’ (Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on ABC).
The show stars Ed O’Neill, Ty Burrell, Julia Bowen, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Sofia Vergara, and revolves around three families, The Dunphy family – the ‘traditional’ family, and two non-traditional families, The Pritchett family and The Pritchett-Tucker family.
The Dunphy family has a mother, Claire (Bowen), a father, Phil (Burrell), two daughters, Haley and Alex and a son, Luke. The Pritchett family includes Jay Pritchett (O’Neill), an older man who married a much younger woman named Gloria (Vergara). In this family, Pritchett must adjust to being a stepfather to Gloria’s 10-year-old son, Manny. The third family, the Pritchett-Tucker family, is comprised of Mitchell (Ferguson) and Cameron (Eric Stonestreet), a same-sex couple who just adopted a baby girl from Vietnam.
The pilot episode goes through the everyday workings of these three families: The Dunphy family’s routine of getting their children ready for school, dealing with sibling rivalry and the issues of having a teenage daughter who is becoming old enough to date. The Pritchett familiy’s story surrounds Jay, who is trying to be a good stepfather to Manny and trying not to look too old around his new wife. The Pritchett-Tucker family has just picked up their newly adopted daughter, Lily, from Vietnam and are struggling with being new parents and deciding when the right time would be to tell the rest of their family that they adopted.
In the pilot episode, it looked as if they were going to be three, completely different families who would never cross paths. Then, with the big reveal of Lily’s adoption the audience discovers that Jay Pritchett is the father of Claire Dunphy and Mitchell Pritchett-Tucker, and all three families are, in fact, one big family. As the series has progressed we have seen all of the characters interact as if they were one family. This is a big relief because all of the actors play off each other and their different characters’ personalities very well.
While ‘Modern Family’ shoots like a documentary, it doesn’t look like other shows like ‘The Office’ and ‘Parks and Recreation’ who use the same format. Instead it is more like a TLC show, like ‘John and Kate Plus 8.’ Each family has sit-down confessionals that look like each character is being interviewed. This broadens each character’s personality in a way that allows the characters to act candidly instead of when they’re running around with their families, being filmed by the camera crew that is following them.
‘Modern Family’ gives us a fresh look at what many American families are looking like in today’s society. With Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan giving American audiences this hilarious perspective of the American family, it’s a definite must-see every week just to see what these modern families are up to.
Published on October 10, 2009 at 12:00 pm
