(I really do love this class, I just like being the devil’s
advocate!)
We do a lot of bashing of Modern Family in class, which is
unfortunate because I really do love that show. While I agree that if follows
the mold of most family sitcoms today (Phil is the emotional and sensitive dad,
and Claire is the serious, rule-following mom), I think it still has a lot of
offer.
The Dunphy’s are what is supposed to be the “common” family.
They have one father and one mother with two daughters and a son. Like I just
mentioned, Phil and Claire are caricatures, but that does not mean they don’t
go through many of the same struggles many other families have to deal with.
Alex, the middle child, is the smartest member in the family. She is the top of
her class and sometimes looks down on others. However, she occasionally has
problems socially. She once had a friend who was a bad influence on her, and
her love life is non-existent. These are issues that many teenagers must face,
and many parents are the ones who have to help them through it. To balance out
Alex there is Haley, the wild child. She barely graduated high school and got
kicked out of college before finishing her freshman year. She is a partier and
an underage drinker and a serial dater. Many parents have a teenager like her
who they must learn to deal with too, but Claire and Phil always (ok, usually)
handle their children’s issue with grace and wisdom.
This is just one example of how Modern Family doesn’t
totally suck. The show is full of life lessons and wisdom about how to handle
our crazy families. So yeah, Claire and Phil are cookie cutter characters, and
the uncles are a little more flamboyant than many gay men would like to be
represented as, and Gloria probably (definitely) started dating Jay for his
money before they fell in love. At this point in the series I think they’ve
given up on trying to pretend they are a middle class family, but that doesn’t
mean the Modern Family doesn’t still have to deal with modern problems.
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