Modern Family - 4

For my final post about Modern Family instead of doing a post on the overall feel of the show like my other posts have been about, I decided I would take an in depth look at a specific episode.  This episode is the most recent to air at the time of writing this.  It aired on April 13th, 2011 and is titled "The Musical Man".

The thing that struck me most about this episode is the way the show treats the idea of the average person and the average family.  Of course the show would be boring if the only things that happened were your run of the mill every day activities, but at least in this episode I realized just what average things the characters talk about and do on the show.

Some of the basic events of this episode *SPOILER ALERT* include Cameron taking over Luke and Manny's school play where everything goes wrong, Claire talking to Haley about the benefits of going to college, Phil putting an ad on his family's minivan to try and sell real estate but that ends up looking like he's selling his family, and a visit from Jay's brother whom he has a very joking relationship with.  It sounds like a lot for one 30 minute episode I know, but that is the brilliance of Modern Family.  Every episode is jam packed with every day life that is fun to watch.

Some of the things I noticed in this episode are:

Haley is worriedly looking up her SAT scores online and Phil says "don't worry, we're not expecting miracles" to which Haley replies "oh good".  Then after finding out that her scores are average Claire says "They're average! We did it, our baby is average!"  What we find funny is that they are so excited by the averageness of their daughter when what most people strive to be is anything but average.  And this is just one of the parts in the episode where the show almost tries to overly heighten the averageness of the characters, which in turn makes them more of a characterization of real life.  The same thing with Cam and Mitchell.  Mitchell always wants Cam to be more normal and more average.  He even says to Cam in this episode "Sometimes you can be a little overenthusiastic."

Modern Family takes a lot of every day situations like driving around in a minivan, or being in charge of an elementary school play or even just reminiscing about the good old days and heightens it so that we then see it as funny.  A lot of people have to go see their kid in a not very good show so people can relate to that.  But not everyone's kid gets stuck in the air for the entire performance because of a technical malfunction.  We might not see that every day....but maybe we want to.  I think humans like things that break up the monotony of their every day life.  In Modern Family the characters have that every day life but at the same time one or two little things happen, escalating the humor of the situation.  And that is why I think so many people enjoy this show.

Modern Family - 3

For this post I want to focus on the educational value of Modern Family.  I think it is interesting because this is definitely one of those shows that I don't think was written to have educational value but was written as a entertaining sitcom that would make money for the network.  On the other hand, I think there is educational moments that can be pulled out if put into the proper context.

Usually in each episode the characters that are the main  point of that particular episode all want something similar and then the episode progresses by showing how each character goes about getting the thing they desire.  For example:  In one episode both Mitchell and Claire don't want to tell their significant other something embarrassing that they do.  Mitchell doesn't want to tell Cameron that he hates it when Cam wears really tight bike shorts and Claire doesn't want to tell Phil that she hates it when he tries to tell jokes and be funny.  The two siblings decide to tell the other person's significant other so that they don't have to do it themselves.  So in that episode both couples learn the importance of being honest and forthcoming in a relationship.

I think the most important overarching theme of the show is the idea of the importance of family.  All of the characters squabble and have their differences, but in the end each of them overcome because they have their family to back them up.  It also shows the idea that every family and every couple are different, but at the same time, everyone goes through a lot of the same difficulties.  In the end, we're all human and we all make mistakes.

One of the things that Modern Family also does well is show a homosexual couple in the context of being in a happy, loving, committed relationship that functions more or less like any other couple would in the situations they are faced.  Cameron and Mitchell are loving parents and often function more rationally than the other couples on the show.  I think this could be used in an educational context to show that no matter a person's sexual preferences, people are still people and go through the same sorts of relationship and family matters that anyone does.