"Monsterating"

So, you may have noticed that I haven't really been doing the episode recapping like I used to. There are a few reasons for this; one, that recapping is totally a time drain because I have to watch the episode multiple times, and two, that I've been more interested in focusing on broader-picture stuff ever since the Glee Christmas episode brutally murdered the recapper in me. It's not that there aren't episodes that I'd love to talk about - I'm planning a post on this turbulent season of How I Met Your Mother in the coming weeks - I just often don't have the time or energy. But this week's episode of Modern Family was one of the worst of the entire series, and included all of my main issues with the show, so it will not be ignored and we're gonna talk about it RIGHT NOW. Because REALLY???!!! Try to at least pretend like you deserve all those awards.

To begin with, though, let's throw out a positive. One of my main complaints about Modern Family used to be Manny. He was so overly precocious and grossly sexualized and given waaaaaay too much screen time. This problem has been fixed this season (probably in response to critics, because I know I'm not the only one who felt this way), with Manny taking more of a backseat and acting more like a regular-yet-unique preteen. A good move on the writers' part, because it allows him to play the straight man against more insouciant characters like Luke and Gloria. So props are to be had for this adjustment.

And that is the only good thing I have to say.

Now, one of the things that really irks me about Modern Family is that they purport to be "modern" (it's in the freaking title!) and yet the show is an incredibly traditional sitcom about incredibly traditional relationships that take place within an incredibly wealthy white family. While the visibility of the gay couple is not a negative thing, I hesitate to call it positive - white gay males have had increasing media representation since the '80s; these days, they have an entire network (for as much as I LOVE RuPaul's Drag Race, it can't be denied that Logo's target viewers are affluent gay MEN) aimed at them. What would be truly groundbreaking is an ongoing depiction of a lesbian and/or biracial and/or queer female marriage - something that network TV has NEVER SEEN. Watching the same gay male stereotypes that were trotted out and addressed on Will & Grace 15 years ago is not revolutionary. So while I think it's not a bad thing to have a gay parents on a popular TV show, I am really effing tired of Modern Family being lauded for it ALL THE GODDAMN TIME.

I also (and this was brought up in my initial review of the series) find that the writers use the family's wealth as an easy way to pad their lazy writing. Having a child's birthday party? Have every type of entertainment possible. Want to get away? Have the ENTIRE FAMILY stay at a fancy-ass resort in Hawaii. Need something interesting to do on your TERRIBLE Leap Day episode? Everyone's going trapezing! Money is never an issue on this show. Contrast that to Parenthood, for which I have my own small complaints (also very white, absolutely no gay representation) but who managed this season to deal not only with the perils and pitfalls of upper middle class privilege but also with mid-life unemployment, financial insecurity, and the difficulty of opening a small business. For the Bravermans' vacation they roadtripped to Grandma's house and stayed in a motel and it was a hundred times more compelling than Jay going to a spa.

But I've gotten off track. Let's get back to "Leap Day" and its horrific, feminist-defiling content. We're just gonna ignore the Cam and Mitchell storyline. I think part of the issue I have with them is that I don't really like either of the characters anymore. There's been so many unnecessary marital hijinks thrust upon them this season that they spend most of their time being bitchy and exaggeratedly gay at each other and it just makes both of the characters kind of unlikable. Honestly, I think all the characters are unlikable these days except for Phil, Luke, and Manny, which bodes poorly for both the women and future of the show. So Cam's birthday is on Leap Day (and this is the millionth joke I've seen this week about someone having a Leap BirthDay and it was stale the first time) and he wants a huge party but something about a tornado (there are tornadoes in January?) ruins his Wizard Of Oz theme so he has to put something together last minute and it's really very dull and absolutely no one is invested in the outcome. Cam has a breakdown about turning 40 (what a new and refreshing concept for a television show!) and then they go on The Scrambler. The End.

AHAHAHAHA I WISH. Let's backtrack to the Dunphy storyline. One of the things I have never liked about Modern Family is Clare. I don't like Julie Bowen, I don't like Clare's biting, controlling, shrewish character, and I REALLY don't like the fact that there's a character like her on television at all. There is absolutely nothing new about the Hot Harpy Wife character, and her inclusion here consistently lowers the quality of the show. But "Leap Day" wasn't even about her, so much as it was about women turning into "monsters" whenever they're on their period. All women, everywhere. So Phil is excited because for some reason he thinks that Leap Day isn't just a Wednesday where the rest of us have to go to work and school but that everybody should do something awesome with their "free day", hence the trapezing (for the record I don't disagree with the sentiment and uber-Phil-ness of this concept, but I did find it super annoying yesterday when I would try to go to a store and there would be a note that said, "we are not open today because it is not a real day" because WHAT? Ugh.). But then it turns out that first Clare, and then Haley, and then Alex are all on their periods, which is determined by their level of upset-ness at the Sarah Mclachlan ASPCA commercial, as if we all don't get upset and sad at that commercial every time it's on. They are all irritable and emotional and obviously not fit for trapezing so Phil must enlist Manny and Luke in a plan to leave them behind. Manny, bless his heart, says fuck this, I'm outta here, you dudes are nuts. And maybe if the joke were that Phil and Luke go MORE crazy and get MORE emotional trying to avoid the menstruating women than the women themselves, it would work, but that is definitely not the joke here. The "joke" is that this happens to all women and the best thing to do is placate them and try not to wake the "monster" by actually talking about it like a grown-up - and the story ends not with character development or anybody's eyes being opened, but with Phil harnessing the "monsters" for his own gain. W. T. F????? Now, I am a woman, but I've never gotten bad periods or even really PMS. In fact, I haven't had a period for a few years because my IUD just zaps those eggs before they can break through any trifling uterine lining. But, like a normal human being, I interact with other women who DO menstruate in my everyday life - I went to two different women's colleges for eff's sake - and I have NEVER been able to tell if someone is on their period just by talking to them (unless the talking involves me asking, "are you on your period?", which it doesn't, because HOW RUDE). Yet the premise of this storyline involves Phil teaching his son about the way in which women are transformed into emotional garbage monsters for 1/4 of every month! Do I really need to go into the myriad ways in which this perpetuates the disenfranchisement of women? "Oh, a woman could never be president because she would nuke the world when she's on her period." "Oh, you shouldn't ever take anything a woman says on her period seriously." "Oh, women are just poorly constructed machines that break down once a month and have to be reconstructed with ice cream and heating pads and tears." How is it that we live in a time when the most commercially and critically successful sitcom is writing flat, irritating, painfully stereotypical female characters and basing an entire episode about their period turning them into MONSTERS? It is 2012. This is disgraceful.

Quickly I'd like to contrast this with the storyline in Community's "Cooperative Calligraphy" where Abed has been tracking Annie, Britta, and Shirley's cycles. He doesn't do it purposefully, but as an effort to improve the mood of the group overall, and "by the time I realized what I was doing, it was showing great results". What his chart and the episode make clear is that each woman has a unique cycle that she responds to in a unique way, and that what might work for Annie won't necessarily work for Britta. It doesn't paint any of them as illogical, irrational womenfolk who need to be avoided at all cost. Just goes to show that there's a way to handle the topic that is funny without being reductionist or misogynist.

Man, aren't we done yet? This recap is getting me down. With these sorts of critiques I'm always worried that someone will read half of it and think that I hate the show. That's really not true! Well, most of this season has been filled with problems, and I still think 1st season is spotty, but 2nd season was admittedly solid. And Dylan's line from the season 3 premiere, "Just so you know there's a fan in my cabin that sounds like someone crying", still makes me laugh. And I can still love Phil and Luke while recognizing that Modern Family isn't very good at writing complex female characters (unsurprising after taking a visit to their IMDB page and seeing that only two out of approximately twenty producers/writers are women). And I can still love Phil and Luke while getting progressively more frustrated and offended by Jay's storylines.

I mean, this whole episode was just poorly, lazily constructed. That is made obvious by the fact that they used the PINK LAUNDRY trope as the impetus for Jay to talk more about manliness. This is not an '80s college sex comedy; no one, especially not paid and trained housekeepers, turns laundry pink anymore (and the implication is that it's happened before! If somebody ruins your clothes, wouldn't you fire them, or at least make sure they never did it again?). So Jay says, "I can't wear this to a sports bar!", like Ruxin doesn't wear pink shirts to sports bars every week. What year is this? And then there's a "Dutch" guy (excuse me, bit actor, but your accent sounds like French by way of Borat) at the bar who is being a normal soccer fan and Gloria is being totally nuts and over the top as usual but no one EVER tells her to stop being an asshole to EVERYONE and instead she gets mad when Jay doesn't punch the guy but instead settles things like a normal, amicable adult. But Gloria keeps talking about how Jay used to be a hothead who would beat people up for small, stupid things all the time (what a keeper! Just what I want in a man.) and so Jay thinks that's what she wants him to do. But then Gloria talks to that's-not-Benjamin Bratt-on-the-phone, Manny's douche father, and realizes she was being stupid and that she doesn't want a psycho jerkface for a husband. Good realization! Too bad they never talk about it and don't really resolve anything and instead Gloria PUNCHES A DUDE and obviously that is HILARIOUS and totes A-OK because she is a LADY and remember how we just finished learning about how those silly dames can't control their emotions? UGGGGGGGGGGH.

One of my least favorite things about Modern Family (and I've considered having this discussion after Jay's gay night out episode and the Manny-must-play-football-because-he's-too-much-of-a-pansy episode from a few weeks ago, but I'm glad I waited until now) is that they'll spend an entire episode reinforcing traditional gender roles and stereotypes, and then spend two seconds saying why they might be wrong and MAYBE should try to change their way of thinking. This makes it difficult to criticize them, because they can go back and say, "Look! But at the end, Jay understands that it's ok for Manny to want to hang out with his mom!" even though Jay obviously still thinks that Manny isn't manly enough because he doesn't like football (I really hated that episode). It's like faux growth. On the surface, Gloria can admit that it's probably better that Jay is a calm guy, but we never see her express that to him or make any attempt to change her own behavior and stop being such an asshole all the time. If Modern Family wants to attempt to subvert these commonly-held (by television writers, anyway) beliefs, they need to work on their actual subversion techniques, because right now, there's no follow through. Endings have never been Modern Family's strong point and if they could find a new way to wrap things up besides "traditional sitcom voiceover montage", I think it'd go a long way towards improving the show.

An important thing to remember when discussing Modern Family is just how entrenched Steve Levitan and Christopher Lloyd are in the sitcom game. They've worked on some of the most sitcomy sitcoms of the past twenty years: Fraiser, Wings, Just Shoot Me (corollary: after going to IMDB to look those up, I JUST NOW realized that this is a different Christopher Lloyd than Doc Brown-Christopher Lloyd. This makes me happy because I was starting to get real disappointed in Doc.). They know the formulas that work - or at least what worked in the past. But this isn't the '90s anymore - and making another sitcom about a rich white ensemble with poorly-drawn female characters shouldn't be an option (although obviously it is, because The Big Bang Theory does it every week). Modern Family gets a pass from the media for its old-fashioned and outdated stance on gender roles simply because it has a gay couple. And while that has never been enough to get a pass from me, it certainly shouldn't be enough to keep female viewers from being outraged about this unflinchingly sexist episode.

Do better, Modern Family. I know you can. Maybe you should go watch some Community for inspiration, and then follow their lead and hire more women writers. Things can only improve from here.

Image via TVEquals