Damn, it's been too long, folks. Unfortunately, when you're applying to grad school and traveling and picking up extra jobs to pay them bills, your little-read blog about television is the first thing to fall by the wayside. That doesn't mean that I haven't had things to talk about, or been building up posts in my head for when I finally have the time to write them. This season of Boardwalk Empire has been spectacular, and I'll be writing about it some time in the next week. The Mindy Project is going well, but the real surprise of the new fall shows has been Ben And Kate, which is just a delightful, smart, playful romp every week. Go On is solidly enjoyable. Last Resort keeps getting better. Revolution keeps getting worse. The Office is, surprisingly, mostly turning it out for their last season, although everyone agrees that making Andy into a horrible monster was a terrible move. Parks & Recreation is great, of course, although I do have some small nitpicks we'll get to eventually. How I Met Your Mother is what it is, which is to say a little dull, very repetitive, a nice vehicle to get my Jason Segel fix, and still very staunchly Not Friends, however hard they try. RuPaul's Drag Race All-Stars is so poorly formatted that not only are the wrong people going home every week, but the show itself is actually boring. What a disappointment.
But you know what's not a disappointment? This season of Modern Family. Oh, there have been some missteps (that stereotypical lesbian couple? Let's not ever mention that again.) and just last night Jay made a homophobic joke ("If you had a man who wanted to pick out strollers with you, you wouldn't have gotten pregnant in the first place" UGH). But this season seems to be focused more on the individual characters we've developed a relationship with, and less on making lazy jokes about whatever boring archetype they belong to (shrewish wife, trophy wife, nerdy girl, effeminate gay man, etc.).
I am loathe to attribute this change to something I know nothing about, but I can't help but wonder if the improvement has anything to do with Steve Levitan taking over as head producer. Chris Lloyd left the show for unknown reasons (a cursory Google search turned up nothing, but if I had to guess it's probably because he's a gajillionaire with eleventy billion Emmys who can go live on a private island and do nothing forever now), and I think maybe his influence was holding Levitan back. The two had been working together on and off for 20 years, and I think it allowed them to fall into old, '90s sitcom style habits far too often. So maybe Steve has stepped things up and pushed the show in this more complex direction, or maybe they hired new writers to fill Lloyd's void, or maybe the existing writers are just having more influence now. Whatever the reason, the show has been less consistently offensive and lazy and thus, far more enjoyable. Do I think anybody on the show deserves Emmys besides Phil and Luke? No. Do I think the reason the Emmys fawn over Modern Family is because Emmy voters feel like, as upper class white people living in Southern California, "OMG THAT'S MY LIFFFFFFFE!!!!! Fuck, I wish I had a gay brother."? Yes. That is precisely what I think. But to hell with the Emmys. Any organization that consistently recognizes the worst shows on television (ie CBS) is not an organization I want an award from.
I digress. The moral of the story here is that sometimes a little change is a good thing. It takes us out of our comfortable, money-lined ruts and shakes us out of complacency. After last year's fiasco of a leap day episode (seriously, you should go read that post if you haven't yet), I was pissed at Modern Family, and rightfully so. But very slowly, this season has been winning me back over. The "Luke is scary good at magic" episode was perfection. And last night's plot in "Arrested" where Haley is so dumb she gets kicked out of Chico State and has to come home didn't feel contrived - it felt like the natural culmination of the character's actions. Plus, that speech from Phil was just fucking awesome.
I'm not afraid to call Modern Family out, should they diverge into hateful, lazy, sexist nonsense again. But I'm hoping that these early episodes demonstrate a larger sea change for this ludicrously popular show. And more Luke and Phil. ALWAYS more Luke and Phil, please.
Image via JustJaredJr
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