Please watch Modern Family and Community so they don't get canceled and other notes from the new TV season

The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.

0 comments

Please watch Modern Family and Community so they don't get canceled and other notes from the new TV season

POSTED: Monday, September 28, 2009, 6:15 PM

Filed Under: TV Watch

With all due respect to the WGA and their fight for fair pay in the age of the Internet, last season's TV pilots sucked and it's all their fault. The ripple effect writer's strike, which also stalled shows for an excruciatingly long time, meant that studios didn't have the time to development their fall slate before putting it on air. Granted, TV isn't an artful medium, but because the there was no traditional pilot/development season, a lot of shows premiered to awful reviews and lower ratings. But this season, the television acolytes among us were given their due: pilots that actually looked good.

'And the best one is Modern Family (watch above, Wednesdays, 9 p.m., ABC) about three disparate families ' a mom-dad-2.5-kids unit, a gay couple and a May-December romance ' in a confessional/mockumentary format (a la The Office, Parks and Recreation). The domestic sitcom certainly isn't new, but this one's got bite. (Come on, Ed "Al Bundy" O'Neill as the patriarch? What else do you expect?) Shows like this live or die based on well-developed, sympathetic characters (even the Bluths from Arrested Development eventually garnered your love, even for lack of admiration or anything resembling respect). But it needs to be well-rounded. Each family/plot thread has to be worthy of its screen time and, at least after the first episode, they are. I love Manny, O'Neill's stepson with a stereotypically saucy Latina mom (Sofia Vergara), who has the soul of John Keats in the body of a chubster 11-year-old. In the tightly written pilot (that, like most shows of its ilk, forgo the joke-punchline set-up), he has the best line: After confessing his love to a 16-year-old who works at the mall, he channels Lloyd Dobler and says, "I gave her my heart ' She gave me a picture of me as an old-time sheriff."

The mockumentary format is becoming like TV's version of the movie voice over. Appropriated from the reality shows it's meant to satirize, the confessional is a cheap device to develop a character congruently with their own storylines. Please, don't tell me you didn't love Jim Halpert that much more because of his stuttered non-declarations of love for Pam in the first season of The Office, or Leslie Knopes' unintentionally insane positivity in Parks and Recreation. But it also works. Half of the reason Modern Family is so good is you can allow your characters to do and say stupid or terrible things, but then cut to a confessional and placate the situation with empathy or further hilarity. And that's why I'm worried about NBC's Community (Thursdays, 9:30 p.m.).

Don't get me wrong, I love Joel McHale (even more so after Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!) and Chevy Chase was both Fletch and Ty Webb and is, therefore, a god. The first episode didn't excite me nearly as much as the second (especially after this scene), which was a more fully realized look at each individual character. But can a show about assholes succeed without confessionals interlaced throughout to make the characters infinitely more likable (It's Always Sunny is an anomaly and it's on cable ' whole different ball game)? Obviously, it wouldn't make sense in the format, but I'm worried about a general audience's ability to connect. Community just needs to find its footing, like nascent Office did, and it could be great.

First there are the douchebags, now there are the cougahs. I like trends in TV because it's such a copycat medium ' something works on one network and all the others give it a shot. Shows starring middle-aged women (The Closer, Saving Grace, HawthoRNe, Damages) have all done well on cable, especially TNT, so now it's time for the network facsimiles. I find this inexplicably amusing and end up watching a lot of shit TV because of it.

More on the season after the jump '

Emily Nussbaum, the TV critic at New York mag, pointed out on her Surf blog how depressing a show like ABC's Eastwick (Wednesdays, 10 p.m.) is because it demonstrates how vanilla television insists on being. I have to agree with her. I watched Eastwick because of my affinity for the Updike novel and the 1987 movie but it's a watered down version of its source material, which are, as Nussbaum says, "about women getting high on their own rage, malice, and power. (And then losing it when they fall for the Master of all PUAs.)" It's odd to say that, as a feminist, I don't like Eastwick because it's not as misogynist as its source but that's what made the idea interesting in the first place. Even though they are completely different shows, TV is TV and it's all connected. The entire Eastwick debacle reflects on Community: Producers think that failures, in a sense, can't carry a show. So they switch their modus operandi from misusing their power to gaining a sense of self through their power. It would be a shame if a show like Community didn't catch on because the character weren't likable enough, while Eastwick did well because the characters are so likable they become tofu.

Also, note to the producers: Even though I just referred to her as middle age, I'm sure most 26-year-old men would do inexplicable things to sleep with Rebecca Romijn so making her relationship with that stud who played Kyle XY out all out-of-the-ordinary makes little sense. Please, any free wheeling, bohemian artiste who gets excited about her daughter's first hickey would more likely than not relish her boy toy, rather than be ashamed of her still-active sexuality (believe it or not, post-childbirth, women still have a libido). On another note: Can the network expect anyone, even Candadian TV vet Paul Gross, to fill Jack Nicholson's devilish shoes as Darryl?

Cougar Town (ABC, Wednesdays, 9:30 p.m.), the most blatant of the older ladies getting it on genre, fares a bit better, chronicling the life of Courtney Cox as divorced mom who enters the dating (kiddie) pool. It has it's moment ("This is from that night we got drunk on Amaretto and played dress-up!") and Cox fits much better here as an older variation on Monica Geller than in her dark, short lived FX series Dirt. But you can see where this is all going. Could it be possible that the antagonistic relationship Cox's character has with her attractive, younger-lady-nailing neighbor could turn out to be something more? Gasp! Snooze. Although, I haven't erased Cougar Town from my DVR just yet. I'll be impressed if they can keep it fresh and I like a show where the female leads are allowed to be both ridiculous and funny. But I'm still conflicted. One of the reasons I like Cougar Town is that it simultaneously busts and perpetuates a stereotype that infuriates me: women are either anti-sex or are lushy sluts. New mom Christa Miller bemoans having sex once a month, while Busy Phillips pushes Cox into cougarhood. But Cox's character is both open to exploring her sexuality and afraid of it. I want to see how daring TV can actually be.

Like I said before, I watch a lot of terrible TV in the name of spotting trends: The third in the cougar triumvirate is CBS' Accidentally on Purpose (Mondays, 8:30 p.m.), which looked stupid. It was.

Scorecard:

Modern Family: Awesome
Community: Getting there.
Eastwick: Blech.
Cougar Town: On the (white picket) fence.
Accidentally on Purpose: No.

I still want to catch The Good Wife ' the Silda Spitzer/Elizabeth Edwards-y drama about the wife of a politician caught up in sexual scandal ' because it got great reviews and Flash Foward ' where the people of the world black out and see the future ' because the concept looks interesting but I'm wary of TV sci fi because it generally doesn't have the budget to back it up. Worth my DVR space? Any good?

Did you guys watch these shows? What else am I missing and should catch up?

Posted 2009-09-29 15:30:32

You are right: Modern Family is the best new comedy on TV. Not even close to community or the dreadful cougartown. Why doesn't the City Paper write a regular TV column? And please don't tell me that no one watches TV anymore. That's a lie. People just don't watch it the way they once did. So start a TV column. Anything is better than what you read in the Inquirer or Daily News.

Paula

Posted 2009-09-29 13:35:12

Modern Family was not funny at all. It was cliched and stereotypical. Blah. If this is what passes for comedy, than it's very sad. I miss the Seinfeld days.

Posted by Molly Eichel @ 6:15 PM Permalink | Post a comment

0 comments

Previous Story: Want It Need It: Ork Posters' Philly screenprint

Next Story: Did you watch Archer after It's Always Sunny?

Comments (0)

PHILLY LOVE NOTES: An ode to Spruce Street
Q&A with SHARI SOLANIS: "The goal isn't pornography"
ICE CUBE: In Memoriam: Joe Tartaglia
CONCERT REVIEW & PHOTOS: James Blake @ TLA 5/11
What we're trying to do this weekend
SEXY TIME Q&A: I've never had an orgasm during sex with a man — and I'm 30!
Coming soon to Philly: Two cockamamie movie promotion schemes
Q&A with Tony Goldwyn: "Life is gray, and relationships are, too"
CONCERT REVIEW: Primus (3D & quadraphonic sound) @ The Tower 10/17
ICEPACK ILLUSTRATED: The Archbishop meets the Geator, the Mayor goes suit shopping, Le Bec Fin fin.

About this blog

Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

Follow Critical Mass editors Patrick Rapa and Emily Guendelsberger on Twitter:

@mission2denmark | @emilygee

Search this blog:

Topics:

Blog archives:

May
April
March

February
January

Past Archives: