… and “Modern Family” is the planet-chewing 1%.
I don’t write much about TV these days. I don’t watch that much other than Knowledge and Sports. However, I really like “The Middle” (and so I watch it), and my wife likes “Modern Family” (and so I get to see it.) And thus here I am writing about them.
They are both thirty-minute networks sitcoms featuring colourful families and big TV stars (Patricia Heaton in “The Middle” and Ed O’Neill in “Modern Family“) and both began in 2009. However, if you haven’t watched it, you may not even be aware of “The Middle” but most of us could hardly miss the hullabaloo as “Modern Family” wins award after award year after year.
“Modern Family” receives accolades for dealing sympathetically with a gay couple, an older Anglo man married to a younger Hispanic woman, and vicious sibling rivalry. Each of these three families is, at least, middle class and the Ed O’Neill family can hardly be anything but rich. The dialog is said to be modern and important but it sounds stylised and almost theatrical to me.
“Modern Family” definitely represents the 1% where most people don’t seem to have to work that hard, where a household can spend thousands of dollars on a Halloween house party and the “problems” are about relationships and a sort of metaphysical angst.
On the other hand, “The Middle” is about real people. It is about a working class couple who cannot make ends meet with two full-time jobs and they have three kids each of whom is as dysfunctional as we can imagine our teenaged kids to be.
“The Middle” represents the 99% of us who have to run fast just to stay in the same rotten groove. The language is down to earth and the problems involve money (usually the lack of it), the disappointments of childhood, and the quotidian efforts to keep all the patched appliances working. The dialog is genuinely funny and none of the characters is a pastiche.
“Modern Family” is the banker getting billion-dollar bonuses for conceptualizing, while “The Middle” is a hard-rock miner getting by on minimum wage.
Posted by jakking 
