Modern Family: Season 3

My opinion of this show has really wandered all over the place. I started out a year behind and caught the first season on DVD. I loved it enough to actually draw comparisons between it and the first season of Community. (Gah!) I cooled down a bit on the show in Season 2, noticing (and eventually noting in this blog) that the formerly sharp writing felt a little duller this time around. And then early on in Season 3 I began to actively dislike the majority of the main characters. I canceled the DVR series recording as part of my annual New Years TV rotation trimming and figured I'd see how the rest of the season turned out on DVD. In fact, here's a paragraph I wrote last December about the show and its slippery slide downward into mediocrity:

I greatly enjoyed the first season, and I think part of that enjoyment came from a certain freshness it had. There was a pleasant blend of simple plots, no laugh track, funny jokes, and relatable characters. Season 2 could be described in the same way, but somehow the whole production felt a little less inspired and a little more lazy in my eyes. And that perceived dip in quality has continued into Season 3, to the point where I can no longer find reasons to continue regularly watching Modern Family. The characters are all fairly well-defined, but they're also all fairly one-dimensional, and growing ever more flattened by the month it seems. Back in Season 1, for example, it was funny to explore how adultlike and dignified the portly Colombian kid was, and how much his personality clashed with that of his nephew/cousin, an archetypal ADD-ridden boy. But two years later, they just keep revisiting that well as a source of comedy and it's running fairly dry. Ditto on the contrasting "popular ditzy older sister and nerdy ambitious younger sister" rivalry. And ditto for so many other characters, be they the snippy gay couple or the lovable dolt of a husband and his uptight wife. The show has gotten too predictable and has lost all of its charm and appeal in my eyes. I can see why so many people enjoy it, but I can also no longer ignore that I'm not one of those people. I'm not swearing off the show entirely, but I think I'll catch the rest of the series in syndication or on DVD at this point.

And, true to my word, I've at least finished up the third season on DVD. And I didn't really dislike it at all! Maybe this is just one of those shows that's good enough to enjoy on DVD but not good enough to command half an hour of my time and DVR space every week. Maybe the second half of the season was just as tired as the first but a ten-month hiatus gave me new esteem for the same old song and dance. I'm really at a loss here. I thinK I can settle on calling this one overrated by the masses but under-appreciated by me for the past year or so. For me, the question still remains: do I catch up with Season 4 online and resume watching once a week? Or has that ship already sailed for me, and is Modern Family best off as a DVD-only show for me? Tough to say, but I'm definitely softening my stance on how low this show has sunk. After all, even at its worst, there have always been two huge reasons to watch it:

Stay classy, my friends.