Stupid early January!

Re: Modern Family. It’s generally an intelligently written show with a great cast–even if they try their best to disguise the fact that one of the daughters is mysteriously missing for long stretches. My main problem with the show is that when you look beyond well-written individual episodes, there’s really nothing else going on there.

Community makes a good comparison. It does a bunch of one-off episodes, but it also allows its characters to grow–Jeff Winger is not the same person he was at the beginning of the series. Heck, even 30 Rock pretends to have story arcs that string episodes together and present the illusion of change. In contrast, Modern Family seems to be a family that’s largely trapped in amber. It doesn’t take any risks and just sort of meanders along. It’s a show that aims for mediocrity, and usually hits it.

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