Modern Family is back! Or is it? The show is starting its sixth season, and despite being a longtime fan, I’m worried its expiration date is nearing.
The show has had a long history of success — it has cleaned up at the Emmys every year since it first aired, with ten nominations in 2014 alone (source). And in terms of content, the first four seasons were laugh-out-loud hilarious. But then something started to change.
I stopped laughing out loud during season five.
Yes, much of it was amusing, but it lost the impeccable timing that was once so characteristic of Modern Family. The plotlines felt tired and a little contrived, as if the writers had finally begun to run out of plausible ideas. The most notable offender of this is “Sleeper,” in which Phil develops narcolepsy as a result of his anxiety that Claire will discover he missed the plumber while buying the record of a song he lost his virginity to.
Wait, what?! …It was just as confusing in the show as it seems now.
Of course, not every episode suffered. Season five also contained one of the best episodes in the show’s history. “Vegas” took the adults to Las Vegas for a weekend of debauchery in hotel rooms paid for by a client of Jay’s. Phil gets mixed up in an underground society of magicians, Jay develops an inferiority complex because he isn’t an Excelsior Plus guest, and Mitchell and Cam have very different ideas about how to conduct their bachelor weekend. Each storyline is distinct, believable, and they all tie together at the end in a perfectly harmonious and hysterical way. But an episode of this caliber was definitely the exception, not the rule.
The kids are also growing up, which causes several issues. Where they once served as supporting characters and devices used to get the adults into situations, they are now becoming adults themselves and growing into their own.
This is making the show feel a little crowded, with several plotlines happening per episode instead of the old formula of three households, three plots. In addition to this, college is becoming a concern. Haley has already gone to (and been expelled from) college and currently resides in the Dunphy’s basement, but Alex is sure to have more success. What will her absence mean for the show?
We get a taste of life without Alex in the season six premiere, an episode that holds the promise of a very strong season. While Alex is gone, the rest of the Dunphy clan are having their best and most harmonious summer ever. The second she returns, everything falls apart. This is the best storyline of the episode, although the other ones are solid. The plot wasn’t new or groundbreaking, but it was a solid and funny episode, and the actors seemed to have their old vigor back. Ty Burrell even managed to turn a plot accurately summed up as “Phil enjoys plums” into the best moment of the episode.
I carried the hope given by the season premiere into this week’s episode and was sorely disappointed.
Jay and Gloria’s struggle to give sentimental gifts is expected and a little dull, Alex struggles with college choices while Claire hovers, and Mitch and Cam are attempting to take a new family portrait and Lily can’t seem to smile nicely. The best moments, again, come from the remaining Dunphys and their attempts to thwart the psychology experiment they’re participating in. The problems seen in season five seem don’t seem to be going anywhere.
It may be too early to tell whether season six of Modern Family will shine or fall flat, but history seems to indicate that we are in for a season of repeated issues and predictable plotlines. If Modern Family continues on in the way it is now, it may be in trouble.
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