Modern Family Values

ABC's sitcom "Modern Family," which has garnered high ratings on numerous awards, is likely to win even more Emmys this September in light of the just-completed third season.  Because not only did it keep getting funnier, it added a new twist in the season finale: Gloria, Jay Pritchett's Hispanic trophy wife, is pregnant.  This is going to open up several comic possibilities - an inter-ethnic May-December couple (which is novel in and of itself) siring a baby who will be the aunt or uncle of Cam and Mitchell's adopted daughter Lily and the Dunphy siblings.  Life in the Pritchett clan is going to get even more complicated.

Expect Cam and Mitchell's efforts to adopt a son - the most recent one fell through at the last minute in a parody of Mexican telenovelas - to continue, probably until the series ends. Cam and Mitchell keep trying to accomplish this objective, but the writers keep setting them up to fail, and as I noted in an earlier blog entry, it's for the same comedic effect of Charlie Brown repeatedly trying to kick the football.  The show's writers and producres are going to play this out for as long as they can, much like Frasier Crane's inability to find a soulmate on "Frasier" was played out all the way to the series finale of that sitcom.

Meanwhile, something has to be done about Luke, the Dunphys' only son, whose stupidity has gone beyond annoying. I realize that clueless, trouble-prone, hormone-imbalanced fathers like Phil Dunphy (his surname is similar to "dummkopf" and "doofus") are the coin of the sitcom realm, we're never going to have a TV dad like Jim Anderson and Cliff Huxtable ever again, goof-up dads are here to stay, and we can't get rid of them, but please, please, no more idiot sons on sitcoms! Do we have to put up with Luke Dunphys and Jake Harpers until the end of time? I know sitcoms have to have a remedial-student child for comic effect, and it can't be a daughter, because the National Organization for Women would go after the producers of such a show so fast it would make their heads spin, but give the kid a smarter brother, for Pete's sakes! (Manny, Luke's stepcousin on "Modern Family," is defective in a different way; he's way too sensitive and prissy.)

As for Luke, can't they get rid of him, write him out of the show? Don't kill him off, of course (although he's dumb enough to get himself killed) - send him to a military school, or have an eccentric aunt who looks like Rosalind Russell or Angela Lansbury arrive and then take him around the world and home-school him.  Anything to get him off the show!

(Oh, one thing I forgot to mention: ABC canceled Courtney Cox's sitcom "Cougar Town," despite good reviews and a loyal audience.  The show isn't defunct, though; it's moving to TBS on cable television.  As for the Fox 2012-13 lineup, relax, I'll get to that later.)