A bit late

Playing House

Modern Family is really funny. Yes, I like something, and it is on TV! The set-up seems overly complex, with an unseen documentary crew, three families that are somehow related, and lots of pre-teen kids, but in fact all of that post-modern framing makes it brisk and funny. Scenes don’t get drawn out, because they can always cut to a character’s recap of the outcome, and the visual changes more often than in a typical sitcome because instead of one living room sofa, there are three.

In fact, those three living rooms, and those three houses, are used as a structuring device, cluing us in both to the character of each respective family and to the fact that we are switching POV. I would like to think that the houses, each more enormous than the last (and this for people who don’t seem to work, at least not yet) are meant as subtle satire. Yes, Virginia, everyone on TV does live in a McMansion. The sheer size of the sets astonishes, and offers the female audience the kind of shelter porn that Nancy Meyers movies are always good for (see Lisa Schwartzbaum’s EW review of It’s Complicated).

I have already read UrbanBaby love for the beige transitional living room of the most conventional of the three houses, inhabited by the most conventional of the three families: Claire, Phil and their three kids. What makes the show funny is that Claire and Phil, the good-looking heterosexual married couple, are the weirdos of the bunch. She is played by Julie Bowen, so pretty, so unthreatening in Ed, etc. Here she spoofs her natural niceness by being socially awkward, bad at giving gifts, once an ugly duckling. It is the explanation for why she would have married the even awkwarder (but unaware) Phil. He clearly loved the duckling, not the swan. They are actually characters, not cardboard cut-outs of what TV people think is normal.

Meanwhile, Claire’s father Jay (Ed O’Neill, a.k.a. Al Bundy) is married to a Colombian hottie with an awkward son of her own, Manny. They live in a house he can only have bought after his first wife’s passing: it is modern in the extreme, as glimpsed in the still above, and every time they show its angular front door it screams “mid-life crisis.”

The nicest house of the bunch, and the one we have spent the least time at so far is the home of Mitchell, Claire’s brother, Jay’s son, who is married to Cameron (a man). It is Spanish-style, hung about with vines, and actually looks like it might have been built before 2005. They adopted a little-seen baby Lily. I hope next season they can spring for some baby actors, since the Lily is mostly played by a Snugride. Cameron is actually the most popular member of the family, funny and wise, and has so far been given the most reveals: he was a defensive lineman; he is a clown; he was kicked out of the Greensleevers. To me, at least, the jokes seem more knowing and less stereotypical than most gay humor on TV. But they have given Mitchell and Cam the best taste.

The Modernist State

Any CT readers of this blog should watch “Living Modern in Connecticut” tomorrow night at 9 on CPTV, with additional broadcasts over the weekend. The half-hour show gives a short history of modernism in Connecticut, offering brief tours of the state’s three mid-century hot spots, New Canaan, New Haven and Hartford. It is a primer on the preservation issues facing the architecture of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and manages not to demonize the architecture or the demolishers.

I hadn’t realized it before, but I have done a lot of writing about preserving the work of modern architects who lived or worked in Connecticut, and the show mentions Philip Johnson, Gordon Bunshaft, Eliot Noyes, Paul Rudolph and Eero Saarinen. The episode ends with a building still hanging in the balance, Warren Platner’s Kent Memorial Library. Platner is better known for his restaurants than for his buildings, but this is a beautiful structure, and it would be a tragedy to lose it to the digital age.

Word on the Street

My son shows his first interest in the New York Times! But only because Big Bird was above the fold on Sunday’s Arts & Leisure section in honor of the show’s 40th anniversary. We have begun a bit of a study of Sesame Street in our house, as we alternate, depending on wake-up time and day of the week, between the two DVD sets of Sesame Street: Old School (please make more) and what we like to call “real Sesame Street”. And all three of us much prefer the fake one.

As my husband said, at various weekend brunches:

The older Sesame Street had more trickster figures and anti-heroes than role models.

The divine anarchy of Grover, the dopiness of Big Bird, the grouchiness of Oscar, all were accepted and accomodated by the wise, relaxed adults of the Sesame Street of my youth, who seemed to be going about their business (were David and Maria dating?) but always willing to join in a big brass band. They didn’t spend all their time trying to entertain us (as personified by the puppets) but could be drawn in by an argument or a game. And all instruction was a game, Susan with her “One of these things” song, the Count with his laugh.

We have never been able to figure out why the episodes come with a warning that they are for adults. Is it the disco? The “Macho” man, looking like the guy on the side of Brawny paper towels, that illustrates the letter M? Because they do a much better job of holding the attention of a two-year old. Every segment is short and to the point (every time Neil Patrick Harris as the Shoe Fairy comes on, my son moans; adults may find NPH funny, but it is just too long, too abstract and jokey for a toddler). In the old school episodes there was much more variation in the on-screen visuals, as it jumps from the space of the street, to lightly animated (and often very stylish) sequences, to skits featuring the puppets, to songs. Nothing is very long, nothing is endlessly repeated, and no one overacts. Several segments are just weird, like Capital I, which will stick in your head for days if you watch it on YouTube. Several of the adults on today’s Sesame Street spend all their time looking at the camera, popping their eyes and over-articulating. It is tiring from an adult perspective, and perhaps an indication of the child-centered world we are raising our son in, as dissected by Daniel Zalewski in his recent review of current children’s books in the New Yorker, The Defiant Ones.

My son’s favorite segment, to which he begs us to return, is one in which Grover and Kermit have to figure out the order of cart, horse, and driver. It is hilarious, and even a two-year-old can see what the problem is. If they tried to do the same thing with Elmo, it would surely involve Mr. Noodle, nervous laughter, yelling, and a full cast. Back in the day those two had to work it out for themselves, by themselves, and move on to the next thing.

And speaking of the alphabet: ABC Books on the Design*Sponge guest blog.