What I’m Watching: Modern Family (Season Premiere)

Modern Family: Season 7, Episode 1 “Summer Lovin’” (B)

It’s no secret that my affinity for this show has dwindled considerably over the past few years, and the fact that, for the first time ever, it didn’t take home the Emmy for Best Comedy Series last week had almost made it fall off my radar completely. I’m not at a point where I need to abandon it though, and, fortunately, this premiere was considerably better than what we’ve seen lately. Its formulaic nature hasn’t changed, but I did enjoy its plotlines a bit more than I have recently. Through the show’s decline, Haley has tended to be one of the show’s stronger characters, exaggerated in an amusing way but still fairly solid. Her shutdown following Andy’s proposal to Beth and subsequent jumping back in to a relationship with the dependably dopey Dylan was entertaining to watch. I enjoyed Dylan’s v-neck t-shirts that used the v-neck as the letter v, particularly Claire’s Evolve t-shirt that perplexed Jay. I wasn’t as fond of Fat Andy since I think that’s an unnecessary gimmick, but it served to mostly give him and Haley the opportunity for a furious interaction. Alex’s love life is also fun to watch, particularly because she and her intellectual boyfriend are ready to defy the statistics because they’ve never been in bottom percentiles and they both love numbers so much. Jay and Gloria trying to get Joe into preschool too late didn’t offer much in the way of new material, but it was relatively entertaining. Mitchell taking to painting was a bit random, but it was nice to see him go off the rails rather than Cameron, and proved a funny and harmless distraction. Let’s hope this season can be a return to relative greatness for this show.