You Shall Not Pass The Tests!: Modern Family

I am personally fond of comedies when it comes to watching TV shows. I met my first true love of sitcoms when I encountered Friends as a kid. I somehow grow up with this show that I can just watch it over and over again without getting bored; and I feel that lots of people have the same feeling as mine (Or is it just my imagination?). I thought it is such a classic show that no show will ever replace its place in my heart. Until I met my another love -- Modern Family. The position of Friends has been shaken since then. 

The name of the show explains itself -- it is modern, with the composition of 3 unique families. Modern Family combines the traditional type of family structure as well as the unconventional ones :

·      Claire's family: one father, one mother and 3 children

·      Jay's family: a hot Latino single mom along with her kid marries to an old man

·      Mitchell's family: a married gay couple with an adopted Vietnamese daughter

And the three individual families are all combined together into a big one, since Jay is the father of Claire and Mitchell.

ANALYZING

What sitcom has a more various and interesting story background than this show, right? With its dynamic setup of the show, I think it is great to be used to analyze Deggan's Rule and Vito Russo Test. They are invented based on The Bechdel Test, which is to see whether a movie or a show has achieved the 3 rules:

1.    There must be at least 2 female characters 

2.    Who have at least 1 conversation

3.    That is not related to men

While Deggan's Rule and Vito Russo Testare focusing on Race and Gays respectively instead of women.

Deggan's Rule

When it comes to Deggan's Rule, this show is designed to have diverse races, such as Colombian (Gloria and Manny) and Vietnamese (Lily). It indicates that there will be multiple scenes that are qualified to pass this test. For example, in Season 5 Episode 9: The Big Game, Lily had a crush on one of her pre-school mates. She, later on, tells Gloria about this boy and Gloria starts to teach Lily how to make the boy notice her. Although this scene fails at passing The Bechdel Test, it sure does pass the test of Deggan's Rule, since they are talking about boys instead of race. 

(And Gloria is pointing out a good truth to her!)

Vito Rosso test

As for Vito Russo Test, we can certainly focus this topic on Mitchell and Cam. Among their relationship of building up a family together and how they interact with other family members create bountiful scenes that fall into Vito Rosso Test. In Season 6, Episode 4: Marco Polo, Cam, who is a school's football coach at that time, becomes superstitious because of the upcoming football game. Hence, before he leaves the house for the game, he starts to do unreasonable things, which are his "traditions" as hoping for winning the game. Mitchell, then, starts talking with him of how ridiculous he is. This is a conversation of 2 gay men talking about nothing related to gender.

The Smurfette Principle

It means that among the main characters, there is only one female while others are all males, which just like the situation of Smurfs! But in Modern Family, this is definitely not the case! Within the cast group, we got Claire, Gloria, Lily, Alex, and Haley, which is actually the same number of male actors.

Never A Self-made Woman

The term is explaining a fact happening in multiple shows that -- a woman needs men's help to achieve what they have become. Modern Family can be tagged with this name due to Claire. She is in charge of HER FATHER (Jay)'s company in the later part of the show, which she did not go through the path of how people usually get a job, but with her dad's help.

(See? That's Claire and her dad, Jay Pritchett, in the office of Pritchett's company)

3 TROPES

All The Good Men Are Gay

Come on! Has any of you had this kind of feeling before? One time Cam and Mitchell have a bet in a bar about whether Cam can get a number from a girl. He actually gets one! By acting all funny and charming in front of a hot woman. This plot falls into the category of "All The Good Men Are Gay". However, later on, at the end of the episode, Cam talks to the woman about the truth that he is actually gay. She, then, explains that she knows about it all along and she just wants a gay friend. This is a subverted of this trope.

All Girls Want Bad boys

The first person that pops into your mind is definitely Haley, right? She dates Dylan, who is not exactly all bad but has some features of the bad boy type -- his style and playing in a band. Also, before Gloria marries Jay, She was married to Javier, a handsome Latino guy who rides on a bike and being a womanizer.

Dating What Daddy Hates

This is actually related to the previous trope but with a little bit of twist. Since in the case of Modern Family, it is the MOMMY that hates the fact that Haley is dating Dylan; and she thinks that Haley is worthy of a better guy. On the other hand, Phil, the daddy, actually likes Dylan a lot! 

With all of these interesting factors going on in Modern Family, now you know why it is my another true love of sitcoms!