Rich People on Television

I never thought I'd write something criticizing Modern Family, and I'm not! Not really. Relax. Sit down. Eat a piece of pie.

(You know, if you have it. If not, go get some. Pie improves reading. It's a proven face.)

Here's the thing--

One of my favorite sitcoms of all time is Roseanne. I love how it dealt with a lower-income family in a realistic way, but was still funny and irreverent, rather than depressing.

Watch an episode of Roseanne, then watch an episode of Modern Family, and it's a little, well...

Here's the thing:

The whole premise of Modern Family is that these people are us. I mean, that's the premise, or the goal, of most sitcoms--that you identify in some way with the characters.

The problem with Modern Family is that every once in awhile I'm reminded that I'm never going to truly identify with their characters, because their characters are sooo much richer than I am.

And it's not like the show willingly embraces this and makes fun of it like on Frasier, where Frasier's Dad was always commenting on his son's high-brow problem. It seems as if Modern Family doesn't want us to pay too much attention to the fact that money is never an issue for any of its characters, but they still want us to believe these characters are middle-class.

Well, newsflash, the middle class is ALL about money, or rather, worrying about money. Very few families in this country aren't, except, you know, the rich ones.

Okay, so maybe it doesn't expect us to believe that Jay and Gloria are middle class because Jay's worked all his life building up this successful business and blah blah blah--fair enough.

But how convenient that Mitchell happens to be a lawyer, thereby securing his family's financial status, and Phil's real estate career never seems to be in too much of a low-patch. Oh sure, every once in awhile Phil will bring up how bad the market is and he'll voice concerns about it, but they seem to be minor concerns considering how bad the market really is.

What I'm saying is this: Isn't it a little odd that there's a show dealing with three separate families and not one of the families ever struggles with finances?

Now, let me play devil's advocate here:

I'm a writer.

I understand that it's a lot easier to write about rich people, because writing about poor people and making it funny is incredibly difficult. That's why Roseanne was so brilliant.

When you remove the problems of the real world, it's a lot easier to create. I can only imagine what a day in the writer's room of Glee must be like:

"Guys, I KNOW we already added eight new characters this season, but we're running out of storylines for the ones we have!"

The bottom line is, I still enjoy Modern Family despite the little voice in the back of my head that says--They could still do a show this good AND have at least one character who doesn't drive a brand new Prius. They could still deal with actual problems every now and again. The people who create this are smart enough to take it to that next level.

But then I just go back to watching the show, and admittedly, it is a nice mental vacation.

Probably because I can't afford to take an actual vacation.

But hey, that's why I watch tv.