“My relationship with Modern Family is pretty torturous because I know I am just being fed comfortably middle-American ideas of ‘edge’ that still sort of pander but I tend not to mind it because the actors are all pretty flawless. Case in point, Julie Bowen and Ty Burrell as goofy dad and perpetually irritated Phil and Claire Dunphy. Ty Burrell is so gifted that his sensitive new age guy cum hapless childish moron seems not only plausible but loveable. Julie Bowen is so good that her Claire Dunphy – written as an unhappy, terrible, mean-spirited, and paranoid wife and mother – transforms into a soft-hearted goof who’s a bit more neurotic than she should be – something runs in the family, just look at her brother Mitchell (artfully played by Jesse Tyler Ferguson) as he manages to treat his partner Cam with the same level of near perpetual disdain.

But good acting can’t cover up the nag – watch more than one episode in a row and you find yourself wondering if you are, in fact, watching a Looney Toon. With behavior this, well, unloving, it’s hard not to visualize Modern Family the drama – where slammed doors and therapy sessions are the order of the day.”

Excerpted from FemPop’s article: “The TV Nagging Wife: Relished and Subverted”