As the final season of one of my favorite shows of all-time begins its final season, my wife and I found an easy excuse to rewatch the entire series of Modern Family again from the beginning. Hopefully we'll time it where we get through all the seasons by next spring, when the series finale drops.
Tonight, we watched the series premiere, and oh was it fun to go back in time.
The kids are really kids. Haley, the oldest, is only 15 years old. Alex is a physically small child. Manny always has acted way older than his age, but even from the first episode, he did so at a creepy level. The writers do a great job of building these families with true-to-life characteristics that remain consistent throughout the series and pass on from parents to children, but Manny is one of the exceptions. While Gloria and he are passionate people, we learn from the opening episode that Manny gets some of that from his father, as well. Manny and his mother are both spoiled, but that's where most similarities end. Manny is cultured, booksmart, measured, composed, quiet, and doesn't stick up for himself all that much. The only other thing they have in common is the desire for older people; Manny's first attempt gets shot down (the girl had a boyfriend), but from beginning of the show, you could see Manny wasn't going to learn his lesson nor act his age.
Young Luke is one of my favorites. Older Luke isn't awful, but young Luke is so fun. He's the perfect mesh of his parents. He has Claire's tough love and secret mean side, but he's so off-beat and original like Phil. In this episode, though, he is a victim of his own doing as Phil makes him bite the bullet (literally) after he shot Alex with a beebee gun.
Haley's tense relationship with Claire doesn't take long to hit rocky waters. Haley is basically a younger version of her mother. Even in the opening episode, Claire finds herself walking that fine line of being too controlling in an attempt to try to help her kids avoid the same mistakes, while also letting her kids live their own lives. I'm sure that's the struggle any parent feels. Meanwhile, Haley's on-again, off-again relationship with Dylan (my absolute least favorite character on the show) has such an innocent start. I still can't help but fight back feelings of annoyance every time he shows up, though.
As for the adults, their behaviors don't change much throughout the series. In the first episode, Gloria is loud, Cam is one for the flair and dramatic, and Phil is the weirdly goofy-cool dad in front of kids and daughter's boyfriend (no dad should be proud to know the dances to High School Musical).
It's fun to go back and see what the writers, set designers, producers, etc., hadn't fully figured out yet. The changes to the sets were immediately noticeable. Phil and Claire's house has a wall right by the inside of the front door; now there's an opening there that goes into another room. Some of the places and camera shots where they do interviews of the cast are way different (side note: I realize "Modern Family" isn't technically a sitcom in the traditional sense, but I'm counting it anyway).
Also, it is revealed that Phil and Claire have been married for 16 years, yet Haley is only 15 years old. Later in the show, the writers indicated that Phil and Claire got married because Claire got pregnant with Haley; obviously the years don't matter, but it's probably a small-enough and insignificant-enough detail to ignore for the sake of the greater story later on. For me, I've always had a weird disbelief in the consistency of the kids' ages throughout the show. It just seems like they grow up faster than the writing lets on. I'll keep an eye on that as I go back through the old seasons.
The 10th and final season of the show is already an episode old, and it'll be fun to go back and forth between the first and last seasons. Keep checking back for more diaries of Modern Family.
THE WIFE'S TWO CENTS: My wife has told me multiple times that the Lion King scene with Cam raising Lily is the moment when she knew she would love this show. Also, I figured out where she and her brother got their "Jes" catchphrase (instead of "Yes"), and it's all the funnier.