Modern Family's Modern Take on Divorce
On Modern Family this week, the crew headed to Anaheim to spend a day at the "happiest place on earth"--Disneyland. In between the usual hilarious scenes and witty one-liners, the show focused on family patriarch Jay, who told the camera about an earlier visit to Disneyland that nearly tore his family apart:
Jay explains to the camera with a glass of scotch on his lap that when Mitchell and Claire were kids, he got into a terrible fight with [then-wife] Dede . . . and ended up taking the kids to Disneyland alone. There he had a string of Disney-related epiphanies: His marriage was beginning to resemble the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and he wanted to get off.
But then, he had an epiphany, as he explains:
So my plan was drive Claire and Mitchell home, put them to bed, pour myself a nice tumbler of scotch, and tell Dede [his ex-wife] it was over. Well on the way out we made one last stop.
The stop was in a theater at the park featuring a robot Abraham Lincoln discussing his presidential duty to keep the union together. Quoting from Lincoln's Lyceum Address and his Cooper Union Speech, the robot solemnly declares, "If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. . . And in that faith, let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand."
The experience had a profound affect on Jay:
I don't know what happened. Maybe it's what robot Lincoln said about a man's duty or keeping the union together. Maybe I just chickened out. But I realized that staying with my kids was more important than leaving my wife. Now, that's not the right decision for everyone. But it was the right decision for me.
If you watch the show, then you know that Jay is a manly man. The epitome of masculinity, in fact. And a good, manly man, he knows, must do his duty: "So I stuck it out until they were grown," he continues--over Gloria's question, yelled from the other room, of whether he wants to join her in the jacuzzi--"and the universe rewarded me." He smiles.
Scenes like these are why I love the show. This segment reconciles an anti-family trend in contemporary America to perennial values, like duty, that today seem outdated. Divorce is a jarring and inescapable part of twenty-first-century American society--it happens too often, no doubt. And we can bemoan that fact all we like, but that probably won't change the reality--not anytime soon, at least--that half of all marriages end in a split. So if you must divorce your spouse, then you should do it after your kids are out of the house, so that the breakup of your marriage won't affect them as permanently or damagingly as it would if they were still children who need mom and dad. Call it Modern Family's modern take on divorce.
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Dec '10
Re: Modern Family's Modern Take on Divorce
Love the show as well. One of the charms is that of the 4 men portrayed, the 2 gay guys are probably the most bumbling and inept. And their relationship is completely dysfunctional.
I'm not saying that all gay couples are that inept and dysfunctional, but it is refreshing that something out of Hollywood isn't portraying them as suave and superior.
Sep '11
Re: Modern Family's Modern Take on Divorce
It's a great show. I love it and watch every episode and wait for the next one. I thought it was interesting, maybe this was mentioned on the podcast last year, but some organization surveyed Conservative and Liberal homes and found that among Cons, Modern Family was the the most watched series; among Libs... Dexter, a show about a serial killer killing serial killer (that's a twister) with a fetish for blood in the name of "justice." That's all when he has all the means to convict them under the rule of law and there's no need for vigilante in the first place. He's a psychopath. It's a real window into Conservative and Liberal psyches I think.
Re: Modern Family's Modern Take on Divorce
I agree with your sentiment here, that if you must divorce, wait until your kids are grown and out of the house.
But as an adult who's been out of my parents' house for a few years now, I'd still be devastated if my parents were to split. Truth is, as I enter my own marriage in a few months, I need to have some model of what an enduring marriage looks like. I guess it's sort of selfish of me, but I need them to continue to be a unit.
I'm sad for so many of my friends and peers growing up who came from broken homes.
Dec '10
Re: Modern Family's Modern Take on Divorce
Diane Ellis, Ed.
But as an adult who's been out of my parents' house for a few years now, I'd still be devastated if my parents were to split. Truth is, as I enter my own marriage in a few months, I need to have some model of what an enduring marriage looks like. I guess it's sort of selfish of me, but I need them to continue to be a unit.
I'm sad for so many of my friends and peers growing up who came from broken homes. · 40 minutes ago
Diane - if your folks are still married, then it truly is something to be thankful for. My wife of 26 years and I had fantastic role models - her parents celebrated their 50th last year, and mine made it to 53 before my dad passed in 2006.
Be blessed!
Aug '10
Re: Modern Family's Modern Take on Divorce
Loved that closing scene in Modern Family. Great payoff for a set-up that ran the entire episode.
Sep '10
Re: Modern Family's Modern Take on Divorce
I never would have believed that I'd enjoy that show but I do. I think its because the actors are all first rate and so is the writing. However, I fear I must take issue with the idea that one should stay married "for the kids" Both of my parents would have been better off if they had not done that. For about half of my failed, 11 year first marriage, I vowed that I would not be like my father. At first I thought that meant not cheating but at some point I knew it also had to mean doing the honest and right thing and ending it. Jay and Marse Robert might be right that Duty is the sublimest word in our language and the notion of duty to one's self seems hideously pop-psyche but I have only my personal experience to go on. Lamenting the high divorce rate is popular for conservatives but I think there are many more lamentable stats such as illigitimacy that it makes more sense to decry.
Mar '12
Re: Modern Family's Modern Take on Divorce
Emily, I like your recent takes on two of my favorite TV shows. Modern Family has great characters and is clever, well written and funny. This episode was an especially good one, I thought.
It's interesting. As a conservative, I tend to have my antennae up for slights to my values or superfluous advocacy for things I oppose. I'm not always offended, but am usually aware of these. And, given the premise of the show, Modern Family, would have the potential to annoy someone like me. Yet, somehow it doesn't -- or, at least, not very much at all.
Mar '11
Re: Modern Family's Modern Take on Divorce
"and the universe rewarded me."
Sorry, that sounds like progressive pap.
May '10
Re: Modern Family's Modern Take on Divorce
Every situation is unique. The key, I think, is that the assessment on the show ended up considering duty vs. self-indulgence. And that choice is not often seriously addressed in Hollywood offerings these days.
It sort of helps me that Rubber Duckie is still my sweetie, and plenny good-lookin' after almost 40 years....
Nov '10
Re: Modern Family's Modern Take on Divorce
Uh, who's "Gloria"? This Gloria in a hot-tub asking him to come join her would seem to sound a note that sounds a bit like "the universe rewarded me" to my ear ... but not in a way that resonates.
Nov '11
Re: Modern Family's Modern Take on Divorce
I don't see them as bumbling, inept or dysfunctional. Do they squabble? Sure, but so do the two other couples in the show.
Apr '11
Re: Modern Family's Modern Take on Divorce
My parents had a bad marriage, but even so I wish that they'd stayed married a few years longer. Even though I knew it was coming, it was harder to handle at 12 than it would've been at 16 or 20. For me, it was just interesting that the show presented Jay's decision as reasonable and even noble, rather than as a sucker's move by someone just not brave enough to be true to himself, or some such standard T.V. trope.
And I don't think that Mitchell and Cam are more bumbling or dysfunctional than the other couples, but the fact that they're portrayed as just as bumbling and dysfunctional as the straight couples is what makes them stand out from other gay couples on T.V. (And none of the couples look dysfunctional to me-they all have loving, stable, relationships. They're just each a little weird.) To me, at least, that's what makes them more human, funny, and easier to relate to than other gay couples on T.V. who are portrayed as perfect couples, but campy.
Apr '11
Re: Modern Family's Modern Take on Divorce
Diane, God's blessing on your pending nuptials.
Here is an excerpt by C.S. Lewis from Mere Christianity the promise of marriage. Maybe today's divorce problem is as simple as keeping a promise.
But, of course, ceasing to be ‘in love’ need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense—love as distinct from ‘being in love’—is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be ‘in love’ with someone else. ‘Being in love’ first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.
Lewis, C. S. (2009-05-28). Mere Christianity (p. 109). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
Sep '10
Re: Modern Family's Modern Take on Divorce
Duane Oyen
Every situation is unique. The key, I think, is that the assessment on the show ended up considering duty vs. self-indulgence. And that choice is not often seriously addressed in Hollywood offerings these days.
It sort of helps me that Rubber Duckie is still my sweetie, and plenny good-lookin' after almost 40 years.... · 13 hours ago
I should've mentioned that I have not actually watched that episode but I agree. Different Hollywood take.
Aug '10
Re: Modern Family's Modern Take on Divorce
R. Craigen: Gloria is Jay's loving, beautiful, and devoted wife. "And the universe rewarded me" is now one of my favorite sitcom lines of all time.
Apr '12
Re: Modern Family's Modern Take on Divorce
As funny, well-written, and well-acted as this show is, to me its most appealing feature is the teaching of virtues that it makes part of every episode. Of course, on the show virtuous behavior doesn't always lead to cosmic rewards (just like in real life) but however it works out, it's always funny. This will go down as one of the greatest shows of the decade.