Catch Up TV

Increasingly, I find that there are huge swathes of popular culture that, despite apparently being huge when they were on, completely passed me by at the time.  In particular there seem to be so many TV shows that were 'must watch' years ago, which I've never seen and never felt culturally deprived that I never saw them.  Every so often, I'll stumble across a re-run of one on an obscure digital channel, recognise it as something that was all the rage back in the day, watch it and shrug.  Not because they are rubbish, but rather because, at this point in time, it is hard to fathom just why they were once so big.  It's a reminder that context can be so important: what seemed new, innovative, daring or unconventional ten years ago might well seem utterly commonplace now.  Anyway, to get to the point of this particular set of ramblings, the other day, while flicking through the various Freeview channels - it was during the recent 'interruption' to my broadband service, so I was without streaming schlock via Roku - looking for something to watch, I stumbled across an episode of Modern Family.  I vaguely recalled it as being a sitcom that was very 'must watch' for the Channel 4 demographic some years ago, (actually a lot of years ago when I looked it up).  In truth, my main awareness of it was via several mildly disparaging references to it in episodes of Family Guy.

I have to say the main thing I took away from watching a couple of episodes was that I finally understood all of the references in that  episode of Family Guy where Peter wants the show to win an Emmy award, so has it emulate various Emmy-winning shows, starting with him swapping Lois for a hot, younger, Hispanic woman.  Because that's one of the main strands of  Modern Family.  Finally watching episodes of Modern Dad I could, sort of, see why it was popular at the time, but I couldn't help but feel that it was just an update of Married With Children.  I mean, coming in cold, it looked to me as if Al Bundy had finally become a successful businessman after ditching Peg and shacking up with that hot Hispanic chick, while his daughter Kellie had become slightly less dumb, married and become a controlling mother, while his son Bud had turned gay and married an effeminate James Cordon lookalike.  (In the Family Guy version the gay couple are Stewie in a fake beard and Brian - 'I've got the beard, that means you're the lady one Brian').  OK maybe I'm misreading it - after all, there was no toilet in evidence, a lack of crude innuendos and Ted McGinley wasn't living next door.  But you get the gist of what I'm saying - in truth there is nothing new under the sun.  When it comes to sitcoms, the trappings and tome might vary over time, but the basic format stays pretty much the same.