Featured TV on DVD Review: Modern Family: Season Six
September 28, 2015
Modern Family: Season Six - Buy from Amazon: Collection 13
Modern Family has been one of the best and most popular sitcoms on TV for each of its five previous seasons. In fact, it has won five Outstanding Comedy Series Emmys in a row, tying the record. Is it still the best sitcom on TV? And how are the extras on the DVD?
I'm not going to go over every plot thread in every episode. That would take longer to type than it would to watch. Each episode usually has three threads, one for each family. Sometimes there's more, while sometimes the threads are so related it is just over plot. I'll just go over some of the highlights for the seasons, in chronological order.
The highlights begin with the season premiere, The Long Honeymoon. One of the threads is about the greatest summer the Dunphys ever had. Everything is going perfectly, until Alex returns home and all hell breaks loose. At first the family is worried that Alex is the reason they've never before been able to string more than 8 good days in a row, but the truth is much worse.
Episode five, Won't You Be Our Neighbor, is the introduction of Ronnie and Amber and the Dunphys' new neighbors. They return for a few episodes, including this year's Halloween episode, Halloween 3: AwesomeLand, which is another fun Halloween episode.
Queer Eyes, Full Hearts focuses in part on Haley, who is spending a lot of time with Andy. At first Claire and Phil think they might be dating, but it is something more professional. There are several episodes where Sarah Hyland gets to show off more dramatic acting skills, and this is one of them.
Three Turkeys is this season's Thanksgiving episode. It has Phil and Luke preparing the turkey. Claire thinks they will screw it up, so she prepares a back-up turkey. Meanwhile, Jay and Gloria are traveling to Mexico for Thanksgiving with Gloria's family. They were splitting the traveling distance... or that was the plan. Gloria's family couldn't make it, so Jay and Gloria decided to stay home and not tell anyone.
In Haley's 21st Birthday, it's Haley's 21st birthday and Claire and Gloria take her out drinking to celebrate. Only Claire tries to be a friend and not a mom for the night. Things get out of hand. Meanwhile, Alex, Luke, and Manny are babysitting Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons), but Lily asks where babies come from and the three freak out at the prospect of telling her.
In The Day We Almost Died, the Dunphys, plus Manny, are driving when they nearly get into an accident. As a result, everyone vows to change the way they live their lives. Modern Family is a sitcom, so you know they go overboard.
Fight or Flight... one word: Sal. This is the episode that earned Elizabeth Banks an Emmy nomination for Best Guest Actress and she deserved it.
Connection Lost is the most high-concept episode of the season. Claire and Haley get into a fight. The next day Claire is at the airport waiting for a flight trying to get in touch with Haley, using video calls with her family. This spirals into madness. This is the most unique episode of the season and arguably the best.
Grill, Interrupted focuses on Jay's Birthday. There's a lot happening, but my favorite part was the interaction between Jay and Alex at the end.
In Knock 'Em Down, Cam convinces Jay to help his bowling team win the league championship. Only, it's a gay only league, so Jay has to pretend he's gay. It works, until Cam's nemesis, Martin, starts to hit on Jay.
In Integrity, Alex absolutely cleans up on the Academic Awards and during her many acceptance speeches, she taunts Sanjay Patel. In Patriot Games, we learn Alex and Sanjay exactly tied for valedictorian with GPAs of 4.645923. All of the grades for all of their classes are in, but one. P.E. Now it is up to Cam to decide who gets to be the valedictorian.
In Crying Out Loud, its Senior Skip Day and Alex is going to school, because of course she is. The rest of the family is forcing her to ditch school. Meanwhile, Claire is thinking of leaving her job with Jay, but there's certainly some emotional baggage there.
The season ends with American Skyper. In this episode, Alex graduates and the episode takes place at the party. However, the best part of the episode is the Haley and Andy possible romance, which was a continuation from the moments in Closet? You'll Love It!. It's nice that Sarah Hyland got a couple of episodes where she could show off a more dramatic side. Ariel Winter got the same chance last season with Under Pressure.
So the "highlights" include more than half of the episodes this season. That should probably tell you all you need to know for a review. Even the weakest episodes were still funny and have high replay value. There were also some great emotional moments and many of the characters had significant character growth over the season. Modern Family is still my favorite sitcom on TV at the moment, although it is no longer the only one I watch on a regular basis. I watch the series premiere for The Muppets and I will be watching that as well.
There are two featurettes on Disc One, the first on the Halloween episode and the other on the Thanksgiving episode. On Disc Two, there is a nine-minute featurette on the making of Connection Lost. Disc Three starts with a six-minute behind-the-scenes featurette with Julie Bowen. Next up are three minutes of deleted scenes and eleven minutes of outtakes. That's not great, but it is enough.
Modern Family: Season Six is still my favorite sitcom on TV at the moment and I think the only reason it didn't win its six Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy was because that would have been the record and too many voters were unwilling to say it is the best sitcom of all time. The DVD isn't loaded with extras, but there's enough that it is Pick of the Week material.
Video on Demand
The Show
The Extras
The Verdict
Filed under: Video Review, Elizabeth Banks, Julie Bowen, Ty Burrell, Sarah Hyland, Ed O'Neill, Oliver Platt, Sofia Vergara, Steve Zahn, Ariel Winter, Eric Stonestreet, Nolan Gould, Rico Rodriguez, Adam DeVine, Suraj Parthasarathy