Little ones? MODERN FAMILY's one hour 'special' (two thirty minute episodes) was not worth watching or airing. Yet some in The Water Cooler Set try to insist it was.
Nonsense abounded from scene to scene. There wasn't a real or genuine moment in either episode. And no one seems to notice the most obvious point: Who was recording?
For eleven seasons, this rather dull family has been recorded. They've spoken to the camera. The camera has caught their antics. Were they doing a reality show? Was this a documentary? What the hell was going on?
If MODERN FAMILY had even one iota of honesty, the camera would have panned back in the final scene to show film director Christopher Guest recording the family members -- that way the 'creators' of MODERN FAMILY could have finally acknowledged the theft they'd conducted.
Mockumentaries can be funny. Guest has certainly demonstrated that with the films: THIS IS SPINAL TAP, WAITING FOR GUFMAN, BEST IN SHOW, A MIGHTY WIND, FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION and MASCOTS. And the mockumentary format that Guest excelled in can be ripped off in a crude and far less funny manner as the TV series 'creators' Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan demonstrated.
The show never should have had an eleventh season. In the final two episodes, they attempted to cram in all this 'development' that should have taken place in episodes scattered throughout the season. Last Thursday, WILL & GRACE, in their (second) final season offered "We Love Lucy" -- a pointless episode where Karen, Jack and Grace argued over who was the Lucy (I LOVE LUCY) as each took place in fantasies where they took turns playing Lucy, Ethel and Fred. It was pointless and not very amusing. It was a waste of time. Fortunately, season eleven of WILL & GRACE has only one wasted episode (there are two more weeks before the show wraps up) while MODERN FAMILY had a season eleven where every episode was a waste of time.
Ariel Winter should have been fired long ago. As the late Burt Reynolds told her to her face, she can't act. And she really, really can't. Her character of Alex is also irritating and annoying. She ended up with the British professor. Yawn. They never had chemistry. Winter had chemistry with Ben (Joe Mande) and with Bill (Jimmy Tatro). They managed to mitigate Winter's smugness and other irritating qualities. Chris Geere's Arvin had no chemistry with Winter and he had no chemistry with Sarah Hyland when he was supposed to be in love with Haley.
Speaking of Haley, it's good that talk of a spin-off is not around her character. Hyland is a comic marvel and as important to the show as Ty Burrell and Sofia Vergara but the decision to saddle her with Dylan (Reid Ewing) killed all interest in the character. She had real chemistry with Adam Devine's Andy. Ewing has played Dylan dull as water since day one. Why they brought him back is anyone's guess but he helped destroy season eleven.
The spin-off? Mitch and Cam. Because who doesn't want to see those two bitch at each other?
The ending for those two was they bought a bigger house (and Elizabeth Banks showed up for a far-too-brief cameo as best friend Sal) and then decided to leave it and move to Missouri so Cam could coach college football in his home state. How sad is Missouri football? We don't know but we must assume that college football in Missouri is in a very sad state if they are rushing to hire some guy who has only coached high school football for six years and coached it at a small high school in a Los Angeles suburb.
While Cam tries to coach college football, imagine all the fun we'll have as Mitch learns to take care of an infant. We get that, right? They just adopted an infant. Someone will have to take care of the baby so Mitch's dreams about being a judge in Missouri will have to be on hold for a few years. Cam took care of Lily when she was an infant so Mitch'll have a lot to learn. Oh, the laughter that will ensue. No doubt it will be as inspiring as "The Conversation" episode of MAD ABOUT YOU -- where Jamie and Paul try to let Mabel cry herself to sleep? What's that? Not a sitcom classic episode? Yes, we agree.
MAD ABOUT YOU was a dated show when it was brand new though some try to pretend it was a breakthrough. Since Gloria was a stereotype, they couldn't talk about breakthrough in terms of Latinas and since the show was never that funny, they couldn't call it a comedy breakthrough. So we were supposed to pretend that two straight men creating a same-sex male couple was some sort of gay breakthrough for television.
But there was already ELLEN and WILL & GRACE. How exactly was MODERN FAMILY a breakthrough? Season eight of WILL & GRACE ended with Will having a child. Cam and Mitch were never having a romantic nights -- though Jay and Gloria did and so did Phil and Claire. MODERN FAMILY was largely a tale of sexed up heterosexuals and celibate gay men.
The show served up insulting stereotypes, not breakthrough portrayals. This would include the myth that gay men and lesbians can't get along. This would include Mitch constantly referring to Cam as a woman -- except when he was condemning Cam for doing the same. This would also include Jay's homophobia that was part of the show long after Mitch and Cam got married and long after Gloria gave birth to Joe.
So many lies last week as various members of The Water Cooler Set informed you of how amazing the show was and how amazing the last two half-hour episodes were.
Lies came over the radio airwaves last week on one of Andy Cohen's radio shows on his RADIO ANDY channel. Andrew is neither funny nor attractive which makes him your typical male talk show host. The twist with Andy is that he is an out gay host of a talk show. The sick with Andy is that he hits 52 in two months but acts like he's in his twenties. That act's not aging well for 36-year-old Adam DeVine so you can imagine how much worse it is for Andy Cohen.
He chatters with D-listers which is how, last week, he ended up chatting with former child actress Alyssa Milano. Alyssa has no career so she mainly used her time to trash Tara Reade.
You know Tara, right? The woman who states that, while she was working for then-Senator Joe Biden, he assaulted her. Katie Halper was the first to interview Tara in depth about the accusations for a broadcast. Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez also interviewed Tara for DEMOCRACY NOW!:
AMY GOODMAN: Can you give us the circumstances, how you ended up — what was the day, how you ended up alone with Joe Biden? Explain what happened that day.
TARA READE: I was approached by my supervisor. She handed me a gym bag and said, “Hurry, Joe wants this, so get it to him. He’ll meet you down towards the Capitol.” And I went down the stairs, and I don’t remember exactly where I was, because there’s connections between the Russell Building and all of that and the corridors, but we were in a semi-private location. It wasn’t a room. It wasn’t, you know, the Russell Office Building — I mean, in his office. It was down in the corridors. And I handed him the gym bag.
And then he — it was one, as I described, fluid moment. He was talking to me, and he said some things that I don’t recall. And I was up against the wall. And he — I remember the coldness of the wall. And I remember his hands underneath my blouse and underneath my skirt, and his fingers penetrating me as he was trying to kiss me and I was pulling away. And he pulled back, and he said, “Come on, man. I heard you liked me.” But he was angry. It was like a tight voice. And he tended to smile when he was angry. And he isn’t like the Uncle Joe like everybody talks about now. He was younger. He was my dad’s age at that time and very strong. And he looked insulted and angry. And I remember feeling like I had done something wrong when he said that statement. And then I was standing there when he said — he was still near me. He said — pointed his finger and said, “You’re nothing to me. You’re nothing.” And he walked away.
Alyssa went on Andy's show to try to silence the calling out she'd been receiving for weeks for refusing to acknowledge Tara. See, with no career to speak of, Alyssa's spent the last years claiming credit for #MeToo (Tarana Burke created it) and pretending she was an activist for survivors. Believe all women, she had insisted. But when the rubber hits the road, Alyssa's fake assery floats to the surface.
We called her out long ago. In July of 2018, Illeana Douglas went public about how Les Moonves assaulted her. And Alyssa said nothing, not one word, not one Tweet. She who Tweets constantly went into silent mode. Why? She was attempting to get a pilot (for HACKTIVIST) on the air and didn't want to jinx her chances.
So, no, we weren't surprised that she would refuse to acknowledge that Joe Biden may have assaulted a woman. Like Rose McGowan, we knew Alyssa was a fake ass.
But there she was talking to Andy and making it clear that she was full of s**t and didn't believe women unless they were attacking men she didn't like. Earlier, back in April of last year, she had dismissed Lucy Flores and the other women accusing Joe Biden of inappropriate behavior.
There she was lying to Andy that she'd done her -- what? "Due diligence," she said eventually. She struggled with the word -- "diligence" is a big word when you never had an education and Alyssa never had one. We weren't surprised she struggled with big words. She wanted the world to know that she'd been "friends" with Joe Biden for 15 years.
Apparently, he's advised her on birthing and breast feeding over the years and she's advised him on make up techniques and Team Steam.
And that's why, she explained/lied, "I don't feel comfortable throwing away a decent man."
Isn't it great to know that Alyssa can determine a decent man?
We no longer need court systems, we just need Alyssa. She'll tell us who the decent men are, right? That's good enough, right?
If she knows them and likes them, they are innocent.
Is that the world we live in now?
Tara Reade has made some serious allegations. Is she telling the truth? That's for people to decide on their own. What is known is that she has every right to tell her story and any advocate for survivors shouldn't be trying to discredit her before the corporate media has reported on it and allowed the nation to have a dialogue.
Alyssa's hypocrisy, as Krystal Ball predicted, just increased awareness of Tara Reade.
Today, THE NEW YORK TIMES finally reported on the allegations as did NBC NEWS.
Shaun King notes of NYT's report:
The
independently confirmed that Tara Reade told friends and family members that she was sexually assaulted by
. They also confirmed with Biden interns that she was removed from supervising them right when she reported the assault.
The details only grow stronger for Tara.
Does that mean she's telling the truth?
Not necessarily.
But it does mean that we need to have a serious discussion.
Can we do that when we're surrounded by liars?