Steven Johnson Modern Family

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Watching “Modern Family”, a thirty minute sitcom on Wednesday nights, enhances your intellect and makes you smarter. The show is about one extended family that lives in California. Within that family network are individual stories which follow a main plot. Each week the story lines mingle throughout each other, the characters deal with problems, and they face and solve them with humor. “Modern Family” is an example of Steven Johnson’s essay, “Watching TV Makes You Smarter”. The show compels the viewer to focus on the different characters’ stories and defines the reality of a 21st century American family. “Modern Family” pulls the viewer into the main story in its opening and carriers them throughout each individual family segment. The storyline …show more content…

The story line takes the viewer into the lives of each of these family homes: Jay and his younger South American wife, Gloria, her son Manny and their son, Joe; Claire, her husband Phil, and their three children, Haley, Alex, and Luke; and Mitch, his husband from Indiana, Cam, and their adopted Asian daughter, Lily. Each character has “a defined personality with motivation and obstacles and specific relationships with other characters” which mingle with one another (Johnson 416). The audience pays close attention to the interaction of the characters and how they solve problems. The storyline “weaves together a collection of distinct strands” where the three family segments have individual circumstances occurring in each of their homes (418). Those stories overlap one another and come together in the end to conclude one main plot. The lives of the characters are linked because they are family; yet, those lives have individual stories of their own for the viewer to

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