“The Bicycle Thief”
September 30th, 2009
I, like every other TV critic on the planet, liked Modern Family. I even loved parts of it. But I was one of the few who expressed some trepidation at what the show was going to look like in the weeks ahead. So much of the episode was derived from the amazing final scene, one where everything came together in a bit of epic coming timing, and I wasn’t sure how the individual stories could live up to that moment.
For me, “The Bicycle Thief” leans heavily on two elements that made the pilot as strong as it was, focusing on Ty Burrell’s cool dad Phil and Cam’s dramatic side. I love what it does with Phil in this episode, and very much enjoy Cameron and Mitchell’s side of things, but I felt as if Jay and Gloria’s side of the equation was lacking a bit.
And it matters because here they choose to let the different families stand on their own for an episode, connecting them together with a general theme (a theme of fatherhood, in particular) as opposed to letting them mingle between one another. It makes for an episode that is somewhat less zany and surprising, but in at least 2/3 of its content it’s just as strong as it was last week.
When it comes to U.S. cable series making their way to Canadian airwaves, there’s always a problem. For the most part, Showtime and HBO (and even FX, AMC, etc.) don’t tend to follow a traditional schedule. They debut shows when they want to, often “out of season” in an effort to draw viewers from the main networks. They’re some of the few channels to run shows during the summer, which the networks shy away from, which means that Canadian networks airing the shows in simulcast would need to disrupt their schedules and promote the shows independently to be able to deliver strong numbers (by comparison, Showtime and HBO tend to lump their premieres together to launch a particular slate).
Cultural Learnings 