Modern Family: Fan vs Fanatic

As anyone just glancing at this blog should be able to tell(and anyone who knows me couldn't possibly miss), I'm a fiction fanatic, with my primary medium of choice being television.  I don't just watch television -- I talk about it, write about it, quote it, analyze moments, do entire series rewatches and occasionally even dream of my favorite fictional characters.  I'm a part of fandom for all my favorite shows, writing fanfiction and drawing fanart and making my tumblr essentially nothing but reblogged television GIFS.  I usually either love a show and obsess over it, or I don't care for it and will never bother watching.  Very rarely do I greatly enjoy a show and not completely immerse myself in it.

But there's always an exception, and for me, it's Modern Family.

The show's new season premiered last night, and I remembered to DVR it, but just barely.  I think the show is hilarious, and it fits right in with my other favorites like Parks and Rec and The Office.  It has lovable characters and emotional moments.  It's single camera, mockumentary, no laugh track.  I think it's a great show and I'm a fan.  But unlike most of my other shows, I'm not a fanatic for it.  I don't feel the need to make fanart or peruse its fanfiction.  I don't seek out its tags on tumblr and for the past season hiatus, I was two episodes behind, only catching up last night when it finally returned.  When I didn't have a DVR, I'd forget it for weeks at a time.

I watched the premiere today and it was really strong.  All in all, I think I laughed more times while watching it then I did watching the HIMYM premiere, and that might even be the normal comparison between the two shows (except HIMYM probably would have had the advantage in its early, golden years).  And yet, How I Met Your Mother still means more to me.  The characters will stick with me and I wonder about the missing moments the series doesn't show.  I theorize and read fanfiction and draw the characters.  I read interviews and watch blooper reels and can quote the show pretty well.  I never actively search for any of that material for Modern Family, and if something happens to just present itself to me, I will look at it with only casual interest.

After I finished the premiere today, I turned the television off, and that was all it was.  The show was over and I thought of it no more until it struck me how unusual that was for me.  I hadn't formed any real opinions on the episode and just let it end in my mind the same time it ended on screen.

I spent a lot of time thinking why that might be, and though I'm still not positive, two possible reasons do stand out to me: the family sitcom genre and its character development limitations.

My favorite shows tend to center on the "work place family" instead of literal family, and while the show does feature a "modern" and more eccentric version, the family set-up does have more limits to what can be accomplished.  For instance, the character relationships can't really change.  All the marriages will remain stable and reasonably happy, even when characters fight.  The end of each episode will offer this resolution. The kids will also always be loving and antagonistic siblings; they'll always learn their lessons with some setbacks along the way.  With the exceptional possibility of adding new characters, the dynamics are unlikely to change.  Ever.

There used to be a time in television when that's how shows were meant to be:  you come back for the same characters every week to see the same kind of stories.  You didn't want them to change and this was especially true for comedy -- you wanted the same funny people doing the same funny things and getting into the same funny kind of trouble, like in I Love Lucy or Gilligan's Island.  That's not the case anymore.  The trend for more serialized storytelling and changing characters started with drama but has since found its way to primetime comedy as well.

Take How I Met Your Mother for instance.  In many ways, it follows a classic formula -- archetype characters and zany situations.  In other ways, it has become more than that.  For most of its run, the show was a mystery centering on who The Mother would be.  It also has callbacks from seasons previous and plays with structure with flashbacks and flashforwards and unreliable narration.  And most importantly, it's allowed its characters to change.  Barney has changed from a one dimensional horn-dog and funny guy to someone with depth and insecurities.  We've seen him heartbroken and we've seen him patch up most of his daddy issues and we've seen him grow enough to want and actually be able to thrive in a committed relationship.  We've seen Robin do the same, while still striving to reach her career goals.  We've seen Ted accomplish things in his career and fall in love and move on and regress and move out on his own.  Marshall and Lily have gone from a seemingly stable relationship to finally being tested together to getting their own place and becoming parents.

Parks and Rec has had a similar trajectory.  The characters have had a chance to grow and change their relationships.  Andy has gone from a mooch to his girlfriend Ann to having a stable two-sided relationship with April and even some ambition for himself.  Leslie has gone from the Parks department to City Council, from being unlucky in love to finding her soulmate, and Tom's gone from the irresponsibility of bankrupting Entertainment 720 to running his own thriving business with Rent-A-Swag.  Ann's going to have a baby, and Ron's abandoned some of his hard independence for a lasting relationship and family.  They're all still the same funny, flawed people we've known but their storylines have been allowed to progress and as characters, they've been allowed to develop naturally.

All in all, I guess it's the serialization that really captures me with the ability to see characters grow and change and see their dynamics with each other change as well.  Modern Family is great and just as good if not better than some of my other shows, but changing just isn't something most family-centric shows can do.

Sorry for being long-winded, but much of this was me trying to sort it out for myself.  Agree, disagree, think my reasoning works out or is it flawed?  What makes you a fanatic for one show but a casual observer for another?