Family

On 4 February 2020, we watched the last ever episode of The Good Place. The show ran from September 2016 to January 2020. It’s a very nice TV show that we loved watching with the kids because it’s about friendship, philosophy, a bit of science and it’s fun. One thing which is cool is that all the main characters have (more or less) the same importance and the actors performed admirably: Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell), Chidi Anagonye (William Jackson Harper), Tahani Al-Jamil (Jameela Jamil), Jason Mendoza (Manny Jacinto), Michael (Ted Danson) and Janet (D’Arcy Carden). If you don’t know the show, give it a try.

A few months ago, we also finished watching Life in Pieces. The show ran from September 2015 to June 2019 and chronicles the lives of three generations of the Short family as they go about their daily lives in Los Angeles. What is cool is that each episode is told as four short stories, typically one for each of the three Short family branches and one that ties the other three stories together. It’s a cool show but the characters are not very likeable, apart maybe from Dr Tim Hughes (Dan Bakkedahl), Matthew Short (Thomas Sadoski) and Colleen Brandon Ortega Short (Angelique Cabral).

Modern Family is a TV show which ran for eleven seasons, from September 2009 to April 2020. It has just finished airing and we saw the last episode a few days ago. Modern Family is fun to watch with the whole family and I liked how the kids in it grew up in front of us during the eleven years. I did a small survey with Christina, Anya and Kyan and, by consensus, our three favourite characters from the show were Gloria (Sofía Vergara), Phil (Ty Burrell) and Manny (Rico Rodriguez). Honorable mention to Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons) for being so sarcastically funny. Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) and Claire (Julie Bowen) were sometimes interesting but not always…

The War at Home is a relatively old TV show which ran for two seasons, from September 2005 to April 2007. We hadn’t heard of it and I think it was Anya who discovered the show. We have just finished watching the last episode today. The War at Home follows the antics of a largely dysfunctional American family: the dad, the mum and three kids (the pretty one, the misfit and the cynical one). On the whole, The War at Home is not very good and received mixed to negative reviews from critics, scoring a 28/100 on Metacritic. Dave, the dad (Michael Rapaport), was way too caricatural, vulgar and immature. But Hillary (Kaylee DeFer) “the pretty one” and Mike (Dean Collins) “the cynical one” were quite funny. Special mention for Rami Malek who plays Kenny.

Neither Modern Family, nor The War at Home, are among our favourite TV shows but, having watched them entirely, something about them must have pleased us…

Maybe we liked Modern Family for being, ahem, modern and The War at Home for showing, ahem, the war which sometimes exist between parents and their adolescent kids.