Modern Family

I have returned from Gen Con, with both my voice and brainpower feeling temporarily eroded from when the con began. So today I'm going to blog about something without high brainpower demands: Mid-Century Modern.

Mid-Century Modern is a Hulu sitcom created by Max Mutchnick and David Kohan -- the latter of whom was a co-creator on Will & Grace, among other shows. That sense pervades every frame of this multi-camera, "live studio audience" (juiced with laugh track) series that feels like a throwback to network sitcoms. It's even directed by James Burrows, whose direction of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Cheers, Taxi, Frasier, Friends, and more basically defined what network sitcoms are.

But the show it arguably feels most like is The Golden Girls. The core cast of four is three older gay men -- crotchety Bunny, airhead Jerry, and sassy Arthur -- along with Bunny's mother Sybil. In some episodes, they leave the house; in some episodes, they don't -- but at every turn they're trading barbs with one another. All that's missing from a typical Golden Girls episode is the cheesecake. (Well... there is cursing. The Golden Girls could never do that, but this is Hulu.)

The characters are all big archetypes, and the actors who play them lean in. Nathan Lane plays Bunny with such a heightened panoply of neuroses that you can imagine the casting directive was for a "Nathan Lane type." Matt Bomer is channeling Betty White's clueless Rose with his guileless delivery of stupid one-liners. Nathan Lee Graham is a flamboyant force with bite. Linda Lavin has been doing sitcoms since Rhoda, Barney Miller, and Alice, and knows exactly how to deliver a line -- especially a "blow" to end of scene. And the four all work off each other well. 

Still, it would be generous to call the show "good." There are episodes that succeeded in making me laugh out loud once or twice. And they did an archetypal "very special" sitcom episode when Linda Lavin died of lung cancer in late 2024. But really, the thing about Mid-Century Modern is that it feels like a minor milestone in LGBT+ rights. This isn't subversively ahead of its time like Three's Company or Soap. It isn't blazing a trail for acceptance like a Will & Grace. Instead, it simply asserts that gay people too can headline a kinda-middling sitcom.

I give Mid-Century Modern a B-. It's hardly an essential watch in a crowded streaming landscape. Yet I didn't have much trouble finishing all 10 episodes, enjoying something that felt like warm and familiar "comfort food" even though it was released fresh this year.