The Film
With its fourth season starting this week, Modern Family continues to set a high bar for television sitcoms. It's consistently one of the best shows on TV, and has all of the awards to prove it.
In Modern Family: The Complete Third Season, the show continues to expand on the story of the Pritchett clan and its various extensions. This season, we saw the family through an adoption process, an election, a death, a few trips, and several other storylines. As the show (and the cast) ages, everyone seems to take on a larger role. Heck, we even got to know Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons) this season!
This season continued the streak of stellar writing, but much of the praise has to go to this cast. Modern Family has one of the best groups on TV. If you're a fan of the show, you probably have your favorites. For me, Ty Burrell and Ed O'Neill are the real standouts. Burrell's puts his entire body into every line, while O'Neill's deadpan delivery is downright priceless.
Modern Family's third season definitely shows signs of the sitcom's growing popularity. There are multiple destination episodes and a parade of guest stars that includes Tim Blake Nelson, Benjamin Bratt, David Cross, Bobby Cannavale, Ellen Barkin, and Greg Kinnear. Thankfully, it's not showing signs of age. Is Modern Family: The Complete Third Season the show's funniest installment? Well no, but it's still funny and consistently one of the best shows on TV.
The Picture
Season three's 1.78:1 image is on par with the show's previous releases. The sitcom's trademark shaky-cam style doesn't leave a lot of room for spotting details. The interview segments are slightly better, but it's all very lifelike and a little step up from ABC's TV broadcast. The set's strongest suit is definitely the colors. The varying skintones across the show's many characters, the various sets and this season's many destination episodes all have a great color palette.
The Sound
Modern Family's main focus as always been the dialogue, so you can expect that to be the shining star of this set's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. That said, this set offers up a few more opportunities for surround sound than some of the past seasons. Expect to hear cars, chatter, amusement park atmosphere, and other sounds sprinkled through the surrounds.
The Extras
Each of the three discs in this set has a few little extras to feast upon. There are deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes antics, bloopers, and spotlights on this season's destination episodes, the kids and actor Ed O'Neill. There's also a little bit of Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston thrown in for good measure. It would have been nice if they got some of that lengthy cast to do a commentary or two. However, this collection is on par, if not a little better, than what's been included with previous seasons.
Final Thoughts
Modern Family: The Complete Third Season isn't the best season of the sitcom, but it's still funny -- and probably funnier than 95 percent of everything else currently on TV. They don't give out those Emmys for nothing, you know. If you've already started your MF collection, this season is a slam-dunk. It's entertaining, has a decent AV presentation and a nice collection of extras. Enjoy.
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