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Adam Britten

Adam Britten is a self-proclaimed Disney geek. From a very young age, he fondly remembers visiting the parks with his family on an almost yearly basis. Currently a Master of Digital Marketing Student at Hult International Business School, Adam wishes on a star that he will one day work for the mouse's marketing department. He’s visited Disneyland, Walt Disney World, & Disneyland Paris; he hopes to complete the world tour. His favorite Disney movie is Alice in Wonderland. Can also be seen on: Twitter as @AdamBritten, www.AdamBritten.com, and his new blog about the intersection between social media and theme parks at SocialThemeParks.com.

Modern Family: Season 2, Episode 23 – See You Next Fall

Last night’s episode of “Modern Family” may be slightly misleading. The title “See You Next Fall” is not referring to the fact that it is the season finale, which many of my friends thought it meant, but instead was alluding to the fact that Cam is going to produce several laugh-worthy moments as he slips and stumbles his way through the episode. (He falls into Lily’s kiddy pool and gets upset when Mitch laughs at him.) Aside from some hilarious physical comedy, the episode provided many great lines and carefully threaded stories, hopefully pointing to the fact that next week’s season finale will be one you won’t want to miss.

Starting with the Dunphy’s, Alex is graduating from Middle School and gets to deliver the address, since she is valedictorian. We see her rehearsing a brutally honest speech where she will bash her classmates for ignoring her, and Haley takes it upon herself to try to stop this from happening. Meanwhile, Phil can see that Claire is going to have an emotional meltdown. He tries to make it happen immediately instead of the next day, so that he can go to Las Vegas with his cheerleading buddies.

Jay arrives home and the left side of his face is drooping. He tries to avoid any attention, but it’s obvious that he got a bad Botox job. Gloria and Manny both think that something bigger is wrong, though, so eventually Jay must admit what he has done. (By the way, they still have the cute dog from last week; glad to see the writers didn’t just get rid of her, like most other sitcoms would have.) This story ends up being another case of Jay feeling old, and Gloria is there to once again remind Jay that his age is all in his head.

There wasn’t much to the Mitch/Cam story, but it was still funny. At Jay’s house, Cam runs into the glass door, and then the screen door. Mitchell laughs again, and this time Jay and Claire join in, allowing Cameron to realize that “cruelty is genetic.” Upon trying to leave Jay’s house for Alex’s ceremony, everyone is stuck because the fence won’t open. Gloria finds a two-seater bike, so they throw the bike, Claire, and Phil over the fence so that they can make it on time.

At the ceremony, Haley tries to show Alex that “everyone has their stuff.” She admits to her sister that she’s flunking biology and might not get into college. She gives some harsh advice, while calling Alex “smart, pretty, and funny.” Alex is clearly touched, as the speech she gives is not the slap in the face to her class that she had prepared. Instead, she takes the words right out of Haley’s mouth. “Don’t stop believing, get this party started!” She gets a standing ovation as her entire family looks at her from the audience with pride.

Overall, I thought this episode was fairly strong. The best Modern Family episodes are the ones that center around one family moment, weaving together independent stories from each of the families. I’m also impressed with how the writers are handling Alex & Haley’s relationship, and I would just like to say that Sarah Hyland is hilarious. (This is evidenced by the fact that half of the lines I picked below come from Haley.)

As usual join us below the jump for Memorable quotes from the show:

Read More »Modern Family: Season 2, Episode 23 – See You Next Fall

More on ABC’s 2011 Fall Lineup

Earlier today, ABC announced their lineup for the Fall 2011 season. Later in the day, ABC held their “upfront,” which is a meeting where advertisers can purchase commercial slots in advance. This meeting gives more details regarding new shows that will debut in the fall. Let’s take a look.

Read More »More on ABC’s 2011 Fall Lineup

A Look at the Current Standing of Disney on Broadway

John recently posted about the announcement of the Walt Disney Company’s second quarter profits. At the end of the post, he asked where readers would like to see the company go in the future. I started writing a comment, but it was rapidly turning into… Read More »A Look at the Current Standing of Disney on Broadway

Modern Family: Season 2, Episode 22 – Good Cop Bad Dog

With just a few episodes left in the season, Modern Family was new again this week with Good Cop Bad Dog. This episode dealt with role reversals in each of the families, and for the most part it was fairly successful.

Let’s look at the Dunphys first, as they were the strongest story of the evening. Claire is sick of being the “bad cop” so she insists that Phil and her trade styles. Claire takes Luke and Manny go-karting and tells Phil to stay home and make sure that the girls clean their bathroom. Both of them take it way too far, in classic Dunphy fashion. Claire is so dead set on the boys having fun that she can’t even realize that they are miserable.

Meanwhile, Phil makes the mistake of trusting Haley and Alex, and they sneak off without actually cleaning their bathroom. Upon realizing this, he chases them out of the house and jumps on Haley’s car! This throws Phil over the edge, and he makes them clean the bathroom until its spotless, and then assigns them other household projects while refusing to feed them.

Mitch and Cam have tickets to see Lady GaGa, but Cam has fallen ill. Mitch wants to go to the concert anyway, but feels guilty because Cam always takes care of him. (We get to see a funny flashback of Cam carrying Mitch into the kitchen.) Once Cam chugs some Nyquil, Mitch decides to sneak off without him. Not much meat to this storyline, but it provided some chuckle-worthy moments.

That brings me to what I think is the weakest storyline of the evening. Gloria has invited a man over to the house so that he can get business advice from Jay. The man (played by Lin-Manuel Miranda) has a lot of enthusiasm, but a strange idea for a “good doggie, bad doggie training system.” Jay in his crippling honesty tells the man that his idea is terrible. Jay convinces Gloria that she has to learn to say no, to which Gloria responds by taking the man’s dog so that he can move. Jay holds firm and decides to take the dog away. I have two problems with this whole story-arch.

First, the premise is centered around the fact that Gloria collects needy people and tries to help them. Haven’t we seen that exact same story play out with Cameron? Second, I was hoping for a great guest appearance from Lin-Manuel Miranda (who wrote and originally stared in the Tony award winning Broadway musical “In the Heights,” one of my personal favorites.) However, he didn’t have much to work with, as his character was written with zero depth. The best part of this story was Gloria confusing sugar coating for “putting on a sugar jacket.”

In the end, the writers tried to tie all of the story lines together under monologue delivered by Gloria about why people end up with the people they love. Jay ends up being the one who can’t say no, and he takes the dog back home. Mitch tries to pretend that he’s been by Cam’s side the entire time, but he has a neon necklace on, which he forget to stop from blinking. When Claire brings the boys home, she and Phil decide that they fit best in the roles they already have. (Good, we need Phil to be the fun one.) All in all, this episode was not as good as last week, but I’ve come to expect a lot from Modern Family. I enjoyed two of the three stories, which is a fairly decent score.

Memorable quotes below the jump:

Read More »Modern Family: Season 2, Episode 22 – Good Cop Bad Dog

Top 10 Grossing Disney Animation Films [infographic]

I recently discovered Many Eyes, a nifty little tool for creating infographics. After playing around for a little bit, I decided to create a visualization of some Disney info. This infographic shows the ten Disney Animation Studios films with the highest gross revenues. It should… Read More »Top 10 Grossing Disney Animation Films [infographic]

Star Tours Meet-up Sells out fast, should Disney do more?

Earlier this morning, the Disney Parks Blog announced Walt Disney World’s first meet-up. On May 20th, Disney’s Hollywood Studios will hold a meet-up to celebrate the debut of the new Star Tours attraction. The event begins at 12:01am and lasts two hours. Unfortunately, sign-ups filled… Read More »Star Tours Meet-up Sells out fast, should Disney do more?

Modern Family – Mother’s Day

Modern Family was new this week with “Mother’s Day,” the 21st episode of the second season. Sitcoms always place an extra emphasis on holiday-themed episodes because they can be very relatable, and this episode was a worthy reflection of all the show’s moms. With Mother’s Day just around the corner, Modern Family served up an episode that was both witty and a tear jerker.

Starting with Mitchell and Cameron, they are dealing with the definition of parenting roles. Mitch serves Cam breakfast in bed, and he takes this to mean that he is the “mother” between the two of them. Even at a picnic for Lily’s play group, the women invite Cam into their picture as an “honorary mom.” Cameron is feeling increasingly insulted as he realizes that everyone considers Mitchell the “husband” and Cam the “wife” in their relationship. Mitch explains that they are just a new type of family and that the right vocabulary to describe them doesn’t exist. Out of anger, he grabs a football and throws it as hard as he can…right at an old man. He then chases after him, and Mitch has to remind him to not flail his wrists.

Meanwhile, Claire and Gloria take their children on a nature hike, and all the kids can do is whine. Out of anger, Claire decides to leave them behind so that she and Gloria can enjoy their day. This prompts a conversation between the two of them about how sometimes their kids can annoy them. Claire provokes Gloria until she finally admits that she can be slightly irritated by Manny. She calls him “persnickety” and says his poetry isn’t that good. She turns around to find Manny standing right behind her. Down the hill, Luke, Haley and Alex decide to not apologize for their actions this time. They finally think they have discovered a way to beat Claire at her own game.

While the ladies are away with the children, Jay and Phil are cooking a Mother’s Day feast. Flipping through a recipe book, Phil finds a poem that Jay wrote for his mom when he was nine years old. Upon reading the poem, Jay starts to tear up a little. When the entire family comes home for dinner, Mitchell recalls a story about his grandmother. Jay then tells a story about his mother yelling in the face of his little league coach, which causes him to finally let his tears go. Haley breaks her own rule and apologizes to Claire, followed shortly by Alex and Luke. And in typical sitcom fashion, everyone starts crying and hugging each other.

With only three episodes left in the second season, I look forward to Wednesday nights more and more every week. Modern Family will be new the next few weeks leading up to and including the season finale. Unless the upcoming episodes are absolutely terrible, I think I can safely say that the series has not experienced a sophomore slump like a lot of strong-starting series do. What do you think? Has the second season of Modern Family been better than the first?

Memorable quotes are below the jump:

Read More »Modern Family – Mother’s Day