Character Study

Jesse Tyler Ferguson as Mitchell in Modern Family

            Struggling with what really is the right and accepted thing to do in Modern Family; Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s depiction of Mitchell contributes to the comic effect with the use of subtle humor, intriguing diction, and the ability to be embarrassed by others so easily, while also displaying him as a round character.

            Through the use of subtle humor, comic effect is produced by the way Jesse Tyler Ferguson says his lines, and specifically what his lines happen to be. While talking about his sister Claire, Mitchell says that “Claire is the son that my dad never had”, which ultimately means that he is also, the daughter his dad never had too. During the Lifetime Supply episode of Modern Family, Mitchell won an award and decided to put it on the mantle, which thus created Cameron, played by Eric Stonestreet, to display one of his trophies that conveniently downgraded Mitchell’s new trophy based on size. Mitchell knows he was in fact “acting like a 14 year old girl”, but he could not help himself when Cameron never shared the fact that he had won so many awards previously and decided to show them, when Mitchell won and displayed his. The subtle dry humor that Mitchell uses helps portray himself in a way about his attitude that is not easily seen; it shows a deeper meaning. He believes he is better than Cameron, but he also will do anything to help him out regardless of him not believing everything Cameron says.

            The diction of which Mitchell utilizes is intriguing and highly hilarious, even just on the surface. As soon as they adopted a daughter, Cameron decided to get a friend to decorate the room by painting himself and Mitchell as “fairies”. Mitchell thus said to Lily, “Yes, we pulled you out of your home in Vietnam, but don’t worry, things will be perfectly normal here. Your dads are floating fairies”, as if she really knew what he was saying and that if being floating fairies would do anything for her at all. Having never told his family about adopting a child when he went to Vietnam, Mitchell became immediately nervous because all he could envision were “flashbacks to when [he] told [his] family [he] was gay”, which obviously did not go well by these choice of words, but the audience can read that it was obviously an awkward, but amusing time for the viewer, all based on his choice of words. However, knowing Mitchell to be one that often overreacts, one can envision that the situation of telling his family he was gay was not as bad as he makes it out to seem, but it still having the possibility to have been an awkward time for him.

Having been often embarrassed by situations he has been in with his family and with Cameron, he does not know how to handle these situations as well as someone would think he would having continuously gone through these awkward times. Mitchell often believes Cameron “takes things a little too far”, which in turn causes him to be embarrassed with the aftermath and while during the action. One time when he and Cameron accidently “locked [their] baby in the car” all he could focus on when talking to the emergency assistant was that “people [were] judging [them]!”, while he should have been focusing more on the safety and well being of his daughter, Lily. Mitchell was embarrassed also of when in the Punkin Chunkin episode, when Cameron insisted that he could launch a pumpkin the length of a football field and ultimately failed, but because he does not like seeing him fail, he insisted with every other critique in the family, to help the “believers” to actually get to launch the pumpkin the length of the football field.

Having often prided himself as better than everyone else, Mitchell appeals to the comic effect by being a well rounded character, being very sassy, nonchalant and straightforward. Also being very derisive, often creating stabs at others, helps create humor for everyone viewing the show because often people find making fun of others, is ultimately funny. Jesse Tyler Ferguson plays the ultimate role in creating comic effect in Modern Family by what he says, but also with his reactions to the other characters and the actors that play them.