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Manny Has Been Replaced as the Worst Child Character on Television

By Dustin Rowles | TV | September 2, 2016 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | September 2, 2016 |


Through five seasons of Modern Family — a mostly harmless, innocuous sitcom with pleasant enough characters and formulaic storylines — we have had to endure one of the worst child characters in the history of television. Each week, while we are folding our laundry or checking our phones or otherwise engaged in multi-tasking while watching this sitcom with one eye, Manny Delgado has cursed us with his obtuse precociousness and misplaced Lothario douchiness.

Yes, we know, Manny. You are a romantic. And based on your track record, a lousy one, at that. And yet, every week, here’s a storyline about Jay teaching Manny about becoming a man, while Manny teaches Jay about being a better person.

Manny is basically a 14-year-old stalker in the making, and if CBS’s new procedural, Stalker, survives a few more years, there’s some definite crossover potential here. “No, no, Jay! I wasn’t stalking her! I was only admiring her through her window. From her roof. Every night this week. But it’s only because I’m in love with her! How can loving someone be a crime!”

Manny is the worst. Or, at least he was the worst.

Lately, he’s been replaced as the Worst Child Character on television by his adopted step-cousin, Lily Tucker-Pritchett. I don’t like to say this about children, but she is straight-up terrible. She’s exactly the kind of child two image-conscious pushovers with absolutely no boundaries would raise. I like Mitchell and Cameron. They’ve very nice men. They’ve very much in love with each other. They’re a great couple.

But they’re horrible f**king fathers.

Have we ever seen Lily put in time-out? Have we ever seen her suffer any consequences at all? Her every storyline boils down to, “Give me what I want, or I will fucking walk all over you, you fucking ninnies.” And Mitchell and Cameron let her, because they are scared of their own child. And they should be. They’ve created a goddamn monster!

Just look at this behavior.

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You never, ever let your kid talk to you that way. If my child talked to me that way, I would put his Pokemon card collection IN THE SHREDDER.

And this?

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Have they taught her nothing about respect? Screw her! If she doesn’t want any bedtime stories, then good riddance. You think Cam and Mitchell like reading those crappy children’s stories. No. They’d be much better off using that time to read a book or two about disciplining children.

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Oh my God! Language! What the fuck?

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Look at this business? Not only are you gender-defining her with a princess costume, but why would she even be asking if she’s poor? What a judgemental, elitist little sh*t.

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Oh, you’re bored?

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Here is the proper goddamn response to that, Cam and Mitchell.

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Lily is a terrible child, but it’s not her fault. It’s bad parenting, and in a show like Modern Family that is progressive when it comes to other social issues like gay marriage, adoption, and interracial families, maybe it should be a little more progressive about class issues and parenting techniques, as well because this show is now officially responsible for not one, but two of the worst children on television.