The subject of theTVaddict.com’s inaugural BLOGGER BEAT DOWN is… TV.com writer Richard Lawson, who in a recent editorial claims that “MODERN FAMILY’s kid characters almost ruin the show.” How much do they bother the scribe? “To be blunt,” he admits, “I just really hate the kids.”
Our Take: While Lawson points out that it’s not exactly realistic for pre-teen Alex to ask her beautiful step-grandmother about her sex life — let alone for 10-and-three-quarters Manny to offer up sound parenting advice to Claire — we’d like to remind him that… um, FAMILY is a comedy. Is it any more realistic for Ed O’Neill’s curmudgeonly alter ego to purposely fly a plane into his son-in-law? Heck, for that matter it seems pretty unlikely that Julie Bowen’s Claire would settle down with a guy like Ty Burrell’s Phil! But see, there’s this thing called “suspension of disbelief” that is at the heart of all good comedy. It’s what allows us to believe that Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer would ever be friends, or that Sam Malone would be helplessly drawn to Diane Chambers. And frankly, when it comes to annoying kids on network television shows, we’ll take any of the FAMILY brood as opposed to the cloying kids who populated FULL HOUSE or pretty much any kid who has ever appeared on any show on the Disney Channel.
Next Up: The genius at Newsweek who thinks our favorite serial killer, DEXTER, needs to get the axe. Stay Tuned… 
