Ellen Gray: 'Modern's' Rico Rodriguez makes Manny his own

MODERN FAMILY. 9 tonight, Channel 6.

IN A SEASON of quirkier than usual sitcom kids, Manny Delgado still manages to stand out.

The amorous Colombian-born middle-schooler from ABC's "Modern Family," Manny is a joy to his mother Gloria (Sofia Vergara), a puzzle to his stepfather Jay (Ed O'Neill) and played with a fearless exuberance by 11-year-old Rico Rodriguez, who, it turns out, looks taller on-screen.

Told so by a not very diplomatic visitor to the show's Burbank, Calif., set, the young actor replied, in media-savvy fashion: "Really? That's interesting."

He then stretched up a hand to demonstrate how much taller he intends to become both offscreen and on.

Like Manny, "I like girls," Rico told reporters in the kitchen of his character's house, and "I think I can be as suave [and] . . . he can be mature [and] I can be mature sometimes."

Where Manny and Rico part ways: "I'm crazy. I like to run around the set, play with my friends, you know. I'm really sometimes nothing like Manny."

"We write him as if he's a 12-year-old Antonio Banderas," said "Modern Family" co-creator Steve Levitan. "That's it. Just write him as Antonio Banderas, in those movies like 'Zorro' . . . There's an honor to him."

The role was "crazy hard to cast," but Rico "makes it his own," he said.

"He really has grown [as an actor]. From the pilot to the next episode, he's grown tremendously. And we love him. And we love the fact that people love him," Levitan said.

"They just said he's an old soul, he's like an Antonio Banderas, but in an 11-year[old] kid's body," Rico recalled.

Rico's exposure to Banderas' work is apparently limited to "Spy Kids" - "the three movies, in stores now," he said jokingly - but the description seems to have done the trick.

"I was like, 'OK, so I can work with this character,' " he said, describing an audition process in which he received plenty of direction - "not yet, don't do that, don't do this" - but ended in triumph.

"Finally, the last shot, I guess I blew them away. I don't know, but they picked me out of millions of kids and so I'm like, 'Wow.' And to this day, I'm like, 'Wow, they still picked me. I can't believe that.' "

Ah, the glamorous life of a flight attendant.

Building upper-body strength while trying to shut overhead compartments packed tight with luggage passengers don't want to pay to check, searching for exact change for passengers who bought a sandwich, evicting the occasional movie director from his possibly too-small seat.

Not that you'll see much of that sort of thing on the CW's "Fly Girls" (9 tonight, Channel 57) a "reality" show about Virgin America flight attendants that should've been grounded.

Part fantasy, part product placement for Richard Branson's discount airline, "Fly Girls" follows the not exactly spontaneous adventures of Farrah, Tasha, Mandalay, Louise and Designated Mean Girl Nickole - five women who appear to be living in a '60s movie about stewardesses with set design from MTV's "The Real World."

"When we put on our uniform, the world is our playground, and anything can happen," one informs us as part of an opening montage that seemed obsessed with the fastening of the buttons on the blouse of that very uniform.

I mean, with ocean-view property at their disposal, who knew any of them would have to change clothes in the front seat of a convertible? (The union currently trying to organize Virgin's flight attendants, which will be airing ads in some markets during tonight's premiere, notes that 33 percent are male - something you'd never guess from the first two episodes - and that few, male or female, are likely to be making enough to afford the digs on "Fly Girls." Indeed, it claims some San Francisco-based workers have been forced to sleep in their cars.)

Turns out, though, that anything can happen on "Fly Girls," as long as it involves contrived conflict, abortive romance or feeds the impression that flight attendants are mostly in the air to meet cute guys and party afterward.

Because, you know, the skies aren't just friendly but totally safe and no one's ever going to look to that girl in the tight white blouse for help in an emergency, right?

Maybe the CW, whose main message these days to the young women it targets is that it's good to be beautiful (and even better to be rich and beautiful), should just go back to searching for Pussycat Dolls. *

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