ABC's Modern Family throws some life into the family sitcom

Remember the glory days of the family sitcom? I'm thinking of the time period that stretches roughly from All In The Family to Roseanne, when two-camera comedies with a live studio audience had something more to offer than canned jokes and weary antagonism. Look, dad's a buffoon and mom's a bitch! Ah, so funny.

In recent years the family sitcom format has been feeling a bit exhausted.  Even ten minutes of The Family Guy or Arrested Development display the bitter weariness that most of us feel when presented with a cast of characters that seem to have undergone little change since their original '50s incarnation: clueless dad, humorless mom, daughters rebelling through their body or their brains, and an innocent son just ramping up into puberty.

And Modern Family has all that. Except it's funny.

To be fair, the first few minutes of Modern Family come off as an Office-style reworking of Everybody Loves Raymond: the fifteen year old daughter attempts to leave the house in a short, short, short denim skirt.  The parents freak. Or more precisely, the mother freaks.  Wait a moment - isn't the dad supposed to get huffy in these situations? And that's where Modern Family begins to bend the genre, at one of its stiffest and most intractable joints.

Fans of The Office and Parks and Recreation will recognize the single-camera mockumentary style of the show instantly.  Three families have consented, for whatever reason, to allow a documentary crew into their lives, with interviews spliced into the action.  As always, this premise requires a bit of cognitive blurring on the part of the audience (why is everyone so blasé about the presence of cameras?), but the writing is sharp and funny enough to keep the questions at bay.

The most recognizeable actor in the show is Ed O'Neill, who plays a grumpy track-suit wearing patriarch married to a ridiculously gorgeous Colombian woman played by Sofia Vergara. My favourite character so far is Phil (Ty Burrell), the self-described "hip dad" ("I surf the web. I text... OMG - Oh My God... WTF - Why The Face") who sings High School Musical tunes to the horror of his children.  Phil is a horrendous portrait of an adult quietly terrified of adulthood.

Also of note: Eric Stonestreet and Jesse Tyler Ferguson play Cameron and Mitchell, a same-sex couple who adopt a Vietnamese baby.  It's kind of amazing that network television is able to air a show with a gay couple as major characters.  Yay, for the twenty-first century, which has its moments, if you ignore peak oil, global warming, permanent wars and Glenn Beck.  Yo Glenn Beck: Why The Face?

Modern Family airs on ABC Wednesdays, 9/8c.

Comments

[Amalah]

We watched this last night and LOL'd. (That's the hip way of saying, "Lots o' Laffs.") There's something -- dare I say it -- almost Arrested Development-ish to it?

Definitely our favorite comedy pilot so far, which means it will probably get canceled in a few weeks.

[Marmite Breath]

I watched it last night and honestly laughed out loud. The Lion King bit was SO funny, I couldn't stop giggling. Love it!

[michele]

is there a person who isn't tired of overweight buffoon dad and hot and "bitchy" mom? i hope not.

i will tune for this now b/c it sounds promising.

[Gray Matter]

I loved this show so much. It's smart, original, quirky...no doubt it'll be cancelled imminently.

"Why The Face" I actually choked.

[Palinode]

"Let me meet this PLAYA! Phil Dunfee, yo".

[Palinode]

Good news, by the way - the ratings for the debut were sky-high.