Modern Family Starts Tonight on ABC

Finally, we will all be hooked up on one show that we can see ourselves in.  Even USA TODAY will be following the Modern Family on ABC.  Here is an article bye Robert Bianco:

Finally, ABC gives us a 'Modern Family' we can relate to
By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
It's about time.

After years in the comedy wilderness, much of it spent in a futile attempt to clone NBC's snarkier, more ironic sitcom style, ABC is finally returning to its family roots — and in gloriously funny fashion. You get The Middle next week and Cougar Town later tonight, both terrific sitcoms. But the best of the bunch, and the best new series of the fall, comes first.

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Modern Family, created by Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd, smartly updates ABC's Home Improvement/Roseanne tradition for a new TV generation. True, the shooting style borrows the faux-documentary approach made popular by a rival, The Office. But the down-to-earth tone of this good-natured comedy, and its bighearted embrace of its characters, harks back to ABC and Disney at their comedy peak.

Times, however, have changed, and families have changed with them. The show does pivot on a sitcom-familiar home mix, a mom and dad (Julie Bowen and Ty Burell) who take a comedically different approach to raising their two kids. But Mom has an extended family, and they're the "modern" part of the title: Her father (Ed O'Neill) has just married a hot young single mother from Colombia (Sofia Vergara), and her brother (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and his partner (Eric Stonestreet) have just adopted a Vietnamese baby girl.

That gives Modern Family a lot of territory to cover, but it also gives it a lot of room in which to play — and tonight's pilot takes full advantage of that gift. Each family member is treated with respect, but each is also tweaked and given some funny business to play, from O'Neill's sitcom-pro chagrin at his stepson's romantic notions, to Bowen and Burell's method of dealing with a misused BB gun, to Ferguson's flustered reactions to Stonestreet's flamboyance.

Like the best sitcoms, Modern Family also varies its comic approach. There are moments of wry observational humor any family will recognize. (When the sister offers to "explain" their father's comment, her brother says: "That's not what Dad's saying. That's what you're saying, and it's insulting in a whole different way.") But there are also outsized moments that are laugh-out-loud funny without violating the laws of possibility.

Mockumentaries can quickly become cold and distancing, and that's a pitfall Modern Family will have to work to avoid. But if it can fulfill its promise, it could just be the show ABC needs to spark a sitcom renaissance.

Time will provide the answer. But let's hope that answer is yes.

(Source: USA TODAY)