When veteran sitcom producers Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan's Modern Family premiered last year, many heralded it as the year's best new comedy on television. Now in its sophomore season, Family is funnier than ever, perhaps thanks to a newfound confidence coming off the show's recent Emmy win for "Best Comedy."
The premise of being yet another comedy exploring familial relationships may seem tiring, but the show still manages to break new ground in the sitcom world. As its title may suggest, Family is not the traditional multi-camera sitcom with a laugh track - like many half-hour comedies these days, most notably The Office and Parks and Recreation, it is filmed in a mockumentary style with frequent couch-confessional moments featuring major characters. But what truly makes Family modern is its thematic elements and the open-minded way it deals with issues of homosexuality, gender roles and wealth.
The show revolves around three distinct types of families in today's American landscape. There's the Dunphy clan, a middle-class nuclear family with a father, mother and two-and-a-half kids - in this case technically three, although the youngest child Luke, played to oblivious perfection by Nolan Gould, may not be quite all there. If Michael Scott were slightly better adjusted and a father of three, he would be Phil Dunphy (Ty Burrell). Phil is the ultimate unhip dad, lacking any sort of "street cred" and lacking even more self-awareness - while bragging about his texting prowess, for instance, he likens the acronym "WTF" to "Why the face?" But, as so many bumbling TV dads do, Phil makes up for constantly embarrassing his two teenage daughters by being loving and supportive both as a father and as a husband to his endearingly uptight wife Claire (the underrated Julie Bowen).
Then we have Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) and Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), a sophisticated gay couple with a newly adopted Vietnamese baby named Lily. In many ways, Cam and Mitch are stereotypically gay - Cam loves the opera, and Mitch is a neat freak - but the characters are so well-rounded and endearing that they never come off as clich
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