Old Dogs, New(ish) Tricks

The last time Steven Levitan (Just Shoot Me) and Christopher Lloyd (Frasier) teamed up to create a new comedy they came up with the should-have-been-funnier Back to You, starring Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton. With ABC’s Modern Family, the end result is much better; in fact, it’s absolutely hilarious, perhaps the best new comedy of this young season.

What makes Modern Family so great is its slice-of-life simplicity. In a faux-documentary format that owes much to The Office, we meet three seemingly disparate families: May-December newlyweds Jay and Gloria (Ed O’Neill and Sofia Vergara), plus Manny, Gloria’s 11-year-old son who spends most of his time getting on Jay’s nerves; Phil and Claire (Julie Bowen and Ty Burrell), overwhelmed parents of three; and Mitchell and Cameron (Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet), a gay couple who have just returned from Vietman with their newly-adopted baby girl. We learn late in the pilot that all three are related, with Claire and Mitchell being Jay’s offspring. It makes perfect sense that these three are actually one big family since they all share the same hapless sensibilities.

In a flawless ensemble, the standouts here are Bowen and Burrell, she being a controlling though loving mother who takes responsibility for running the household, he being the kind of dad whose idea of discipline is to say "Buddy, uncool" when son Luke takes aim at his sister with a BB gun. There’s nothing particularly earth shattering about Modern Family, and that's actually something that works to the show's advantage. It's just a healthy dose of relatable humor that will have you clamoring for more.

Immediately following Modern Family on ABC Wednesdays is Cougar Town, the new comedy from Scrubs vets Bill Lawrence and Kevin Biegel. Courteney Cox stars as Jules Cobb, recently divorced and wanting to rediscover the years she lost while raising her now teenaged son Travis (Dan Byrd from Aliens in America). Jules’s idea of fun goes from wine and Scrabble with her neighbor/best friend Ellie (Christa Miller, not too far removed from the emasculating, shrewish character she played on Scrubs) to a drunken night of foolishness wherein her coworker Laurie (ER’s Busy Phillips) drops a boy toy off at her door. Jules proceeds to have sex with him three times in one night and fixes him a plate of crackers and peanut butter before bothering to learn his name. Growth has to start somewhere, after all, and shallowness is as good a place as any to begin.

Cox was never my favorite Friend (I always found Monica more grating than funny most of the time), but she does a fine job here as a woman who considers it a daring act to tempt the hair gods by running across a fountain in between spout cycles. The supporting cast, which also includes Cold Case’s Josh Hopkins as a neighbor with whom Jules shares a hateful/flirty banter, is filled with pros. While the party lifestyle may not be for Jules (“Younger people just don’t get tired like we do,” she tells Ellie), her long-delayed journey of self-discovery provides a decent number of laughs and, as the saying goes, could get even better with age.