Modern Family Reviews

1. Variety: "Review: Modern Family"

In this review of Modern Family’s pilot, author Brian Lowry focuses on how the show is successful compared to ABC’s (which the show originally premiered on) new stack of Wednesday night comedies. Lowry elaborated on how ABC’s other comedies were not as successful and nowhere near as funny as Modern Family,then raved about how funny the pilot, and the overall plot of the show. I found this review interesting because Lowry placed more emphasis on comparing Modern Family to similar programs rather then analyzing the actual content of the show.

2. The New York Times: "Modern Family: ‘I’m the Cool Dad’ and Other Debatable Dispatches From the Home Front"

In this review, Ginia Bellafante goes into detail about each of the three families that make up all of the characters of the show. Bellafante then concluded that Modern Family was the best new half-hour comedy on television since Arrested Development, which ended in 2006. I enjoyed this review because Bellafante gave an accurate synopsis of all of the characters while praising the overall success of the comedy.

3. The Guardian: "Modern Family; Horizon: The Power of the Placebo – TV review"

Majority of this review, written by Tim Dowling, analyzes one particular character (Phil Dunphy). Dowling refers to Phil’s character as having a “placebo effect” in the show. He described that Phil’s character fulfills a placebo effect by living up to the standards of a typical, incompetent, TV dad. I found this review to be extremely interesting due to how Dowling singled out one character from the entire show to analyze. What also was interesting was that in the beginning of the review, it seemed as if Dowling was criticizing Phil Dunphy’s character, but then proceeded to describe how Phil was his hero at the end of the review.