Frasier was smart and funny (not really liking his new show Hank though). Two and a Half Men is hilarious. I'm liking Modern Family, Cougar Town, and The Middle out of the new shows. Oh and The Cleveland Show is awesome!

All this talk about Frasier's quality and Married With Children is missing the point about Ed O'Neil.

If you watched John from Cincinnati, you knew how awesome he was separated from Al Bundy. In fact, his character in John From Cincinnati was much more interesting and authentic than his character on Modern Family.

I think MF would be better if it didn't rely on the psuedo-documentary shots. That style is already tired, which proves how terrible the current crop of TV writers, directors, and producers are--they see something take off like The Office and the cult following it has and everyone decides they must replicate it 'with their own spin'. All MF is is a traditional sitcom shot like a documentary.

It's not bad. We've watched a few of the episodes and parts made us laugh. In fact, aside from Hank, the Wed. night ABC lineup is pretty funny when you think about the wealth of unfunny sitcoms that pollute television.

I think one of the reasons I like Modern Family is that even though they aren't a typical family they all like each other and want to get along. There's nobody that's just outright mean to the other family members.

Contrast that to Two and a Half Men, also about a family, and the joke structure is this:
1. Jon Cryer says anything.
2. Charlie Sheen insults him to his face about either being gay, like a woman, or pathetic.
3. Repeat for 22 min.

I think there's too much mean and nastiness on TV and Modern Family proves you can be funny without showing people be downright terrible to each other.

http://bitsmack.com

It seems that Married With Children is one of those love it or hate it things. And I absolutely hated it. The biggest reason was because of the atrocious acting of Ed O'Neil. There were certainly plenty of other reasons, but that was the main one. I have seen better, more polished performances in high school plays. That a show with such horrible acting, despicable characters and lousy writing could attain the level of success that it did always baffled me. Also, it wasnt funny. Normally, even if I dont like a show, I can see were it would appeal to other people, different strokes for different folks, you know, but the appeal of MWC was and is a mystery to me.
As for Modern Family , I havent watched it yet, so I cant comment. I would like to put my two cents worth in in defense of Frazier. Frazier was a great show, exceptionally well written and acted. I didnt catch all the literary , culinary and other high brow refererences, but even so, it was a superior and very entertaining show. Yes, the quality varied, as it does over the course of any long running show, but it was a smart, funny and entertaining show about characters that we could like and care about. If you ask me, thats pretty darn good for a 30 minute sitcom.

I don't think you were supposed to like "Married" because you obviously are not a teen-age dork boy who had a father like Ed Bundy and who aspired to even see a girl like Kelly Bundy, In other words: Bud Bundy was the target audience and Fox hit it out of the park for those guys. So it's fine not to like everything on TV.
My only complaint with this new show is it seems too busy, but yet you need all the different elemens for the payoff mob scenes. It's OK stuff. Too early to tell if it can even keep up plot lines for a second season.

emmefff - I'm not sure if you meant that Parks & Rec will be cancelled this season or some time in the future, but NBC announced that it's picking it up for the rest of this season the other day.

Parks & Rec is a laugh out loud show for me. I absolutely love it and have done since about the 3rd episode of the short 1st season.

To get back on point to the content of this post, I just don't find Modern Family to be funny at all, and to suggest that it could get to "Frasier level" is not something that I would be happy about. However, there seem to be a number of people who think it gives off an Arrested Development vibe so I may end up giving it another shot. Arrested Development to me is the second best sitcom of all time behind Seinfeld.

We actually think that Modern Family is great. We always loved Ed O'Neill since Married With Children and happy to see him again

http://modern-family-tv.com

im going to watch this show . i loved married with children so im going to find out when its on and give it a shot. or go look for it online.

but u i can see why u wouldnt like married with children. it wasnt very kind to women. peg was a stay at home do nothing useless wife. kelly was the dumb blonde bimbo and al made fun of every fat woman and drooled at every big breasted airhead that came on the show.


nevertheless it was one of my favourite shows. second only to seinfeld

5 years? lol

Wow... were you folks born in the 1990's or something?

Frasier was on for 11 seasons... some better than others.

However, I don't see the comparison. I liked Frasier. Sure, it had better seasons and some weaker seasons, but it was entertaining. Modern Family, meanwhile, touches on brilliance.

I guess the connection is the production team, but I think that's about as far as it goes...

I do think the potential for Modern Family is far greater, though far shorter than Frasier... It's just the nature of it... it will burn brighter, but will run out of steam faster than the slower burn of the more traditional sitcom that Frasier represented..... that said, as Kelsey Grammer is finding out, the old model sitcom's time has passed for now.

I've only gotten to see it once, but I liked what I saw and will have to give it another chance sometime. I just hope it doesn't turn out to be anything like Everybody Loves Raymond. I'm sorry, but I hated that show.

As for Frasier, I like it, but think it was a little over-rated. I always preferred Wings, which was created by the same people.