Review: Modern Family - En Garde

post from TV Squad on 05 November 2009 01:50:00 AM. © TV Squad

(S01E07) I love more and more every week that we have these three different families we can pull from for our main focus. On most family shows, you're limited by the one family dynamic you're dealing with, and by the age of the kids involved. Here, in one show, we have a gay couple with a baby, a traditional couple with kids ranging from pre-teen to teenager, and an older man married to a younger woman with her young son.

That's like at least three different shows worth of material they can pull from each week. How can they possibly not find simply tons of moments of funny with that much to work with? So far, they've managed to pack every minute of each episode, and this week was no exception.

The main story was Manny's fencing tournament; of course it would be fencing Manny would excel at ... why not? From there, we extrapolated into the general parenting desire to have children who are great at something, and the desire of children to receive praise from their parents.