Welcome Back Cobbler

I like ABC's new show Modern Family because it presents an up-to-date look at... what else...a family that is modern. There's a divorced Dad about 50 or so married to a much younger Latina woman who has a son from her first marriage, and the Dad's son from his first marriage is gay and has adopted a Vietnamese baby with his partner, while his daughter has married a clueless realtor and has her own messed-up kids. Does that sound like the family down the street? Maybe!

But I like the show because it brings back to our living rooms a true immortal, an actor of the highest ranking, the man against whom all other sitcom dads will forever be measured, the man who raised the fine art of jamming one's hand down one's pants to near-Olympic status in this and many other nations. I speak, of course, of the great Ed O'Neill. Jay Pritchett to this generation, Al Bundy to the previous, Ed brings humor and lots of it to any part he plays.

If the networks showed families like the Cleavers, the Stones no! the OTHER Stones! or the Nelsons today, they'd be laughed out of the business. Showing me Modern Family means that ABC will be laughed right into more business.