When I watched Sofia Vergara on Jay Leno, joking around with Gerard Butler and glowing with charm and impressing us with a good sense of humor, I couldn’t help but check out who she was. There are too many celebrities for me to keep track of after all.  Turns out, she is starring in the comedy Modern Family alongside Ed O’Neill. And I decided to check out the show because of him.

If you watched even watched a single episode of Married with Children, you are more than familiar with Ed O’Neill’s hilarious character Al Bundy, the miserable shoe salesman. I loved that show. It made me laugh my butt of through most of the 11 seasons. Yes, a sitcom that lasted more than a decade and it wasn’t about your typical family. In fact, most of the characters in Modern Family seem much closer to normal.

But obviously, Modern Family is no Married with Children. It is not in the sitcom format- which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, it is not that funny either.

The Characters:

Aging Jay Pritchett (Ed O’Neill) is married to hot and much younger beauty Gloria. Gloria (Sofia Vergara) may or may not be younger than his daughter. Jay does love his wife but he is having trouble his wife’s 10 year-old son Manny from a previous marriage. And from what she tells us (us-because between their scenes, couples separately talk to the camera and tell us about their thoughts and stuff),her ex –Manny’s dad-was hot, young and wild. Yeah, Jay doesn’t love hearing about this.

Jay’s daughter Claire (Julie Bowen) is married with 3 kids, to Phil (Ty Burrell). Phil happens to be more annoying than any other sitcom character I have ever seen.He thinks he is hip and cool- he is like the best dad ever and moreover he thinks that everybody else thinks he is cool. His character might have passed for funny if he didn’t do the same things over and over again.

Jay’s son Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) is openly and proudly gay, living with his even prouder gay boyfriend Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) and they have just adopted a baby from Vietnam.

The show, overall

The pilot was pretty OK. It looked promising. The fact that I hadn’t known too much about the plot helped. I had no idea all these people would be related. I was expecting them all to be neighbors who hated each other or something. But as it turned out at the end of the pilot, they were indeed a family. It wasn’t laugh-out-loud funny but thoroughly enjoyable. But having watched episodes 2&3, I am not sure I am all that willing to watch more. It is a little entertaining but I didn’t click with any of the characters. I am so used to Ed O’Neil’s every gesture and line cracking me up every second- Married with Children- his only occasionally funny character doesn’t really interest me.

The gay couple couldn’t have been more cliché. Sure, I have been known to enjoy a lot of clichés but only when they work. If you really want a comedy where clichéd gay characters really make you laugh, watch Will and Grace.

As for Julie Bowen, I like her as an actress, having previously watched her on TV series Boston Legal. But I am not all that fond of her character here.

Rated 9.0 on IMDB and I really don’t know why. Yeah, it means a lot of people have found it funny. I didn’t.

While it is not a bad show, it is just not that funny or interesting.