Laughing like a banshee with Modern Family

Just a quick one for today, since I've been busy with work and a bit behind in my viewing. I still have to watch this week's Community, Parks and Recreation, and The Office, and I have several episodes of Legends of Wrestling sitting on my computer, along with the entire season run of Justified, which I haven't even tried to start watching. (Yeah, everyone I know who watches loves and adores the show, but like LOST and Arrested Development and Always Sunny, I didn't want to jump in half-way.)

So instead, let me focus on Wednesday's episode of Modern Family, which was nearly perfect. The other day, I harped about the consistency of The Ricky Gervais Show, Community and Archer, and yet Modern Family somehow got left out of the discussion. For shame! Modern Family is the best of the bunch, which is even more impressive considering that it didn't have the early hiccups that Community did, and it also has a full 20+ episode run, which The Ricky Gervais Show and Archer do not have to worry about.

The best part about Modern Family is that while individual episodes normally have two or three main story arcs, all the secondary characters are still given something to do. This "something to do" is normally hilarious, which helps. For example, on Wednesday's show the main issues seemed to be 1) Phil and Mitchell racing back to Mitchell's house and 2) Claire's anxiety about flying with an eventual Weekend at Bernie's routine and 3) Jay seeing his dream Hawaiian vacation erode away as Gloria heaped more and more activities on it.

These plots were all pretty funny, but I loved the little moments even more. Like when Haley crushed on a guy for the entire episode, and then she and Alex found out that he was only 13... and Alex laughed like a banshee for a solid half-minute. The other son, Luke, is also almost too ridiculously funny, like when he ran through the screen door in last week's episode.

Grade: A+