I was about three episodes in when I realised I couldn't figure out if I liked it or not. I mean, I found it amusing, and it had made me laugh out loud a few times, but there was something unsettling about it: I got a serious case of deja vu with each episode, like I had seen every joke and storyline before. It was riddled with so many familiar (maybe too familiar at times) tv tropes. And that's when I realised that it was just a remake of the myriad tv family sitcoms from the late 80s/early-to-late 90s. Some of the story lines seem lifted from previous episodes from earlier family sitcoms, and just modernized (with the way it was shot, with current pop culture references) to give it a fresh breath of air. For example, in the second episode, called The Bicycle Thief, the father from one of the families, Phil, from the Dunphy household, steals his son's (Luke's) unlocked bike to teach him a lesson, but--lo and behold--it turns out that it wasn't his son's bike, but some other boy's bike, which is very similar to Jessy stealing what he thought was Stephanie's unlocked bike in Full House in order to teach her a lesson.)
Then again, I could just borrow a fitting quote from South Park and say, "Simpson's did it!"
It also feels like there's a beat added after each joke where the laugh track would have come into play. For example (not verbatim):
Claire (the mother in the Dunphy household): Alex, I thought I told you to tell your sister to come for breakfast.
Alex (while busy on her phone): I'll just text her
BEAT
Claire: Haley! That dress is too short!
Oh, haha, such the life as a modern family.
I find it kind of fitting that Ed O'Neill stars as the patriarch, as he has had a similar role in another dysfunctional family.
That said, it is funny, but funny in an all too familiar way.
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