Modern Family [ABC, Wednesdays, 9/8C] is a remarkably smart new series about three families that intertwine in unexpected ways. First, there’s Phil [Ty Burrell] and Claire [Julie Bowen] who have been married for long enough to have a teen daughter, Alex [Ariel Winter], a tween daughter, Haley [Sarah Hyland] and a son, Luke [Nolan Gould], who likes to stick his head in the banister. Then there are Jay [Ed O’Neill] and Gloria [Sofia Vergara] – an older man with a mid-life crisis and a trophy wife, who has an eleven-year old son, Manny [Rico Rodriguez]. Finally, there’s a gay couple – Mitchell [Jesse Tyler Ferguson] and Cameron [Eric Stonestreet] – who have been together for five years and just adopted a Vietnamese child.

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