This week, USA started airing syndicated episodes of Modern Family. My wife and I have never seen an episode of the show, but we've certainly heard the rave reviews. (And it has not gone unnoticed that it won another 'Outstanding Comedy' Emmy this past Sunday night.)

We don't have a ton of time for new shows, but with The Office and 30 Rock ending last year, we kind of have a little more television time.

So the DVR is set (my wife can do that from her phone - how cool is that! - that's what you see in the picture above), and, as is my preference with this type of thing, we're starting from the beginning.

It seems like syndication has changed a bit - the way USA is airing Modern Family is different from what I'm used to. They're airing 2 hours of shows most nights of the week (not all, which is also weird to me - though I saw Monday night it wasn't on because of wrestling, which is a ratings machine, so I get it) - not like the old days where Seinfeld was on 5 days a week at 7pm or whatever.

But at least they're airing the episodes in order, which is the important part.

My wife and I have done this once before - with The Sopranos. Leading up to the show's final season we TiVo'ed all of the episodes HBO was airing, and ended up able to watch them all in order, and I'm pretty sure we watched most of that last season in real time.

This should be easier, because Modern Family is only a half-hour, and The Sopranos was an hour long...although when we were watching The Sopranos we didn't have three kids. (I'm not sure we had even one kid..although I seem to remember we had a baby when the show ended.) But that certainly affects our TV-watching this time around.

(I guess I should also mention we've kind done this twice - over the summer we DVR'ed the entire catalog of Arrested Development, which IFC was airing in anticipation of Netflix's release of the new season of that show. Two problems there, though: 1) We don't have Netflix, so there may be no closure to that binge-watching experiment, and 2) it turns out, whereas I thought I hadn't watched much Arrested Development, I'm realizing as we watch the shows that I have seen many of the episodes. That's why I haven't written about it yet - it's not really a New Thing.)

I read, too, that AMC will be showing all of the episodes of Breaking Bad ('Outstanding Drama', for what that's worth) leading up to that show's series finale. We just can't do that - again, it's an hour versus a half-hour, and it's just too heavy, I think, for the kind of show we're looking for right now.

Modern Family should be perfect - a good comedy which we can watch at our leisure without blowing up all of our free time.

While we're on the subject of TV shows, How I Met Your Mother began its final season this week. My wife and I have had some hits (New Girl) and some misses (Ben and Kate) with TV shows we've watched from the start. How I Met Your Mother has had some downs over its run, but for the most part it's been a solid hit. We're looking forward to a strong final season.

And we're already keeping an ear to the ground for possible shows to fill How I Met Your Mother's spot on our DVR a year from now.