Stream On: This is us, having a ton of fun—‘Modern Family’
One big (straight, gay, multi-cultural, blended, traditional) happy family.
TV has seen a number of family sagas, from The Forsyte Saga to This Is Us, but one of the best is also one of the best sitcoms. That’s the interconnected story of three families in Los Angeles, The Pritchetts, the Dunphys, and the Tucker-Pritchetts. Each half-hour episode of Modern Family packs some of the tightest storytelling with some of the smartest comedy on TV.
/Amazon /Streaming /🍅85%🍿90% /Trailer /2009-2020 /TVPG
In 2015 TV writer Christopher Lloyd (Frasier) told The Telegraph, “We both [Lloyd and his screenwriting partner Steven Levitan] have families and we spent a lot of time coming up with bad ideas for a new series. And then, in the moments between, we started telling funny stories about our home lives. That’s when it dawned on us that, in 20 years of writing, we’d never written about what it’s like to have kids and families—so we thought, ‘Maybe we ought to try that.’”
One of a then-new crop of sitcoms filmed with a single camera (like a movie) with no laugh-track, Modern Family was turned down by CBS (not ready for a single-camera sitcom) and NBC (already broadcasting two—The Office and Parks and Rec). ABC accepted, and a pilot was filmed, which tested positively with focus groups, resulting in the network ordering thirteen episodes and adding Modern Family to the 2009–10 fall lineup. The series was given a full-season pickup in October 2009 and ran until 2020.
And it is brilliant—each episode generally has three plots, each involving one of the families, that join up, during or at the end. It was originally planned as a mockumentary, with a camera crew led by a fictitious Dutch filmmaker named Geert Floortje, but what survived were interstitial interviews with the characters as their stories progressed, with no explanation (and none needed, really), that are as funny as everything else on the show.
Modern Family is a delicious blend of funny, convoluted situations and characters, the characters being: crusty old-school patriarch Jay Pritchett (Ed O’Neill, John from Cincinnati, Big Apple), who made his money in closets. He divorced his first wife, cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs DeDe (Shelley Long, Cheers) and married a Colombian divorcée, Gloria (Sofia Vergara), who is half his age and already has a child, Manny (Rico Rodriguez). Manny is ten years old at the beginning of the series and a budding sophisticate; Jay says “he drinks espresso and dresses like a count.”
Jay and DeDe’s first child is neurotic Claire (Julie Bowen). She’s married to nerdy magician/Realtor® Phil Dunphy (Ty Burrell) and they have three children:
Hayley (Sarah Hyland), sixteen, an adventurous but apparently empty-headed glamor girl: “No one wants to think at graduation! It’s graduation, the time when we celebrate being done with thinking.”
Alexandria “Alex” (Ariel Winter), thirteen, is a sardonic straight-A student: “I let down my mom and dad today. And even worse, I let down my teacher.”
And Luke (Nolan Gould), nine, is a happy-go-lucky space cadet: “I’ve been thinking of moving out for some time now. There’s a line of ants going to a trick-or-treat bag in my closet, and I don’t want to still be here when they get sick of candy.”
Jay and DeDe’s second child, Claire’s younger brother, is Mitch (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), a neurotic gay lawyer. Mitch goes with, and then marries, Cameron Tucker (Eric Stonestreet), a flamboyant Missouri farm boy and part-time clown. In the first episode they adopt infant Lily from a Vietnamese orphanage. From season three on, Aubrey Anderson-Emmons played Lily, who previously had been portrayed by twin infants. Lily grows into a sarcastic child, calling her dads “Ladies” and saying things like, “I’ll reinvent myself. I’m gonna dye my hair blue and carry around an emotional support pig.”
The episodes are epic; I thought a team was responsible for writing the thick scripts, but only one or two writers are credited with each show. The very funny situations are peppered by hilarious—and relevant—jokes, including sight gags. All the actors are brilliant.
Modern Family has won 22 Primetime Emmy Awards and six Writers Guild of America Awards. The show also received a Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network Respect Award for its portrayal of “positive images and storylines that reflect a diverse America, including the depiction of a family headed by a gay couple.” In 2010, Modern Family was nominated for five Television Critics Association Awards.
Sources include Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED).
Pete Hummers is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to earn fees by linking Amazon.com and affiliate sites. This adds nothing to Amazon's prices. This column originally appeared on The Outer Banks Voice.