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[Tracee Hsiang]

Modern Family is an American sitcom television series created by Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan for ABC. It aired for eleven seasons and 250 episodes, from September 23, 2009 to April 8, 2020. The series follows the lives of three diverse family set-ups living in suburban Los Angeles, who are interrelated through their patriarch, Jay Pritchett.

Lloyd and Levitan conceived the series while sharing stories of their own "modern families." Modern Family employs an ensemble cast and is presented in a mockumentary style, with the characters frequently speaking directly to the camera in confessional interview segments. An eleventh and final season premiered on September 25, 2019.[2][3] The series finale aired on April 8, 2020.

Modern Family was highly acclaimed by critics throughout its first few seasons. Its critical reception became more mixed as it progressed. The final season received positive reviews, and the finale episode had 7.37 million first-run viewers.[4] The retrospective documentary that aired before the final episode had 6.72 million first-run viewers.

The broadcast syndication rights to the series were sold to NBCUniversal's USA Network, the stations of Fox Television Stations, and various other local stations in other markets for a fall 2013 premiere. The success of the series led to it being the 10th-highest revenue-generating show for 2012, earning $2.13 million an episode.[5]

Modern Family revolves around three different types of families (nuclear, blended, and same-sex) living in suburban Los Angeles, who are interrelated through wealthy businessman Jay Pritchett and his two children, Claire and Mitchell.

Claire was a homemaker, though returned to the business world in the fifth season, eventually becoming the chief executive of her father's business, Pritchett's Closets and Blinds. She is married to Phil Dunphy, a realtor and a self-professed "cool dad", who is also an amateur magician and real-estate lecturer at community college. They have three children: Haley, a stereotypically ditzy teenaged girl;[8] Alex, an intelligent and nerdy middle child;[9] and Luke, the offbeat only son.[10] Haley's on-and-off boyfriend, Dylan, is a permanent fixture on the show, with the two eventually marrying and having two children, Poppy and George.

Mitchell is a lawyer who is in a same-sex relationship with Cameron Tucker, a former music teacher who occasionally works as a substitute. The two have adopted a baby daughter, Lily, of Vietnamese origin, and are later on legally married. At the end of the show, they adopt another child, Rexford.

The series has also had many recurring characters.[27] Fred Willard guest starred as Phil's father Frank; he was nominated for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series at the 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards, but lost to Neil Patrick Harris's performance on Glee.[28] Willard also received a posthumous nomination in the same category at the 72nd Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards in 2020. Shelley Long too guest starred occasionally as DeDe Pritchett, Jay's ex-wife and Claire and Mitchell's biological mother.[29][30]

Nathan Lane appeared as Cameron and Mitchell's flamboyant friend Pepper Saltzman; he was nominated three times for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series.[31][32][33] Adam DeVine appeared as Andy Bailey, Jay and Gloria's "manny" (male nanny), Phil's assistant and Haley's ex-boyfriend. Elizabeth Banks appeared as Mitch and Cam's fun-loving friend Sal; she was nominated for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series at the 67th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards in 2015. Nathan Fillion also makes an appearance as Rainer Shine, a weather forecaster, and later Haley's boyfriend.

As creators Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan retold stories about their families, they realized that the stories could be the basis for a show. They started working on the idea of a family being observed in a mockumentary-style show.[34] They later decided that it could be a show about three families and their experiences.[35] It was originally called My American Family,[36] and the camera crew was originally supposed to have been run by a fictitious Dutch filmmaker named Geert Floortje, who had lived as a teenaged exchange student with the Pritchetts and had developed a crush on Claire (while Mitchell had developed a crush on him). The producers later felt that this component was unnecessary, and it was scrapped. Lloyd preferred to look at the show as "a family show done documentary-style".[37]

Lloyd and Levitan pitched the series to CBS, NBC, and ABC (they did not pitch it to Fox because of issues they had with the network over a previous comedy series, Back to You, that Lloyd and Levitan also created and produced). CBS, which was not ready to make a big commitment to the single-camera style of filming, rejected the series. NBC, already broadcasting The Office and Parks and Recreation at the time, decided against taking on a third mockumentary-style show. ABC accepted the pitch.[38]

Principal photography took place in Los Angeles.[41] Many of the exteriors used are on the city's Westside. The Dunphys' house is in the Cheviot Hills neighborhood. As of 2014[update], Palisades Charter High School is used for the exteriors of Luke and Manny's school.[42]

Lloyd and Levitan, whose credits both include Frasier, Wings, and Just Shoot Me, are executive producers of the series, serving as showrunner and head writer under their Lloyd-Levitan Productions label in affiliation with 20th Century Fox Television.[41] The other original producers on the writing team were Paul Corrigan, Sameer Gardezi, Joe Lawson, Dan O'Shannon, Brad Walsh, Caroline Williams, Bill Wrubel, Danny Zuker, and Jeff Morton.[41][43]

Starting with the second season, Levitan and Lloyd ran the show, not as a team, but separately, with each showrunner supervising half the episodes. "Chris and I are both strong, opinionated people, and we very, very quickly realized it doesn't make sense to sit here and debate each other and waste time," Levitan told The Hollywood Reporter in 2012. "We often come at it from different points of view, so we said, 'Let's just switch off who has final say.'"[44]

In the first season, the adult cast was paid a range of roughly $30,000 to $90,000 per episode.[45] As a result of the show's success, the cast attempted to renegotiate their contracts in the summer of 2012 to obtain higher per-episode fees, but talks broke down to the point that the fourth season's first table read had to be postponed.

Five of the cast members (Ty Burrell, Julie Bowen, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Eric Stonestreet and Sofa Vergara) retained the Quinn Emanuel law firm and sued 20th Century Fox Television in Los Angeles County Superior Court on July 24, 2012.[46] While not part of the lawsuit, Ed O'Neill joined his fellow castmates in seeking raises for each to about $200,000 per episode; O'Neill had already been earning more money per episode than the other five. The lawsuit invoked the "seven-year rule" in California Labor Code Section 2855 (the De Havilland Law) and requested a declaration that their contracts were void because they were in violation of that rule.[47]

In The New York Times, Bruce Feiler called attention to how the show depicts the increasing way communications technology shapes the way people perceive others, even family members. "[It] is surely the first family comedy that incorporates its own hashtag of simultaneous self-analysis directly into the storyline," he writes. "Mark Zuckerberg may be a greater influence on Modern Family than Norman Lear."[63]

In a 2014 article in Slate, the site's podcast executive producer, Andy Bowers, a resident of Los Angeles' Westside, where the show films most of its exteriors, praised the series for its realistic depiction of life in that part of the city.[42]

The first season was met with critical acclaim. It scored 100%, based on 28 reviews, on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 8.55/10 and the critical consensus: "Thanks to sharp writing and an eccentric but exceedingly likeable cast of characters, Modern Family signals the triumphant return of the family comedy."[112] The first season also scored 86/100, based on 27 reviews, on review aggregator website Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim".[113]

Modern Family drew criticism from the LGBT community for its portrayal of Cameron and Mitchell as not being physically affectionate with each other. The criticism spawned a Facebook campaign to demand that Mitchell and Cameron be allowed to kiss. In response to the controversy, producers released a statement that a season two episode would address Mitchell's discomfort with public displays of affection. Executive producer Levitan has said that it was unfortunate that the issue had arisen, since the show's writers had always planned on such a scene "as part of the natural development of the show."[120] The episode "The Kiss" eventually aired with the kiss scene in the background, which drew praise from multiple critics.[121][122]

The fourth season of Modern Family received positive reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives the season an approval rating of 67% based on 11 reviews, with an average score of 7.75/10 and the consensus: "Modern Family still has charm to burn and boasts a uniformly excellent cast, but the series' subversive edge has dulled".[137] Halfway through the season, Rachel Stein of Television Without Pity wrote, "much as I liked the pairings and some of the dialogue, ["New Year's Eve"] is just another contrived episode of Modern Family we can cite when we talk later about how a different show should have won the 2013 Emmy for Best Comedy."[138] Dalene Rovenstein of Paste Magazine gave the season a positive review, but said a better season was possible.[139]

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