Consider the combined writing, comedic and acting talents of the creators and performers of Modern Family over the 11 years of the series. They have given more chuckles and tears to our household of culturally-distinct, same-gender members of interesting and diverse extended families than I can measure.
Modern Family ended its successful run with a loving post script to its viewers, a documentary about its production over the years. Think "mockumentary about a mockumentary" and wonder what Marshall McLuhan might call it.
The series has been a virtual family experience uniquely suited for our era. Like many shows before it, the TV series brought laughter to our family. In the 1950's our Spanish-speaking borderlands family laughed at the antics of the viejito Walter Brennan, the grandfather of The Real McCoys, in the 1960's we watched the adventures of the fathers and sons of Bonanza and My Three Sons. These characters became a species of minor members of my own family as I slowly worked out the differences between fiction and fact with the same awe as Lily, the child actress, did when she entered her role in Modern Family.
What makes Modern Family a virtual family particularly suited for the 21st century was its mockumentary style of presenting interior monologues. What the character was thinking —the hang-ups, the mechanics of conflict, the asking, solving, failing to solve--much of it messy-- like all things human.
Audiences had a view of how to move forward through life’s passages and trials accompanied as we often are by envy, jealousy, and resentment. We learned how to perfect scruffy tumbles and rolls in order to stand again, dust-ourselves-off, and be our best-possible-at-the-moment-selves. It's all anyone can ask.
Like the Dunphy Family, we learned how to view shortcomings, our own and those of others, as temporary stumbles on the tricky stairway of life.
Eleven years of laughter and tearful recognition of parts of ourselves are a lot to be grateful for.
Modern Family reflected and bridged important cultural changes in family relationships and careers during its eleven years.
Most important, the series offered us a welcome, comfy, seat-across-the-couch view of the inner and outer shaping of ideas and concerns, whether judgey and trite or deep and soulful, that accompany us in living alongside and loving those we hold most dear, our family.
