the agreement was that if he shoots
someone you shoot him modern family
started out like this you can shoot him
afterwards he'll be home at two i can't
shoot him a two i'm showing a house or
two what about three this is how the
show ended up so it's pretty much
25 years of uninterrupted crazy
then when it ends
it ends
normally family sitcoms rely on somewhat
predictable tropes and sort of rehashed
plot setups to tell their stories modern
family relied on powerful performances
and nuanced drama to drive its comedy
turns out this was exactly what
audiences were looking for and since
2009 the show has garnered over 50
primetime emmy nominations and has
remained one of the more popular comedy
shows on network television despite
modern family's popularity in its later
seasons the show started to slowly feel
as if something was missing almost like
there were pieces of a puzzle that
didn't quite fit anymore sometimes
television shows have a way of feeling
like they are hanging around a little
too long so today we're going to be
taking a look at modern family and how
the passage of time can sometimes make a
show feel like it's overstayed its
welcome
one of the things that made modern
family resonate with audiences was the
feeling that we were able to grow up
alongside most of the characters the
show took a magnifying glass to the
intricacies of raising families in a
modern era and allowed the
unpredictability of youth to serve as a
catalyst for change and growth in the
parental figures throughout the show we
were watching children grow into adults
and adults adapting to those changes
this show wasn't just a slice of life it
was just life
however as haley alex luke manny and
lily grew up they grew further apart
from the nebulous relationships within
their family structures and started to
develop as adults they were certainly
holding the structure of modern family
in place
as the children started blossoming into
adulthood they became more self-reliant
and in turn relied on their families
less and less the structure was
beginning to collapse
familiarity and predictability are part
of any successful sitcoms model sure the
inner workings of each individual
episode can be vastly different but very
little changes in the way our main
characters react to any given situation
occurring around them this layer of
predictability provides a sense of
comfort to viewers and a desire to
return to that comfortable place time
and time again in an episode of modern
family we know that mitchell pritchett
is going to come off as being a little
high strung in contrast to his more
laid-back partner cam we know that
gloria pritchett might have some
extremely strong reactions to things
we know that phil dunphy is going to try
way too hard to score points with his
kids i'm the cool dad that's that's my
thing these are those promises that the
writers and showrunners make to us this
is what has made a show like the
simpsons which is now entering its 33rd
season such a mainstay within the
cultural zeitgeist we know bart is going
to be mischievous we know that lisa is
going to have strong ideals we know that
homer is going to commit some active
buffoonery we also know that these
characters won't age to prolong the run
of the series i was secretly given
anti-growth hormones time is the great
equalizer when it comes to most shows
unlike the aforementioned simpsons who
can remain at whatever age the animators
choose to leave them at it might seem
surprising but humans have a tendency to
age in the case of adolescent youth that
aging process can happen quite rapidly
after the fourth season of modern family
the kids all started their journeys into
adulthood in a way this essentially
flipped over the hourglass on modern
family success model the show did a
great job adapting to these changes and
some of these middle season episodes are
of the best of the entire show's run
however by the sixth season as the
children became more and more
independent the more interesting parts
of their existence began taking place
outside of their families and within
their rapidly developing personal lives
we raised them to be independent and now
they're out in the world having their
own lives we did it the focus of the
show started to pivot from the
day-to-day struggles of raising a family
toward the struggles of the children who
were rapidly entering adulthood
something that culminated in haley
dunphy starting a family of her own
which sort of created a russian doll
situation with the way all these modern
families started stacking up when a
show's focus begins to change like that
the promise that was initially made to
the viewers enters a bit of a
renegotiation phase it's very seldom
that a sitcom survives this
renegotiation with their audience a good
example of this is when steve carell
left the office and instead of replacing
him with an existing character the
entire eighth season was spent creating
and renegotiating dynamics under robert
california i'm the lizard king or when
happy days started to rely on ridiculous
stunts to get people to watch an episode
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so how does a writer facilitate the
inherent need to pivot the focus of a
show while still remaining true to the
core of the show that audiences fell in
love with in the first place it's a
tricky spot to be in as a writer when
that hourglass flips on a successful
show studios sometimes try to squeeze a
few more seasons out of it in effort to
make as much money as possible with an
established franchise this is show
business after all and when viewership
of a show begins to trend downward the
decision is often made to do what is
best for the bottom line and sometimes
that decision comes at the expense of
doing what is best for the show
creatively we see this in the form of
misplaced cameos unnecessary character
deaths and the jumping of sharks highly
manufactured moments to bring some eyes
back to the show so that those
advertising dollars don't stop flowing
in the short term in the case of modern
family the show just got to a point
where it needed to become something
completely different than what it
started out as in order to maintain its
staying power but by pivoting away from
its established storylines and character
behaviors the show effectively lost that
staying power this is usually right
around the point in time where shows
begin development of spin-off series
which also exists on seemingly borrowed
time however new promises need to be
made and it's much easier to propagate a
series from a proven successful model
rather than build a new one from the
ground up now modern family did wrap up
their production in april of 2020 but
they left the door wide open for a
spin-off which currently doesn't exist
in any form more substantial than a
rumor at this point so we'll see what
happens there modern family was a
groundbreaking sitcom in many ways it
forged a new path into the sitcom space
by taking the proven success model of a
family sitcom and filtered it through
the proven success model of a
mockumentary to the delight of audiences
and critics alike
unfortunately that new path ended in the
same sort of dwindling way that shows
like two and a half men did when they
were forced to alter the focus of their
respective shows audiences can be fickle
and when a show stops giving them what
they became attached to in the first
place they just simply stop watching and
move on to something entirely different
when a show is forced to pivot abruptly
they start losing their audience once
that happens production of these network
shows become less about the characters
and more about squeezing the last few
dollars out of advertisers it's usually
the death knell for any beloved
television show
well that's it for today's episode don't
forget to like and subscribe if you
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[Music]
you