Modern Family will go down as a show that stayed the same as TV changed

...an artifact that straddles two starkly different versions of America

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/modern-family-series-finale-tv-is-different-now_n_5e8ce947c5b62459a9306613

"When it premiered in 2009, Modern Family was progressive and clever," Matthew Jacobs says of the ABC comedy that concludes tonight after 11 seasons. "Family sitcoms, once TV comedy’s primary sustenance, had been replaced by shows about friend groups and the workplace, yet here came one that conferred purpose via the adjective in its title. The Los Angeles clan was large, blended, fairly wealthy and ostensibly diverse, from the macho patriarch (Ed O’Neill) adapting to the ways of his younger Latina wife (Sofia Vergara) and erudite stepson (Rico Rodriguez) to the well-adjusted gay couple (Eric Stonestreet and Jesse Tyler Ferguson) who’d adopted a stoic Vietnamese daughter. As the 2010s dawned, Modern Family became the rare series to generate colossal ratings and critical applause....By some standards, a show like this — one that got flagship treatment from ABC — goaded Heartland viewers into imagining domesticity with a less-orthodox makeup. In no time, it found fans across political party lines, namely the Obamas and the Romneys. The Pritchett-Dunphy tribe were pretty good surrogates for a country on the cusp of a major cultural upgrade. Today, however, Modern Family will go out as an artifact that straddles two starkly different versions of America. In September 2009, Barack Obama was eight months into his first term as president. Marriage equality would be legalized in 2015, and almost every sector of public life would start to reckon with its treatment of women and minorities. But nothing gold can stay, especially not when something stays for more than a decade. As technological disruption and Donald Trump’s ascendancy changed the national ethos, Modern Family couldn’t keep up."

https://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showpost.php?p=5712995&postcount=3