Sitcom Option: Modern Family and Friends
What You’ll See in the Set Episode
For the sitcom option you study one complete episode of a contemporary programme alongside a ten-minute extract from an older sitcom, so you can see how the genre has changed over time. The contemporary episode is Modern Family, Season 8, Episode 2, first broadcast on 28 September 2016. It is a mockumentary sitcom set in LA, following three families all connected through patriarch Jay Pritchett. The older extract comes from Friends, Season 1, Episode 1 (1994, cert. 12), originally broadcast on NBC in the US and Channel 4 in the UK, and filmed in the iconic Central Perk café setting.
Modern Family was co-produced by Steven Levitan Productions, Picador Productions and 20th Century Fox Television, distributed by 20th Television, and broadcast on ABC. It won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series five times and the 2011 Golden Globe for Best TV Series. Its final episode had 7.37 million viewers on first broadcast.
Sitcom Genre Conventions
Sitcoms usually follow a circular narrative: an equilibrium is disrupted by a problem, that problem creates the comedy, and stability returns by the end — reassuring audiences that things will be resolved. In the set episode this happens across three separate strands: the Dunphy family using Alex’s illness to their advantage, Jay reacting to his new neighbours, and Lily calling her friend Tom a “weirdo”. All three are resolved by the end of the episode.
Modern Family uses an ensemble cast typical of the genre, with stereotypical character types such as the “grumpy old man” (Jay) and the stereotypical geek (Alex). Settings stay limited and familiar to audiences — the Pritchett, Dunphy and Pritchett-Tucker homes recur every episode, just as Central Perk recurs throughout Friends. Iconography ties to setting and character: the confessional sofa shots in Modern Family have become as recognisable as the orange sofa in Central Perk.
Genres rely on repetition of familiar conventions but also introduce variation — a principle theorist Steve Neale associates with how genres stay dynamic over time. Modern Family repeats sitcom staples (home and workplace settings, stereotyped characters) but varies them through its mockumentary hybridity: characters break the fourth wall to speak directly to camera, a device shared with earlier mockumentary sitcoms such as The Office (2001) and Parks and Recreation (2009).
This matters for representation too. Neale’s idea that genres change to reflect social and cultural change explains why Modern Family addresses gender roles and cultural diversity differently to Friends, made over twenty years earlier.
Media Language: Visual, Technical and Audio Codes
Visual codes create comedy throughout the set episode. Manny wears a “Mao suit” to signal his sudden communist beliefs, and Alex appears in her dressing gown to signal her suffering. Gesture codes add physical comedy: Phil, locked in a room, counts sweets as survival food, falls to the floor escaping, and strokes Alex like a therapy dog while saying “good girl”. Mise-en-scène in Lily’s bedroom creates comedy when she says she hates the mural Cam and Mitchell painted for her.
Technically, Modern Family uses single-camera production, suiting its mockumentary set-up. Friends, by contrast, was recorded with a multi-camera set-up in front of a studio audience, complete with a laugh track — a convention Modern Family drops entirely. The only non-diegetic sound in Modern Family is a short, upbeat signature tune, reinforcing the documentary feel, and the medium sofa shots where characters confess to the invisible interviewer give audiences a privileged spectator position ahead of other characters.
Propp’s narrative theory can be applied to the episode: Jay acts as a father-figure/helper others turn to for advice, Phil shows anti-hero qualities as he fails to overcome his “PTSD”, and Alex helps each family member pursue their own goals while avoiding responsibility herself.
Representation in the Set Episode
Gender representations are mixed. Phil, a successful estate agent, is the “good cop” parent while Claire, shown first in a business suit, holds real power at home and work — comedy comes from Phil asking “Did nobody miss me in 18 hours?”. Luke is a stereotypically lazy teenager who steals Alex’s coursework, while Alex herself is represented as a progressive “geek girl”, attending Caltech and taking charge of the useless men in the house — though Gloria being unable to work the remote control reinforces an older stereotype about women and technology.
Cam and Mitchell, a married gay couple raising adopted daughter Lily, offer a progressive representation of sexuality that contrasts directly with Friends, which regularly made jokes about homosexuality. Ethnicity is more mixed: Gloria is represented as a fiery Latina stereotype, and Jay assumes his new black neighbours will think he is a “racist old man” installing cameras because of them — a storyline that exposes his own prejudice, since he later complains that people label him an “old, straight, white bigot”.
Social and cultural context explains many of these differences. The set episode features Jackson Millarker as Lily’s friend Tom, a casting decision reflecting a society that has become more progressive towards transgender people — something unthinkable in Friends’ 1994 broadcast context.
The supplied materials note that Friends under-represented ethnic diversity and made jokes about LGBTQ+ characters, which contrasts with Modern Family's more progressive representations — a useful comparison for showing how sitcom representations shift as social attitudes change.
Media Industries
Modern Family was created by Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan, who pitched it to CBS, NBC and ABC. NBC rejected it, already committed to mockumentary sitcoms The Office and Parks and Recreation; ABC accepted it and ordered a 13-episode first season after a successful pilot. ABC’s headquarters sit opposite Walt Disney Studios in California, and Disney’s ownership of ABC is an example of vertical integration, helping secure high production values.
ABC is a commercial network funded through advertising — a 30-second ad slot during Modern Family cost up to $250,000, and only around 10% of brands bidding for product placement were accepted, since producers needed products to feature convincingly (an entire Season 6 episode was filmed on Apple devices). Convergence has reshaped distribution too: Seasons 1–9 arrived on Netflix in 2020 in over 30 countries, but the show was pulled from Netflix in January 2022 to become exclusive to Disney+, its parent company’s streaming service.
Audiences and Uses and Gratifications
Modern Family’s ensemble cast gives it broad appeal across age, gender, ethnicity and sexuality, and it topped US TV’s scripted series rankings in the 18–49 category for several years — though critics argue it still appeals mostly to white, middle-class audiences, since most characters are white and affluent.
Uses and Gratifications theory explains why audiences watch: for entertainment through slapstick and dialogue comedy; for information, as the show challenges attitudes towards homosexuality, transgender people and ethnic diversity; for social interaction, seen when fans used #ModernFamily to react to Cam and Mitchell’s wedding on Twitter; and for personal identity, as the diverse cast gives many audience members a character or situation to relate to.