Modern Family's Gay Dads Forced to Live in Sin!

in may of 2014 modern family aired a great big fairy tale wedding that was absolutely perfect in every way uh-oh we are never gonna get there on time i'm leaving you the fire has jumped the freeway oh my god the butterflies are eating me and here comes the happy couple now mitchell and cam part of a big chaotic ensemble that made up modern family together for the better part of a decade mitch and cam built a home together raised a daughter and stood by each other through ups and downs richer and poorer sickness and health lawyer and clown bisbo is not gay he's asexual but despite being one of the most wholesome couples on television when modern family debuted mitch and cam were the one household on the show that wasn't allowed to get married getting these guys to the altar was a multi-year effort both on screen and behind the scenes on the part of the writers the actors and ultimately the us supreme court i am chief justice hey friends i'm matt baume and this is the behind the scenes story of how modern families cam and mitch finally made it down the aisle for one of the most anticipated weddings of the year wait what's the balloon budget it was 2009 and the american sitcom was dead or at least that's what the critics were saying after a golden age in the 90s successful sitcoms started getting rarer and rarer in the 2000s with ratings dropping on every network at that point sitcoms had been around for about 60 years and many critics said that they'd become too stale to continue that they were all the same stories that tv had just been churning out for decades and that's why everyone was so surprised by the premiere of modern family on september 23 2009 it was a departure from the decades-old family sitcom formula of two parents wacky kids nosy neighbors this show took a bunch of modern diverse family structures and put them all in one show there were couples that were divorced maybe if you had burned our house down we'd still be together kids born out of wedlock i was conceived at a duran duran concert parents who remarried despite a big gap in age and even bigger gap in communication i called your secretary and told her to order you a box of baby cheeses and most unusual of all for tv a gay couple raising an adopted baby this is cam and mitch we don't love pink you love pink no pink loves me and it may seem like no big deal now but in 2009 having two gay dads among the leads of a network sitcom was pretty unusual there had been some same-sex couples on tv before but they were usually side characters or one-off guests or tragically short-lived for modern family to make mitch and cam equal in prominence to the straight couples was a rare move for a sitcom and particularly risky for a format that everyone thought was on death's door so how'd it happen well it all started with a disaster two years earlier in 2007 fox had attempted a new sitcom called back to you that looked like it was going to be a sure fire hit it started megastar's kelsey grammer from frasier and patricia heaton from everybody loves raymond is directed by james burroughs who directed on cheers and friends and will and grace everyone was convinced this would be a smash this fall kelsey grammer and patricia heaton return to television and making news it didn't even last a season back to you came off as a weak retread of sitcoms that viewers had seen a million times before and meddling from fox executives just made the show worse when it got cancelled pretty excited it's another sign that the end of sitcoms was nigh and also looked like it might be the end for the careers of the guys who made it back to you was created by two producers named steven levitan and christopher lloyd not that christopher lloyd the other christopher lloyd stephen and christopher had both spent their whole careers on classic sitcoms like the golden girls and wings but it seemed like audiences just didn't want their kind of show anymore when back to you ended stephen christopher started frantically trying to come up with something different basically we're just like looking not to get kicked off the lot between brainstorming half-baked ideas they noticed that the funniest stories they told each other were true ones about their families big extended groups with complex structures we start realizing that this is a show that's not on tv so they started building the concept a great big family ensemble much larger than on most traditional sitcoms and shot in a mockumentary style that only a couple shows had done at that point but as they developed the concept and shopped it around one aspect in particular became a point of concern at first they wanted to have one of the households led by a single parent but they were having trouble coming up with single parent story lines in a moment of inspiration they spun that one character out into two gay dads mitch and cam potential storylines started falling into place but before long stephen and christopher realized that having a gay couple might be a turn off for some viewers and we said from the very beginning you know this is gonna mean we probably won't be a giant hit stephen said i remember thinking well there goes the middle of the country this concern wasn't unfounded considering how americans tended to respond to gay characters on tv and in real life a decade earlier when ellen came out a survey showed that nearly a quarter of americans were personally offended you know what you need a melon baller i'm gay by 2008 public opinion had started to shift and viewers had embraced standalone gay characters on shows like will and grace and grey's anatomy but couples was another matter those were less common and usually appeared on cable on top of that americans had recently shown their disapproval for gay couples at the ballot box starting around 2000 voters in over 30 states had voted to prevent same-sex couples from getting married at the same time that stephen and christopher were developing modern family california voters approved proposition 8 to ban on marriage equality in the very state where the show was going to be set california voters have spoken out on what's called proposition 8. they have approved a ban on same-sex marriages stephen christopher had a tough choice to make either take a chance on having mitch and cam be prominent members of the core cast possibly alienating viewers or play it safe by making them background characters you can make a million decisions right and you can make one decision wrong and it'll kill you and that's this business their concern deepened when they ran the idea for the show past a friend a prominent gay writer he hated it he told him to scale back the gay couple he told them quote no one's going to watch unless mitch and cam were reduced to minor supporting roles in other words exactly how most sitcoms had handled gay couples in the past but as they molded over stephen christopher realized that if they were gonna make a show called modern family it didn't make sense to remove the kind of family that had only just begun to appear on modern tv shows we both said well you can't you can't do a show about this without this so we'll just the best we can and yes it'll turn off a large number of a large portion of america but um it has to be in the end they decided they would keep the gay couple as central characters and cross their fingers that it wouldn't backfire on them abc greenlit the show in 2008 and the following fall america met mitchell and cam they're a well-matched pair mitchell's uptight and fussy they'd call me weird well cam's a bit more outgoing and well squishy swishy yes the characters are played by jessie tyler ferguson and eric stonestreet and by the way they were not in the original plan for the cast i found some very fun behind-the-scenes details about how both of these actors talk their way into their roles the year leading up to modern family i killed three people and i'm posting those stories over on patreon head over to patreon.combaum if you want to see that so the first time that we meet mitch and cam they're bringing their newly adopted daughter lily home from vietnam and they're prepared for people to disapprove we're gonna be judged enough as the only gay parents there i don't want to be the late ones too paisley and pink was there something wrong with the fishnet tank top obviously not i'm wearing it underneath but at least on the show they don't encounter much opposition [Applause] [Music] but behind the scenes the showrunners were concerned about how real-life americans would react so in the first few episodes modern family was careful about giving mitch and cam stories that were less about being gay and more about being parents we see them trying to fit in a daycare i want to dance for my baby arguing about baby clothes why is she dressed like the hamburglar getting lost at costco trying to buy diapers you know what we should do we should get enough like the next year or two right where would we keep them they sell sheds the idea was that by giving them story lines that would be relatable to gay and straight viewers the audience would get to know them as parents while also getting used to them being gay they start relating to these characters and realizing oh they're not too different from us and then like they're like oh wait but they're gay and this tactic was pretty effective viewers loved the show especially mitch and cam modern family land in the top 10 in ratings throughout the first season and the top five among new shows episodes averaged around 10 million viewers which was great for the time and mitchencam were audience favorites barbara walters put them on her list of the most fascinating people of the year on mainstream tv once a week audiences are watching two gay men raise a baby and rooting for them the hollywood reporter called modern family the best news series of the year the la times wrote that family sitcoms were quote back from the dead and far from a liability they wrote that mitch and cam were the centerpiece of the show but there was also some criticism of course conservatives launched a campaign to boycott abc for daring to depict a same-sex couple the group one million moms declared that simply putting a gay couple on tv was offensive surprise a producer for fox news said modern family was causing the destruction of the american family kind of a lot of drama the head of the american family association called mitchencam corrosive twisted and a little bit of poison i think we have different definitions of poison but there was also criticism from some unexpected quarters gay viewers who noticed that modern family wasn't treating mitch and cam the same as the straight couples while the other couples were frequently physically affectionate mitch and cam seldom touched rarely hugged and never kissed this is unacceptable at first christopher and steven and the rest of the cast respond to the criticism by asking audiences to just wait chris and steve and the creators they have an arc to this show and you're gonna see everything you could ever imagine from cameron i promise no we're going to have sex but that just made people more impatient fans started an online petition on facebook urging the show to let mitch and cam kiss jesse tyler ferguson who played mitch tweeted that he'd signed the petition himself but behind the scenes not everyone was so eager for years gay kisses had been a source of controversy for tv shows after tales of the city showed a gay couple kissing in the 90s there were congressional hearings that nearly led to the defunding of pbs in 2008 conservatives were outraged when luke and noah kissed on as the world turns and obviously these are people that are trying to push an agenda on the viewers and the reality is i think most people really don't want it and in 2009 the same year that modern family premiered cbs blurred a same-sex kiss between adam lambert and his keyboardist many viewers still regarded gay kisses on tv as controversial even inappropriate to air and that put modern family in a tricky position on one hand they just managed to get audiences comfortable with the gay couple and showing a kiss could alienate that middle part of the country that they were so worried about but on the other hand if the show kept treating mitch and cam differently it made them seem as a family less legitimate than the straights so as the season wore on the lack of physical contact became more and more obvious and fans even started calling the showrunners out to their faces as a lesbian i would just really like to know when we're gonna see cameron and mitchell get some on-screen action like kissing or something with pressure building modern family finally responded early in season two with an episode entitled the kiss in the opening cam gets annoyed at mitch for not being affectionate enough just as fans had been saying all along i remember once in a new year's eve party stroke at midnight he high-fived me and mitch keeps trying to dodge the issue just like the show had been doing i don't appreciate you making me feel bad because i can't live up to your impossible standards nobody kisses at a bowling alley i almost got a turkey but then things get awkward at a big family gathering it's beautiful gloria just like my mitchell and mitch and cam finally hash it out in front of everybody in a heart to heart between mitch and his dad and his sister they realized that they just didn't get much physical affection when they were young and mitch developed a self-consciousness about showing that he loves someone you being so emotionally closed off makes it very difficult for your children to show affection but he also recognizes that it's important to can and one might say to fans of the show so mitch promises to try a little harder and we finally get to see the couple kiss and for all the worries about public reaction there was no backlash at all the episode won an award for its writing it was one of the highest rated episodes of the season and it beat every other scripted show that week except for glee which happened to be the britney spears episode so good luck beating that it's a britney spears sex riot what's so smart about the way this issue is handled is that the show not only explains why physical contact had been so scant but mitch's discomfort provides a reason for the show to gradually work up to showing more affection over time which is exactly what it did in the episodes that followed over season 2 there's a noticeable increase in kisses between mitch and cam woven into the jokes the show's using comedy to take something that was once a little scary to some people and make it just no big deal and for a lot of people they might be the first gay couple that they know we sort of call our show like the the trojan horse so we sort of sneak in people's rooms and before they know that they they love us we're like already we're already in so now mitch and cam were one step closer to truly being equal to the straight couples on the show but with one exception they still couldn't get legally married behind the scenes many members of the cast have become involved in the fight for marriage equality particularly jesse tyler ferguson he did interviews for people who are traditionalists i think there's nothing more traditional than wanting to get married he and eric stonestreet who played cam record tv ads it's not politics it's about love and human rights eric stone street look at me that is why i love you jesse and his then boyfriend justin started a foundation to raise money for equality groups tie the knot is a foundation that justin and i started uh about five years ago we started to raise funds for marriage equality but they were up against a formidable foe there was a huge conservative legal machine fighting marriage not just in california but nationwide and they had some very powerful politicians backing them up among them the governor of california who for weird reasons at the time was arnold schwarzenegger yes the guy from terminator i personally always said that marriage is between a man and a woman arnold also vetoed a bill that would have legalized marriage equality in california and when gay couples sued to overturn prop 8 arnold was in charge of defending it the prop 8 case had his name on it perry v schwarzenegger meanwhile public opinion was improving but most polls showed that americans were still opposed to letting same-sex couples marry thanks in part to conservative groups spending millions to air anti-equality ads across the country i'm a massachusetts parent helplessly watching public schools teach my son that gay marriage is okay it was looking like same-sex couples might never get full marriage equality both in real life and on tv but then on june 25th 2013 everything changed the u.s supreme court ruled in the schwarzenegger case overturning prop 8 in california and also laying the groundwork for full federal recognition modern family was heading into summer break when the ruling came down but the writers jumped into action to figure out how to respond one of our the writers who happens to be gay said that he was actually happier as a writer than he was as a gay man that writer was jeffrey richmond who said that he started planning cam and mitch's wedding before he even realized he could start planning his own but once again there was a risk of alienating conservative viewers tv shows have depicted a handful of same-sex ceremonies in the past starting with rock in the early 90s did you see the wedding cake it has two little grooms up on top and then on shows like friends the l word and this very sweet 2009 ceremony on all my children but just like the same-sex kisses these commitment ceremonies were often a source of controversy viewers complained sponsors bulked stations refused to air them once again modern family found itself in a delicate position with public opinion now roughly split 50 50. the show might lose the middle america audience they'd worked so hard to attract and retain so they took what they learned with the kiss episode three years earlier and crafted a story that emphasized the similarities between mitch and cam and the other couples it starts with the season five premiere in which all the couples on the show rediscover the things that made them fall in love in the first place and it culminates with mitch and cam getting in a contest with each other to engineer the perfect romantic proposal but all their plans keep going wrong but you'll feel better after you throw up and they wind up with a broken down car on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere you know it's a different world down there than it was 24 hours ago cam tire oh my gosh oh my god gonna be a different world for the people in that yellow house kneeling there in the dirt trying to fix a flat tire [Music] yes writer jeffrey richmond said that as you worked on this episode quote i teared up i think you don't realize how invested in these characters you are until this huge thing that had been denied to them suddenly is not an obstacle for them but not every obstacle was out of the way over the course of season five mitch and cam planned their wedding and of course wacky high jinks always seemed to follow just as with the kiss the show focuses on wedding planning storylines that would be relatable to a wide audience gay or straight i'm gonna review our flower options and i have to say so far i'm partial to floral and hardy but i'm gonna give one last look at flora's gump and while most of the mayhem is comedic i cannot be in a house with snakes some issues are more serious mitch's dad jay has never been totally comfortable with the idea of them getting married it's legal for a man to marry another man ew he threw up he just needs some time to get used to the idea honey and eventually he just can't keep his discomfort hidden this whole wedding thing is weird to me why do you need to make it into a spectacle it's a spectacle this is what happens when they let men marry men that cannot be a coincidence and as the wedding draws near it seems like he might not even attend because he's worried about what his macho golf buddies will think i mean i'm just saying i don't know how this stuff plays out with my guys from the club things get even worse on the day of the wedding there's a fire near the venue we've waited ten years can we please have an hour i don't think you realize how close you are to actual flames cam's parents start fighting and are on the verge of divorce it's your son's wedding maybe lose the toothpick i'm getting tired of this nagging i'm leaving you the wedding party's attacked by a swarm of butterflies this is the happiest day of your dad's lives oh the butterflies are eating me and it looks like after waiting all this time the wedding's such a fiasco they're better off canceling it is this really how you want to get married well it's not ideal half of our guests are on the lawn and there are the sprinklers okay let's just call time and death on this that is until to mitch's surprise someone speaks up uh what are we all standing around for after getting into a fight with his son jay realized how important this day was to mitch that he'd been waiting for it for years that he was willing to put up with one disaster after another just to declare his commitment to the man he loves so at the last minute jay finds the perfect backup venue his macho golf club my son's getting married today finally after all that fighting for equality in real life and dealing with disasters on the show mitch and cam get to walk down the aisle i am privileged to pronounce you spouses for life you may now kiss your husband just as thousands of real-life couples got married across california and among those real-life couples that married jesse tyler ferguson who just before filming his tv wedding married his real-life partner justin i have two husbands you guys remember we could have zero husbands now i have two this all coincided with a huge surge in support for marriage equality polls showed that now a majority of americans supported the freedom to marry and for the first time voters in multiple states approved ballot measures legalizing marriage we have finally won the freedom to marry for all families in maine but why did that public change of heart happen well there were a lot of reasons but i think characters like cam and mitch played a meaningful role i mentioned this briefly in my video about will and grace but in 2005 researchers at mit investigated how certain shows with gay characters can cause viewers to reduce their prejudice this doesn't happen with every show in order for it to work the research suggests that the gay characters have to be featured in non-superficial roles over a long period of time say a committed gay couple who gets significant screen time in every episode over the course of multiple seasons the gay characters also have to be on equal footing with other members of their social group they have to share common relatable goals with other characters and they have to be unopposed by significant authority figures when all those conditions are met the study found viewers can feel personally connected to fictional gay characters and are more likely to rethink prejudice about queer people in real life now changing public opinion wasn't the goal of stephen and christopher when they came up with modern family but by including mitch and cam and crafting storylines that made them appeal to a wide audience modern family managed to create the perfect conditions for viewers to accept gay dads as just another part of the family we really want to make a good impression modern family ran for another six seasons and then took a bow in 2020. in the series finale cam gets a job offer in missouri close to the family that he left behind when he moved to california to be with mitch i don't care where we live as long as you're there by my side and the show ends with them heading out on a new adventure to the middle part of america exactly the place that when the show is being developed they feared would never accept them in researching this video i found a bunch of great details about the making of modern family that i just didn't have room for in the video like how they auditioned over a thousand actors for all the roles except one the weird interview questions that barbara walters asked about homosexuality and the time that jesse got in trouble for saying this they're like bert and ernie who lived together as did burt and ernie they did live together suspicious i've got those stories and bonus videos over on patreon check those out at patreon.com mattbaume along with some other perks like stickers and books in the mail thanks to everybody who makes these videos possible and now if you'll excuse me i've got to go check on my thoroughly modern family [Music]

Channel: Matt Baume

Views: 316,302

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Id: RTcwHgi4dUo

Length: 21min 31sec (1291 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 19 2022