While Modern Family wasn’t usually the most experimental sitcom, the show did feature one unique television history first. Modern Family was not, for the most part, one of the more ambitious sitcoms of the '00s. While Community was concerned with subverting television tropes in a meta, self-referential way and Arrested Development was too ambitiously layered to gain mainstream appreciation, Modern Family was content to take the tried-and-tested mockumentary format and apply it to the even more reliable family sitcom sub-genre, creating a show that felt contemporary while also hewing close to television traditions.

For most of its runtime, Modern Family cared about Haley’s romances, Alex’s professional ambitions, Cam and Mitchell’s arguments, and Phil’s latest embarrassing misadventure more than any attempts at experimentation or meta-humor. This made the series a success as Modern Family provided warm, character-based comedy in an era when sitcoms were starting to experiment with weirder, less accessible humor. However, it also led some critics to complain that Modern Family played it safe compared to its competitors. Despite its lack of obvious aesthetic invention, though, Modern Family did take a few big risks in its time.

Modern Family Pulled Off the First Screenlife Episode

In 2015, Modern Family season 6, episode 16, “Connection Lost,” became the first screenlife episode of a US network TV show. Taking place entirely on a computer screen, “Connection Lost” was a classic Modern Family outing wherein a miscommunication led Phil and Claire to erroneously think that Haley and Andy were eloping. While The Simpsons did a screenlife episode almost a decade later, Modern Family’s experimental outing arrived at a time when the format was still very new and innovative. Set entirely on a laptop screen, “Connection Lost” proved that the screen life format had a lot of comic potential the same year that Unfriended proved it also worked for horror.

The screenlife format, unlike the typical mockumentary style utilized by Modern Family, comes with a lot more restrictions and limitations. However, the format can also allow for clever storytelling opportunities, as seen when Claire’s snooping through Haley’s internet history and phone tracking allows her to uncover a book on pregnancy, the address of a Las Vegas chapel, and a host of other concerning details. Ironically, many viewers likely wished that Modern Family’s Haley and Andy had eloped in “Connection Lost,” given the fan-favorite couple’s break-up in a subsequent season.

Modern Family’s Experiment Was Ahead of Its Time

While there were a few minor indie movies that experimented with screen life pre-2015 (such as Megan Is Missing and V/H/S), “Connection Lost” was one of the first pieces of evidence for the format’s mainstream potential. In the years since, major hits like Searching, Host, and Spree have adopted the style while the screen life episode of The Simpsons mentioned above proves the style has broken through to the mainstream. While it might seem suspiring that a series as typically conventional as Modern Family broke ground with this format, the sitcom undeniably made history with the screenlife story of “Connection Lost."