Mission accomplished: ‘Modern Family’ has changed TV

大功告成：《摩登家庭》改变了电视

今天《摩登家庭》大结局已经播出啦，如果还没看大结局，不如来看看这组全剧最后一集幕后照。照片中，剧组人员合影拥抱、含泪告别，引得不少网友泪目，直呼“满满回忆杀”。最终季于2020年2月22日正式杀青，大结局在当地时间本周三播出（国内时间2020年4月9日星期四）。11年的陪伴画上了圆满的句号，不止主创们，剧迷也深感不舍。接下来带大家看一篇来自The Salt Lake Tribune的报道。

Before “Modern Family,” television’s family sitcoms tended to be about traditional families. Mom. Dad. Kids. Sometimes grandparents.

在《摩登家庭》之前，电视的家庭情景喜剧往往是关于传统家庭的：妈妈，爸爸，孩子们，有时是祖父母。

If you think back to the very first episode of “Modern Family,” there was a surprise. The series began with seemingly unrelated scenes featuring three seemingly unrelated families: an older man, his much-younger wife and her son; a married couple and their three children; and a gay couple and their newly adopted baby. But, lo and behold, they were all part of one big “Modern Family.”

如果你回想一下《摩登家庭》的第一集，会有一个惊喜。这部连续剧以三个看似毫不相关的家庭开始，这三个家庭分别是：一对老夫少妻和儿子；一对已婚夫妇和他们的三个孩子；一对同志夫夫和他们新领养的孩子。不过，看吧，他们都是一个大的《摩登家庭》的一份子。

Before the show premiered in September 2009, Steve Levitan said that when he and his fellow co-creator/executive producer, Chris Lloyd, screened the pilot for friends and family, “even our friends who are writers and who are cynical” were “genuinely surprised” at the twist.

在2009年9月首映之前，史蒂夫·莱维坦说，当他和他的合作制作人兼执行制作人克里斯·劳埃德为朋友和家人放映试播节目时，“即使是我们的作家朋友和愤世嫉俗的朋友”也对这一转变“感到真正的惊讶”。

They were startled to learn that Jay (Ed O’Neill), Gloria (Sofia Vergara), Manny (Rico Rodriguez), Phil (Ty Burrell), Claire (Julie Bowen), Claire (Sarah Hyland), Alex (Ariel Winter), Luke (Nolan Gould), Claire(Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) were all members of the same extended family.

当他们得知Jay （埃德·奥尼尔）、Gloria （索菲亚·维加拉）、Manny （里科·罗德里格斯）、Phil （蒂·伯瑞尔）、Claire（朱莉·鲍恩）、Claire（莎拉·海兰）、Alex（阿里尔·温特）、Luke（诺兰·古尔德）、Claire（杰西·泰勒·弗格森）和Cameron（埃里克·斯通街）都是同一个大家庭的成员时，他们都大吃一惊。

“I think the family in America is changing,” Levitan said in 2009. “It comes in lots of different shapes and sizes now that it perhaps didn’t used to.”

莱维坦在2009年说：“我认为美国的家庭正在发生变化，现在很多家庭的样子和规模都是前所未有的。”

Eleven years and almost 250 episodes later, the Pritchett-Dunphy-Tucker clan seems perfectly normal. Not perfect, by any means, but completely within the American mainstream. “I think all families are the same,” Vergara said.

11年，差不多250集之后，普里切特·邓菲·塔克家族似乎完全正常——无论如何都不算完美，但完全符合美国主流家庭的状况。“我认为所有的家庭都是一样的，”维加拉说。

All the characters have their flaws. But, as Ferguson pointed out, “The flaws of a relationship are more interesting than a perfect relationship. I think that’s more relatable.”

所有的角色都有缺点。但是，正如弗格森所指出的，“一段关系的缺陷比一段完美的关系更有趣，我认为这样更让观众有带入性。

The show has always been relatable. Even if your family looks nothing like the one on “Modern Family,” there are elements that ring familiar — parent-child, spouse and sibling relationships. Which is probably because the characters and situations are drawn from the real-life families of Levitan, Lloyd and their team of writers.

这个剧一直都让观众很有共鸣。即使你的家庭看起来和《摩登家庭》里的不一样，但也有很多熟悉的元素——亲子关系、配偶关系和兄弟姐妹关系。这可能是因为这些人物和场景都来自现实生活中的莱维坦，劳埃德及其作家团队。

One of the things Levitan saw at his kids’ school was older fathers with much-younger wives and children. And so began Jay and Gloria, who look like an odd couple at first glance. But viewers quickly overlooked that he is a quarter of a century older than she is, and that Jay is a reserved guy and Gloria is an emotional immigrant from Colombia — because they’re a couple who, remarkably, somehow made sense.

莱维坦在孩子学校看到的一件事是一个年纪大的父亲和比他小很多的妻子和孩子。Jay和Gloria就这样诞生了，他们乍一看就像一对奇怪的夫妇。但观众很快就忽略了他比她大25岁的事情。Jay是个矜持的人，Gloria是一个来自哥伦比亚的情感丰富的移民——因为他们是一对夫妻，这就讲得通了。

Not only did Levitan and Lloyd and their writing teams mine their own families for stories, but the actors quickly learned that anything they told the writers could end up in an episode. The characters are fictional, but they all shared traits with the actors who played them.

不仅是莱维坦、劳埃德以及他们的写作团队会挖掘自己家庭的故事进行创作，而且演员们很快就知道，他们告诉编剧的任何事情都可能被写进电视剧中，成为其中的一集内容。这些人物都是虚构的，但他们都和扮演他们的演员有共同的特点。

It’s almost hard to believe in 2020, but in 2009 it was a fairly big deal that one of the three couples in “Modern Family” is gay.

在2020年可能很难想象，但是在2009年，将《摩登家庭》中的三对夫妻中的一对设定成同志，这是件相当大的事情。

Lloyd and Levitan set out to make a show about how families have changed. And they decided immediately that they’d include a gay couple with a baby. “We knew several people like that,” Levitan said. He was ready for blowback. “I welcome criticism from the far right groups,” he said back in 2009.

劳埃德和利维坦当时准备做一个关于家庭如何改变的节目。他们立刻就决定，要设定一对带着孩子的同志恋人。“我们认识几个这样的人，”莱维坦说。他已经准备好反击了。“我欢迎极右组织的批评，”他在2009年说。

And, yes, there was criticism from some of those groups. But Middle America embraced “Modern Family.” It was a broad-based hit from the day it debuted.

确实，其中一些团体提出了批评。但是美国却欣然接受了《摩登家庭》，它从诞生之日起就广受欢迎。

There were a lot of reasons “Modern Family” shouldn’t have worked. The fact that sitcoms about families weren’t exactly hot at the time. And when the pilot was filmed, the cast included two 10-year-olds (Gould and Rodriguez), an 11-year-old (Winter), and an 18-year-old (Hyland) — and not one of them had much acting experience.

有很多因素决定了《摩登家庭》并不是注定会成功。关于家庭的情景喜剧在当时并不十分火爆。而且这部剧拍摄的时候，演员包括两个10岁的孩子（古尔德和罗德里格斯），一个11岁的孩子（温特）和一个18岁的孩子（海兰），他们没有一个人有丰富的表演经验。

But, Levitan said, the young “Modern Family” cast members were “professional from day one. They were on it. They were not spoiled. They were hard-working. You could give them a speech this long, and they were all over it.”

但是莱维坦说：年轻的《摩登家庭》演员从一开始就很专业，他们很在行，他们不是被宠坏的孩子，他们很努力。你可以给他们讲很长的话，他们都能听进去。”

“It’s an incredible alchemy of just elements coming together,” Levitan said. “It just so rarely happens that the right characters are created and the right actors come along to play those characters, and then the right writers come along to help bring those characters to life and further deepen those relationships.”

莱维坦说：“将各种元素结合在一起产生了神奇的效果。创造出合适的角色，由合适的演员来扮演这些角色，然后由合适的作家来帮助这些角色活过来，并进一步加深这些关系，这种情况是非常罕见的。”

“I will always remember meeting this group of people for the first time,” Ferguson said. “It was like an immediate connection. … And I just remember thinking, ‘Even if the show isn’t a success and even if audiences don’t respond to it, I can really stand behind what we’re creating right now because it feels so special and so unique.’”

弗格森说：“我会永远记得第一次见到这群人，我们立刻就有了很强的化学反应。我只记得当时在想，‘即使这部剧不成功，即使观众不回应，我也能真正支持我们现在正在创作的作品，因为它给人的感觉是如此特别和独特。’”

The show went on to win the Emmy for best comedy in its first season, and in Seasons 2, 3, 4 and 5. There’s certainly an argument to be made that “Modern Family” isn’t as good as it once was — it’s not leaving too soon, for sure — but it has been consistently funny and important without being groundbreaking, if only because it better reflects what American families actually look like.

该剧在第1季以及第2、3、4和5季连续获得艾美奖最佳喜剧奖。当然，有一种观点认为《摩登家庭》并不像以前那么好了——当然，还不至于要很快被砍——它一直很有趣很好看，只是没有突破性的进展，因为它更好地反映了美国家庭的真实面貌。

For the most part, cast members sound like they’re ready to move on. But also wistful about what everyone said was among the best experiences in their careers.

在很大程度上，演员们似乎已经准备好继续前行了。但是正如每个人所说的这样，这部剧是他们职业生涯中最棒的体验。

Vergara said she doesn’t expect to ever again “be able to get a group of people like this, to be in a show like this with this success,” Vergara said. “I don’t think anything is going to be as good or better. … I had been working for almost 20 years before I got lucky with ‘Modern Family.”

维加拉说，她不会奢望还能再一次“和这样一群人，能在这样的演出中取得这样的成功，”她说。“我觉得不会再有什么会比这更好。……我工作了将近20年，才幸运地拥有了《摩登家庭》”。

But, after 11 years as the highly paid star of a hit TV show, she’s not exactly worried. “I might not ever get a job again, but now I have the money. I can sit in my house,” Vergara said.

但是，作为一个热门电视剧的高薪明星11年后，她并不完全担心。“我可能再也找不到工作了，但现在我有钱了，我可以在我的房子里坐享其成了，”维加拉说。

11季22座艾美奖神喜剧《摩登家庭》今天迎来大结局！