Modern Family (2009–2020)

Modern Family is primarily a comedy that revolves around three families that are held together more by their virtue of acceptance and love than by the blood ties that connect them. Each character has been thoughtfully written out and played to perfection by a slew of actors who take your breath away. A family that is so imperfectly perfect that you draw the expectations for your own family - present or future - from their actions, morals, decisions and values.

It's a show where an old rich man marries a young woman of colour; where a white patriarchal figure accepts, not without his reservations, his openly gay son and his partner; where a gay couple gets its chance at parenting when they adopt an Asian girl; where we have a teenage pregnancy create the foundations of a loving family; where an old couple decides to give parenting a spin in the second innings of their life; where each child grows up emboldened with the confidence that his family is there to support him/her to become their own person.

What the show does impeccably well is throw societal expectations for a toss to underline only one thing - who we are and choose to be does not dictate the rightness or the wrongness of our being. The only this that does is the purity of our hearts. That is it. One episode after the other, we have the writers create interwoven and hilarious narratives into episodes that break stereotypes and societal conventions to showcase the meaningless of their existence.

Despite the seriousness of the central theme, the show is outright hilarious. It is witty - much too witty to understand every joke, every emotion, every retort in just one watch. The writing is spot on. It makes you live the characters and fall in love with each one of them - one episode at a time. It's made me pause the show because I had to laugh so bad. It has also made me pause to make way for a few tears which flowed without announcement, without purpose. The families, despite their eccentricities and unconventional way of being, are ever so relatable in how they love one another. The only way to truly love someone is to let them thrive in their own choices - that's what I learn from this show - every day.

It's unparalleled what this show has done for the people who were too scared to come out of their closets and the parents who were too scared to have a kid who did. I cannot recommend this show enough. You will feel a myriad of emotions when you truly embrace the depth of the stories and therein lies its beauty.