Inside a nondescript room in building 104 on the Fox lot, Modern Family’s cast, writers, producers, and invited guests have assembled for a lunchtime table read of Corrigan’s and Walsh’s “Paris” script, the series’ last family vacation episode. While settling in, the cast partakes from another amazing lunch buffet whipped up by Stephen Brenes and his assistant, Jesse Cervantes. Last week, they served dim sum as an 11:00 a.m. snack. Come on! How everyone on cast and crew doesn’t weigh four hundred pounds, I will never know.
The cast sits behind a row of adjoining laminated school tables with that unmistakable fusion maple color. Folded paper name tags mark everyone’s place.
The audience, seated in two sections of metal folding chairs, about five rows deep, consists of perhaps seventy-five total. Beckham sits nearby with his kids. Rodriguez’s sister and mother, regulars on set, take their seats. The writers sit together off to the far right. Every seat has a script to follow along.
This being a Levitan episode, he sits up front. Lloyd hangs back by the door. Vergara opens her script, knowing that Rodriguez will have highlighted her lines for her, like he has done since season 1. Rodriguez thinks Vergara would laugh at the ritual’s origins. “She’s sometimes late to table reads. So one particular day, she was running late. I know how she highlights her scripts because I sit next to her. So I highlighted and dog-eared it and she was ready to go. She comes in and goes, ‘Oh my God, I have to highlight my script.’ She looked and saw it was already highlighted. She looked at me because she knew I did it and thanked me. The next week at the table read, she looks at her script and it’s not highlighted. I didn’t think to because she was early this time. She said, ‘Rico, hurry and do my script.’ Since then, I highlight it every week. I love Sofía so much. I would do anything for her.” Vergara likens it less to a ritual and more to a tradition. “I used to make my son, Manolo, do little things like that to make him feel like he was working. Eleven years later, Rico knows it’s his job now.”
The cast reads the script in real time. Today’s favorite mispronounced Vergara word? Squirm, which she turns into “squeem.”
Upon the reading’s conclusion, O’Neill, ever the cheerleader, gives his usual stamp of approval. “It’s simple. It’s funny. It’s smart.” Someone brings in a surprise birthday cake for Ferguson. He gives a short emotional speech, reflecting, “This is the best job I ever had, which I know sets an unfair precedent to the spin-off.” Everyone cracks up and then disperses soon thereafter.
Thirty minutes later, the writers have converged around the outer conference table in the writers’ room to hear Lloyd share his notes. Levitan sits at the opposite end.
In the script, Claire’s storyline revolves around a torrid affair she had thirty years ago with a Frenchman, Guy, in which they promised to meet again on this day, a date she’s long forgotten. Lloyd questions Claire only saying to Guy, “Nice to see you again,” and then turning away from this man and his broken heart. “I also don’t believe Claire says, ‘Oh my God, this poor guy has been in love with me for thirty years,’” says Lloyd. “She doesn’t know that. He could have been married for twenty-five years. He’s embarrassed because she isn’t leaning into the moment.”
The biggest issue Lloyd has concerns Mitchell and Cam’s story. “What are the stakes?“He likes Mitchell being instantly recognized as an American by his clothes. But then what? And Cam discovers another Fizbo clown, resembling his own creation. Did he steal Cam’s act? Did Cam steal his act? Is there any way to care more about that story, to give it more stakes?
“One of the tricky things here is the metaphor being a comedian stealing jokes,” says Levitan. “It’s the ultimate taboo. Cam gets to go on and essentially kill and then someone steals his jokes as opposed to you’re about to go on, you’re nervous and getting ready, and then he looks over and there’s somebody there who’s already him [playing Fizbo]. It would ruin that experience that he built up in his head. He wants people in ‘Paris’ to experience this.”
And with that, Lloyd disappears like Batman into the night, except the clock reads 2:00 p.m. Levitan splits the room into two. In “the big room” goes Levitan, Walsh, Zuker, Lloyd’s brother Stephen, and Morgan Murphy to revise “Paris.” This room, incidentally, with its two glass walls, one emblazoned with the Pritchett’s Closets & Blinds logo, doubles as Jay’s business place.
In the B room, a smaller space, like the kids’ table at Thanksgiving, Richman, Walls, Higginbotham, and Vali Chandrasekaran work on an upcoming story. Burditt works alone in his somewhat bare office on a script that Lloyd asked him to cowrite with him for next week’s table read.
Lloyd hasn’t taken a script credit in several years, making this a big deal. One would assume he will have one more for the finale. Levitan will write a script this year as well, a similar situation and big deal. Although not writing together, they leave as they came in, creating story, emotion, and hopefully laughs.
Lloyd’s script, “Legacy,” holds a Kid Gavilan bolo punch—the death of Phil’s dad, Frank. The show has dealt with death before, outside and within the family (the Dunphys’ elderly neighbor Walt and DeDe Pritchett). Lloyd wants to handle this one differently as well as the message behind it. “We were looking for some weightier events to deal with in our final season,” recalls Lloyd. “It was an opportunity to examine how Phil got to be Phil, but also to bring a new perspective to Phil’s penchant for silliness—that it’s actually more philosophically based. The world, and people, need a cheerleader, and Phil knows he’s good at that, and is happy to provide that, even if it means suppressing some of his own emotions to that end.”
Lloyd denies it has anything to do with his dad, in the conscious mind anyway. Burditt concurs. “Chris used what he felt best fit with Frank and Phil as characters,” says Burditt. “But we didn’t discuss our own personal feelings. Maybe that’s the Catholic in us.” Lloyd handled two of the episode’s stories, that of Phil and Frank and one involving Mitchell and Claire. “Just like I always prefer playing basketball with players that are better than me, I love writing with someone who can write circles around me,” shares Burditt.
The ending, a treatise on life and wonder, comes from a feature film idea Lloyd has kept in his back pocket for years. “It’s based upon a news article I read years ago,” confides Lloyd. “It occurred to me it might make for a nice way to honor a father who has passed.” Burditt sums it up more directly. “Reading Chris’s Phil-Frank scenes slayed me. It made me miss my dad.”
The script goes under several revisions on its way to the finish line. In a few instances, he moves scenes around. The biggest change, however, comes with the story. “In Claire-Mitchell, it was to get a bit more comedy and urgency into their drive—a real desire to catch their dad and step into the conceit of them being detectives trying to put clues together to catch a criminal,” Lloyd shares. “In Gloria-Cam, it was to see Cam’s nemesis earlier, creating drive, and to streamline the argument between Gloria and Cam over approach.” And therein ends the master class for the day.
Back in the big room, Levitan and company slowly work their way through revisions. Levitan comes to a conclusion about which way he’d like to go with the Fizbo setup. He tells the room, “I think it’s, ‘I’m about to go on. Someone’s doing my act.’ I think that moment will land more. He’s looking at a clown who looks exactly like him. The metaphor is the comedian who comes on before, stealing or doing all your jokes.”
Elsewhere, small changes in the room pertain to dialogue.
OLD SCENE
MITCHELL
We’re all so proud of you, Dad. I’m glad that we get to be here for this.
Jay crosses off to deal with the luggage.
CLAIRE
(Calling after Jay)
Wouldn’t miss it for the world.
(Then to Mitchell)
We can bail on the reception, though, right?
NEW SCENE
MITCHELL
We’re all so proud of you, Dad.
CLAIRE
We love that we get to be here for this.
Jay crosses off to deal with the luggage.
In the new version, both of Jay’s kids show pride in their father. Claire’s feigned and slightly cold disinterest disappears.
A big debate in the room involves a single joke. Levitan begins by framing the skeleton of Jay taking in the occasion of his winning a prestigious closet award. “I wish my old man could be here to see this. Funny, he stormed the beaches of Normandy and I’m getting the closet award. Who’s the bigger hero now?”
The room comes alive as everyone throws in suggestions about a new punchline. Some get ignored, some talked over, others considered and then dropped. Everyone wants to be the one to land the joke. It feels like an episode of Match Game with Gene Rayburn:
I wish my old man could be here to see this. Funny, he stormed the beaches of Normandy, and I’m getting the closet award, blank …
People shout out punchlines:
Two American heroes in one family.
We both left our mark in Europe.
This country brings out the best in both of us.
A couple of heroes.
The room grows quiet as everyone regroups. Suddenly, out of the blue, Walsh speaks up. “We keep topping each other. Who knows what Joe will do?”
The room cracks up. Drop mic. Winner. Moving on, they try to come up with funny names of other closet businesses. The script already has Heinrich Müler of Berlin’s Closet-stadt, Susan Sasaki of Tokyo’s Closets and Canned Whale Meat. The room cleverly adds as possibilities Warsaw Wardrobes, Finnish Unfinished Closets, Norway’s Afjordable Closets, and Das Closets.
In the second room, most of the conversation revolves around Alex’s plight, working for a non–environmentally friendly conglomerate and perhaps walking off into the sunset with her fireman ex-boyfriend. In a surprise, Arvin Fennerman, one of Haley’s old lovers, will be returning for episode 15. Alex always had a thing for him. Perhaps Fennerman’s scientific theory came to the wrong Dunphy conclusion? That remains to be seen. I have been told she will be quitting her corporate job to work on a scientific project with him. The rest remains a mystery. Levitan teases his appearance for me. “In creating a world of characters, it’s nice to revisit some after a while because, as in life, people have a way of coming back, leading us to reflect on where we are in our lives since last seeing them.”
The writers also talk about Mitchell and Cam’s ultimate fate. Looks like through a series of circumstances, another baby lurks on their horizon. That requires a bigger house. And then wouldn’t you know, Cam gets offered a job back in Kansas to coach football. The writers wonder aloud if for a cherry on top of all of their life changes, would it be funny if they see someone giving away a dog while driving to handle all of these problems and then adopt that, too?
They debate over timing. Should they find out about the baby at the end of episode 14 or the beginning of 15? In episode 15, their storyline involves looking for a new house while Phil stages theirs. No one knows about episode 16, but it could be a Haley episode, perhaps with Claire.
Just another day writing a hit TV show.