For years now, Modern Family has been one of the freshest and funniest shows on the air. It’s a miracle of TV writing, as it manages to cram a plotline for each of its many characters into every episode, always with a classic three-act structure and stakes and conflict. Plus, the cast members have always been great in their roles.
It’s a shame that the show will be ending with its upcoming eleventh season, because we’ve had so much fun with these characters over the past decade. Here are 10 Hilarious Modern Family Memes That’ll Make You Sad The Show Is Ending.
10. “I’m the cool dad, that’s my thing.”
We were introduced to everything that makes the Phil Dunphy character hilarious in this moment from the pilot episode. Although he claims to be “the cool dad,” we can see that he’s actually just a dad who cares a lot about his kids and wants to be able to connect with them despite the age difference.
We see his lovable cluelessness when he thinks “WTF” stands for “Why the face?” and we see the effort he puts into his impressing his kids when he shows that he has learned the lyrics and dance moves for every song in High School Musical.
9. This baby dressed up as Cam
With its tenth season, Modern Family became the longest running comedy series in ABC’s history. Along with being the network’s longest running sitcom comes a certain level of popularity. All of those characters have become TV icons over the past decade, including Eric Stonestreet as Cameron Tucker.
Cam is such a well-known character that this baby who dressed up as him went viral. Everything about this costume is perfect, from the flamboyant, colorful shirt to the stonewash jeans. They even got the hair right, which is the most impressive part. Many TV characters have been cosplayed by babies – Walter White, Jesse Pinkman, Dwight Schrute – but Cam is the cutest.
8. “Love is just around the corner.”
The mockumentary format has allowed Modern Family to do a ton of traditional jokes, with a setup and punchline. This has helped to make it one of the funniest shows on the air, since few current series are this economical with their humor.
In an episode in which Manny finds out he accidentally led on a single woman online, he tells her an expression from his home country: “Love is just around the corner.” That’s the setup. Gloria knocks down all the pins with the punchline that reveals the true meaning of the saying: “I come from a neighborhood with a lot of prostitutes.”
7. “I’m Phil.”
Modern Family has explored the relationships between all of its characters, but the show really nailed its depiction of suburban family life and the marriage of Phil and Claire. In this meme, as she gets excited about riding a waterslide that has a radar gun at the bottom, she realizes that she has become her husband.
This is based on Phil’s love of all things childish. He likes the same movies he liked when he was a kid, the same music he liked when he was a kid, and yes, the same waterslides he liked when he was a kid. Whoever made this meme agrees with her shocking realization: “Me too, Claire, me too.”
6. How I plan to parent
For millennials who started watching Modern Family when it first aired a decade ago and have since grown up and become adults with families themselves, the show was sort of a training manual for their future parenting. Across ten seasons, the series has depicted everything a parent should do to properly raise their kids, as well as everything a parent shouldn’t do.
Screaming “higher” in response to a child screaming probably falls into the latter category and wouldn’t work with an actual child. But according to the meme’s creator, it’s how they plan to parent when they have kids of their own.
5. “Success is 1% inspiration, 98% perspiration, and 2% attention to detail.”
One of the things Modern Family fans will miss when the show goes off the air after its upcoming eleventh season is Phil’s-osophy, a collection of written wisdom that Phil has compiled. It’s based on everything he’s learned in his life, such as “When life gives you lemonade, make lemons. Life will be all like, ‘Whaaat?!’”
A great example of Phil’s-osophy is summed up in this meme: “Success is 1% inspiration, 98% perspiration, and 2% attention to detail.” If only he’d paid attention to the small detail of the math in that equation. At least his heart is in the right place.
4. Modern Family at its finest
This is a meme within a meme. The original meme simply had the screencaps of Mitch celebrating a young girl’s failure with the caption, “Me as a parent.” But the meme outside that meme captions it with another astute observation: “Modern Family at its finest.” On a lot of occasions, we’re led to view Mitch as the voice of reason.
Since Cam is more extroverted and outspoken and dramatic than Mitch, Mitch is usually the one who levels everything out. However, on more than a few occasions, we have seen that he can be just as crazy as his husband.
3. “Let me fix your hair…”
The ensemble cast of Modern Family has meant that over the course of the last ten seasons, we’ve only seen our favorite characters together a handful of times. Because there are so many Avengers and the MCU only cranks out three movies a year, the writers have to carefully select which characters they’re going to team up.
This is essentially because they won’t all get the chance to share the screen together. The same basic principle applies to Modern Family. Based on this meme, hopefully we’ll get to see more of Cam and Gloria together before the series ends with season 11 later this year.
2. Haley behind bars
Since Haley was basically a grown-up when the series started and she was the first one to actually become an adult, her character development on Modern Family has been very interesting.
We’ve seen her at lows typical of youths, like being a terrible driver or getting arrested, but we’ve also seen her at surprising highs, like when she became an entrepreneur out of Phil and Claire’s basement and became a self-made makeup guru. This led to quite a lucrative career in the cosmetics industry, so she’s not a total screw-up like we came to expect from season 1’s portrayal of Haley.
1. Mr. Fish
Modern Family has made leaps and bounds over the past few years in the acceptance of same-sex parents in society. For ten seasons, we’ve seen Cam and Mitch, two guys who clearly love each other and share a wonderful life together, adopt a daughter from Vietnam and raise her with all the same care, love, and values as a straight couple would.
They also have a bunch of embarrassing parenting moments, like Mitch revealing that he’s unfamiliar with Finding Nemo by calling Lily’s Nemo toy “Mr. Fish,” to further prove to skeptical audiences that gay parents are just like straight parents.
