This morning, news of a “Modern Family” episode shot entirely on Apple products broke the TV news Internet. Everyone should take a deep breath. It is pretty cool, in terms of editing and telling your story. People and families live online now, so it only makes sense to show that. But there’s also a lot of missed social engagement going on here. News orgs reporting on the episode breathlessly report that the “Modern Family” crew recreated the family’s social media presence. From Yahoo TV:
That level of detail means plenty of Easter eggs for viewers to gobble up. They created Facebook pages with fake inspirational posts, email inboxes, to-do lists, photo albums, fake web searches, articles, and more. “We got to populate it with a lot of little jokes you won’t catch on the first viewing,” Ganz said. “The crew wrote comments on Claire’s page, and we took pictures from previous episodes. On the Yahoo News page, there’s an ad for Croctopus 4, [a sequel] to a film that Claire and Phil went to see in season 2. [The search] for moms who raise their daughters’ babies [has] pictures of crew with their kids. My favorite thing was on that page as well. It is a Lifetime movie called Not Without My Daughter’s Daughter. You can read Alex’s essay to Yale. It was my satire of those essays where you try to say the least amount of information in the most words.”
I want to read that essay. And I want to see what Claire posts on Pinterest. “Broad City” has taken its characters digital presence into the real world, using Tumblr for Lincoln’s recipe blog and Trey’s workout videos. For “Modern Family,” it seems, social media and the digital aspects of the Dunphy’s lives are props, not something to be played with.
Not every show has to have an immersive social experience; it could be over done. But until I can click through a West Elm pin on Claire’s Pinterest page, save the press release. The episode airs next week, so there’s still time.