'Modern Family' Episode to Air Tonight Draws Criticism
The No Cussing Club, an anti-profanity group, asked ABC to pull this week's episode of "Modern Family" where a toddler uses a bleeped out profanity.
"Our main goal is to stop this from happening," McKay Hatch, the 18-year-old college student who founded the Club in 2007, told The Associated Press. "If we don't, at least ABC knows that people all over the world don't want to have a 2-year-old saying the 'F-bomb' on TV."
In the episode, titled "Little Bo Bleep," which will air on Wednesday night, 2-year-old Lily shocks her parents, who are trying to prepare her to serve as a flower girl at a wedding, by using the F-word.
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Lilly, played by Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, actually says the word "fudge" during taping, but it will be bleeped on air and her mouth will be blurred to give viewers the impression that she actually said the F-word, AP reported.
"We hope they know better," Hatch told AP. Hatch wants his club members, which he estimates to be 35,000 in the U.S. and three-dozen other countries, to complain to the network.
Hatch said on Tuesday that ABC had not yet responded to him. An ABC spokeswoman later told AP the network had no comment.
"We thought it was a very natural story since, as parents, we've all been through this," Steve Levitan, the show’s creator and executive producer, told EW.com about the cursing controversy. "We are not a sexually charged show. It has a very warm tone so people accept it more. I'm sure we'll have some detractors."
Last week, Levitan told the Television Critics Association that he was "proud and excited" about the use of the F-word plot ABC was prodded to allow.
"Modern Family" received a Golden Globe Award on Sunday for best musical or comedy series and won an Emmy Award for best comedy last fall.
"If kids are accountable for their choices, then adults should be as well," including the media, Hatch told AP.
