Gay Kiss Comes to

Following months of anticipation including a Facebook campaign, Modern Family characters Mitchell and Cameron finally kissed Wednesday night. They shared a low-key peck in the background of a scene between Jay and his daughter Claire.

The episode as a whole explored public displays of affection and the coldness Mitchell, played by Jesse Tyler Ferguson, had learned from his father Jay. However, critics of the ABC sitcom suggested the lack of same-sex affection stemmed from concern about the public's response, which Ferguson seemed to suggest in comments to Entertainment Weekly, where he said the characters were being handled “very carefully.”

“That was something that [the writers] had in the works very early on; unfortunately it’s going to look like a response to the Facebook campaign,” said Ferguson about the kiss. “Some people are complaining that it shouldn’t be a big deal and it’s being made such a big deal. The thing is, it never was even meant to be a big deal. I think when people see the episode, they’re going to understand what our plan was the whole time…. We’re handling the characters very carefully. We’re in a lot of living rooms every week and it’s fantastic. And I don’t want to scare off the people who are just getting comfortable with Cameron and Mitchell…. It’s very simple and it’s not a big deal. That’s exactly what it should be.”