NO, THEY WERE NOT GOING AFTER SHIA LABOEUF: The
original casting breakdown for Modern Family suggests that while they'd written two of the parts for the performers who wound up playing them, the show could have been dramatically different (and likely not as good) with the wishlist, in particular in the Mitchell-Cameron pairing, where the wishlist is made up of a pair of performers who are both very funny, but who would
not have worked in those parts (heck, flip-flopping the originally proposed Mitchell-Cameron pairing might have worked better).