Nothing good comes from eating facon. Nothing.
Lily (pulling on an IV bag): What does this do?
Luke: I don’t know, but thanks to Obama, you’re paying for it!
One of the funniest Modern Family episodes took a sharp turn for the worse about two-thirds of the way through the episode with Haley getting kicked out of college.
Channeling Season 1’s “Up All Night,” every family wakes up at 3 a.m. to the phone ringing. It turns out Haley got arrested at college for drinking — and no one is surprised.
The Dunphys
Phil, Claire and Mitchell drive up to the college in the early morning to bail Haley out. Claire is upset with the situation, naturally, and is freaking out. She also points out that Phil never gets worked up over anything. Phil mentions several times that he would like to get waffles, but his request is never heard.
Mitchell’s there because the Dunphys needed a lawyer, to which Jay brutally asks Claire why they didn’t get a real lawyer and not one who defends pandas in court. (“That’s adorable,” Phil says.) Mitchell wants to prove his lawyer chops but ends up misinterpreting and confusing several elements of Haley’s case. The three watch a video from the police where Haley is climbing down a fire escape and, when told to put her hands up, falls from the fire escape onto a cop in a case of accidental assault.
Haley comes out of jail wearing a revealing black outfit and is told she has to go to a university hearing for her mistake. She gets ready for the hearing in the same outfit — saying that Elle Woods does the same in Legally Blonde — and Phil explodes, telling her she’s been ungrateful for everything he and Claire have done for her. Haley gets the message and goes business-casual.
However, the hearing goes poorly when Haley feels guilty and starts listing all her mistakes at the university, including dating TAs and lying on her application. As a result, she gets kicked out of college and moves back home.
The Tucker-Pritchetts
Cam comes over to stay with Alex and Luke. In a classic Cam move, he overreacts and thinks that Claire thinks he’s a horrible parent (she expressed a second of hesitation about him staying with the kids, worried about inconveniencing him), so he does everything he can to seem like the perfect parent. This includes spreading his health kick for facon (fake bacon made of soy) to the kids. It turns out that Luke is allergic to soy and has a throat-related reaction, so Cam rushes him, Alex and Lily to the hospital.
Luke gets in and his swelling goes down. Alex masquerades as a med student going on rounds in the hospital, passes out when she sees a C-section, and gets rolled into the room in a stretcher.
Cam then finds out that Claire thinks he’s a great parent and didn’t have to go through all that trouble.
The Pritchetts
Dede (Shelley Long in a recurring cameo), Jay’s ex-wife, drops by the house. Jay gets nervous because Gloria and Dede haven’t had the best relationship — flashback to episodes where Dede and Gloria thrash at each other in public — and now that Gloria’s pregnant, he’s worried the animosity might hit the roof.
While Dede is still in the house, Gloria returns. Surprisingly, they end up bonding over Jay’s lack of help with young children. Jay never helped out with the kids, Dede asserts, and Gloria, thinking about how he won’t even help pick out a stroller, agrees. Then she panics.
After Dede leaves, Jay explains that he was working when he had kids in his previous marriage, but he has much more time for the new baby now.
Why this episode worked up until a certain point and then failed
It was funny. It was fresh. It was hilariously unbelievable. The theme of three horrible events — Haley getting arrested, Luke having an awful allergic reaction, Jay’s ex-wife coming to visit — was great. Add in Cam’s panic about Claire’s impression of him, Mitchell’s panic to be a real lawyer and Gloria’s panic that Jay will never help out. This episode was on the right track to greatness.
But it crashed and burned when we find out that Haley gets kicked out of college. The show ended last season in jubilation that Haley was going to college and had a plotline targeted around the coming-of-age of moving out of the house.
Her failure because of stupid mistakes is a slap in the face for any faithful Modern Family viewer that was hoping for her success and the happiness of the characters on the show. It’s the opposite of funny to hear the message that it’s okay that she failed out of school — because as parents, Phil and Claire should be furious, knowing the value they both place on education.
How could the writers do that, especially after featuring mostly intelligent and college-educated characters on the show? It is senseless and feels a bit like betrayal.
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