If something happens, and Cam isn’t around to overreact to it, did it really happen?
Cameron, referring to blocking the removal of a favorite tree: “Sean Penn would play me in a movie about this. Or Anne Hathaway, if they wanted a female-driven vehicle.”
Mitchell: “And who would play your long-suffering partner?”
Cameron: “Julianne Moore, either way.”
This week’s Modern Family was too thematically scattered and disconnected to match the show’s usual thematically-unified brilliance.
The Dunphys
Haley starts community service as a roadside trash collector after getting kicked out of college for falling on a police officer while drunk. She seems to be unfazed by – or ignorant about – her community service when she motions to her cute new outfit (the orange hazard vest).
Alex is fed up with Haley embarrassing her – referencing a photo Haley posted to Facebook of Alex in headgear that has hundreds of likes – so decides to try to catch Haley at her worst at the community service job. She gets several good shots but a car drives by her and knocks her phone into a sewer. After rolling in the mud trying to get her phone out, Haley drives by Alex in a car with a boy she met doing community service. Now, Alex looks her worst, and Haley takes a picture of her and posts it to Facebook in a lesson of karma. It, too, has hundreds of likes, Alex contends. It wasn’t one of the girls’ most interesting plots, but it was a rare time that the writers devoted an entire storyline to them.
The Tucker-Pritchetts
Cameron is up in arms because his favorite tree in the park – which the couple calls “Treeona Elmsley” – is being cut down to make room for a new parking lot. In his dramatic way, he stages a protest by sitting up in the branches of the tree. Suddenly, he gets called to the local theater company’s production of Cats – where he is an understudy – because the primary actor can’t make the show. He tells Mitchell to take his place on the tree, which he does unwillingly, because he hates that Cam never finishes things and makes Mitchell do them instead. Then, Mitchell thinks about all the good times they had in the tree and relents, until police tell him the tree is rodent-infested, to which he demands Cam returns as soon as the show’s over. So Cam comes back, clad in a Jellicle Cat’s outfit and full makeup that would make Andrew Lloyd Webber proud. He sits on the tree until the police and crew tell him he’s won, and they’ll come back on Monday to cut down the tree. All in all, a very believable and well-written storyline for the couple.
The Pritchetts
Jay thinks Gloria has gotten stupider because of her pregnancy, so he tells Claire to take her to Costco while he takes Manny to a friend’s birthday party.
The party, dubbed the Doug-lympics, is an annual celebration for Manny’s friend Doug that involves games and playing – two areas where Manny normally fails. He doesn’t want to go, but Jay forces him.
Luke and Phil are at the party, too, and Phil is joking around with the other dads, all of whom he seems to know pretty well. Jay, feeling awkward, says that he’s leaving – to which Manny echoes back that Jay should get outside his comfort zone – so Phil introduces him to his buddies. Jay, wanting to impress the younger men, defaults to a foolproof subject – funny Phil stories. But Phil starts to get embarrassed and when challenged to a boxing match in the kids’ arena, goes all out and creams Jay in front of the whole crowd. He admits to pent-up anger and apologizes, only to overhear Manny trying to fit in with his set of kids by swapping Phil jokes. The scene was a repetition of Jay’s trite worry that he will be too old to fit in with younger parents.
Claire keeps up with Gloria as she keeps doing stupider and stupider things, such as trying to get out of the car when it’s still moving, misreading the word “dozen” as “frozen” and almost closing the trunk on Claire. But the tables turn when Costco security catches Claire with an unpaid sweatshirt that she put on when she was cold in the store and forgot to remove. Claire has a hard time justifying her accident to the security guard. The guard is about to call the police when Gloria starts screaming that her water broke, and she’s about to have her baby. He lets them off the hook apologetically and it’s only in the car speeding away to the hospital that Gloria reveals she just used a water bottle to make it appear she was in labor. It was a funny take that painted Gloria’s pregnancy as useful rather than just annoying, as it’s been painted the entire season.
What worked about this episode
Each segment was well connected and circled back to emphasize the overarching themes of each. In Alex and Haley’s cases, the theme of karma echoed throughout; in Jay and Phil’s scenes, it was the idea of fitting in; in Claire and Gloria’s, it was the importance of not undervaluing someone. Also, Lily’s sassy lines were hilarious, and hopefully a sign of great writing to come for her character.
What could have been better
The way the three plots functioned together was disappointing. There was no overall thread through the episode and it viewed like three disconnected stories instead of the usual interweaved narrative. It ended feeling unresolved, which is unusual for the show.
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