Modern Family: The Verdict (7x05)

Lots of different plot threads here - pretty much every character had something to do. I'm not sure I was  a fan of a few of the plot threads, but others were pretty cute. Let's get started.

Cons:

Claire gets to be boss for the day, since Jay is out of the office. She brings Haley and Alex with her for "bring your daughter to work day." Predictably, her day is awful. Nobody at the office wants to have her as their boss. They all insist that they wait for Jay. Things come to a head when Claire tries to make a farewell speech to a retiring employee and inadvertently prepares the speech about the wrong person. This plot thread was... uninspired. It had a lot of slapstick humor with Claire getting more and more banged up throughout the day. I rarely enjoy slapstick. Then there's Haley and Alex, who had nothing to do the whole time but cringe and look worried about Claire's antics. I think the point of this plot thread was that Claire wanted to impress her daughters, and then later they tell her that she already impresses them all the time. This was sort of a shoe-horned lesson that didn't hit the mark for me. Everything about this plot thread was predictable, too. It was no surprise that Claire's day kept getting worse and worse, and there were no twists to keep me on my toes.

There was one awkward joke when Luke, anxious to get out of community service with Phil, tries to tag along with Claire. Claire says that Luke can't come because he isn't a daughter, and then Luke says he has something he wants to talk to them about. Phil cuts him off and tells him he's not getting out of community service. Oddly enough, this is the second time they've done a "Luke is transgender" joke on Modern Family. I just... why? I don't get it. It's odd. It felt awkward and a little insensitive to me.

And it's 0 for 2 with the Dunphy's this week, because the other weak plot thread is Phil and Luke's. Phil goes with Luke, Manny, and some other guys to clean up trash in a park for community service. What a cliché way of getting community service, first of all. I don't know anybody who actually does that without going through some sort of larger organization. In any case, Phil is approached by a man who seems to know him, but who Phil cannot remember. When the man asks him for money to get a cab, Luke believes that Phil has been scammed. Phil wants to believe in the good of this stranger, but eventually he believes Luke and thinks this guy pretended to know him to get money. However, as he retaliates by filling the guy's car with garbage, this supposed scammer comes up and tells Phil that he's the doctor who delivered Luke. Oops! This plot thread didn't really offer anything new. It was funny-ish to see Phil tricked by the scammer, but then it was painfully obvious there was going to be another fake-out. And what was the point of the community service framework for this plot thread? Phil, Manny, and Luke could have just as easily been hanging out in the park for fun. It didn't make a lot of sense, and it didn't really add much other than the trash-in-the-car punch line.

Pros:

Gloria gets jury duty, and unlike every other American in the world, she's really excited about it. She wants to do her part as an American citizen. Her overzealous response gets her kicked out immediately. I loved this scene - when she tries to insist that she wants to stay on the jury, the judge tells her she can stop acting crazy - she's already gotten out of it. Another highlight was the very start of the episode, when Gloria wonders if she should tell the court that she has experience on a firing squad. Jay wonders why she says things like that, seemingly worried that it might be true. Ha! Gloria, having failed on the actual jury, ends up judging an informal case instead - a dispute between Cam and Mitchell.

Cam and Mitchell are having a party. They run into their friend, who went through a terrible breakup with his partner a few months back. This guy isn't invited to the party, since his ex-partner will be there. Mitchell, seeing how sad his friend looks, invites him on impulse. Gloria thinks there's something fishy going on, and demands to know why Mitchell wants this guy to come to the party. Mitchell admits that he knows he himself would be left behind if he and Cam ever split. Gloria, who can tell when people are lying, presses until Mitchell admits that actually he thinks Cam would be the one left behind. All of this stuff was hilarious. Gloria ends the whole dispute by saying that they'd both be likely to be left behind by their friends because of how annoying and difficult they are.

Because Gloria is off on jury duty, Jay has to go to Joe's school. It seems that the Learning Barn insists on parent volunteers so that kids can bond with their parents. Jay is grumpy and surly about being forced to volunteer, but at the end of the day Joe says it was the best day ever because his daddy was there, and asks if Jay can come back the next day. Aww! I'm all about this. Jay looked so surprised and happy when Joe said he wanted him to come back. I also liked Jay having to sit at the "feelings table" because he made fun of a kid's big ears after being called old. Lots of humor and a few sweet moments too!

So, there you have it. The Dunphys did not do so well this week, but the rest of the family had great plot threads. A middle-of-the-road sort of episode that had me shrugging at some parts, but smiling at others.

6.5/10