Modern Family: Playdates (7x10)

This was one of those cute middle-of-the-road episodes with nothing to complain about, and a few solid laughs. All in all, I enjoyed it.

Cons:

The weakest link in terms of plot threads was Lily and Cam's. The family boarding with Mitchell and Cam's family has a little boy about Lily's age, and Cam thinks that Lily has a crush on him. He gives her advice on flirting, but when the family comes down for dinner, it turns out that Lily has a crush on the dad, not the son. There were actually a lot of good individual laughs in this plot thread, but the setup itself was very weak. I knew from the second Cam and Lily started talking that Lily was going to like the dad instead of the son. It's one of those "misunderstanding leads to comedy" routines that feels just... lazy, or something.

Pros:

But that being said, Lily did get the funniest line of the whole episode, so her plot thread can't be judged too harshly. Cam is doing Lily's nails, and he keeps giggling about the "juxtaposition." Lily responds: "I get it, I'm Asian. hahaha. It's racist, Daddy." That was pretty priceless.

Mitchell and the Dunphy children got a lot of laughs from me this week as well. Mitchell decides to cash in his "day of fun" for his birthday, a gift lazily given to him by Haley, Alex, and Luke. The kids forgot to plan something, so they drive around aimlessly for awhile, before they find a map of where stars live in the area. They take him to what they believe to be Barbara Streisand's house, only to find out that Ray Liotta lives there now. The kids have no idea who Ray Liotta is, but he's very nice, and offers to take Mitchell over to Streisand's house. Streisand and Mitchell get to talk through the intercom, which is more of a birthday treat than Mitchell ever could have hoped for! It was sweet seeing the kids trying so hard to make Mitchell happy, even if they had forgotten to prepare for his birthday. And the Ray Liotta stuff was great. I know who he is, but I can see how a lot of people my age wouldn't. I loved how Mitchell kept repeating his full name again and again, and how Ray Liotta got annoyed that he felt the need to keep reminding them who he was. Streisand's voice-cameo was cool too!

Gloria and Jay have one of Joe's playmates over for a play date, and the parents come along. The father is old - even older than Jay - and he continually talks to Jay as if they're the same age. Jay gets more and more annoyed, but Gloria tells him to make nice. The old guy's wife is the only other older mother with a kid who goes to Joe's school, and Gloria wants to make friends with her. I liked this plot thread because while it started off relying on a bunch of jokes about Jay being old, it shifted in to something more complex by the end. It was a nice misdirect to have Gloria talk about her own anxieties with getting older. She's definitely old to be the mother of a boy as young as Joe. I enjoyed that. And the jokes about Jay being old worked pretty well, mostly because the other guy was, comically, so much older. And at the end, Jay tells him about Netflix, and it turns out the other guy is more tech savvy than Jay, because he knows about streaming and Jay doesn't. That was great!

Phil and Claire had my favorite plot thread of the night. They go out to dinner with a couple that they met on vacation. Claire tells Phil that they have to make the other couple pay, since they've paid the last three times they've gone out. When the bill comes at the end of the meal, Claire stops Phil from taking it, even though he really wants to. After hours of waiting, we finally get the truth - Phil and the other guy made a bet when they were on their vacation. Which of them could get their wife to eat more cockroaches unknowingly? Phil lost, and thus owes the other guy five meals. Both wives are furious, and vow to sneak something disgusting into their husbands' food when they least expect it.

This plot thread was the perfect example of taking a very simple idea and finding a lot of humor in it. The setup is just four people at a restaurant. The conflict is just who will pay the bill. And from there, a lot of fun things were able to happen. I loved the way Phil clearly had a crush on the husband. And there was an excellent joke when the waiter came over to say that he is leaving, and to introduce his replacement. They sat through two whole work shifts waiting for somebody to pay the bill!

That's all I've got. This was a fairly simple episode, but it hit the spot.

8/10