Modern Family: The Party (7x18)

This was a pretty decent episode! It knew what it wanted to be, and it accomplished its goals admirably. Let's dive in.

Cons:

There was just one moment that made me really annoyed and twitchy. Mitchell and Phil are going together to a sci fi movie, and they ask Lily if she wants to come along. Claire says she shouldn't go, because "you'll be the only girl there." I hate that. Girls are nerds too. Girls like science fiction. Science fiction wouldn't exist if it weren't for women, and many of the most famous science fiction franchises would have fizzled out if it weren't for female fandom. Gah. These kinds of jokes are old and tired and nine years of The Big Bang Theory has made me particularly sensitive to it. GIRLS LIKE NERDY THINGS TOO.

Pros:

That small (yet undeniably annoying) quibble aside, this episode was successful because it paired some unusual characters together and really explored the full comedic potential of these pairings.

Claire gets a spa weekend as a perk for her job, and decides to bring Gloria along. Mitchell and Phil are off on their movie night, and that leaves Cam and Jay to awkwardly go out to a bar and watch a wrestling match. Cam and Jay are both really nervous about this, because they tend to be weird around each other. Things do start out awkward, but when they meet a couple of guys at the bar, they start to have a good time, bro-ing out and acting like immature little kids. They end up back at Phil and Claire's house for the climax of the episode, which I'll get to in a second. In the end, Jay tells Cam that he had fun with him, and it seems that their relationship is reaching a new level. I think my favorite part of this plot thread was when Cam made some stupid joke about banging one of the other guys' sisters, and Jay just lost it laughing, delighted at the thought of the very gay Cameron Tucker using hetero smack talk. Cam was so proud of the success of his evening that he announced he'd "send a group email" to tell everybody about it later. That was pretty great, too!

Meanwhile, Claire and Gloria barely get started on their spa weekend when the fire alarm goes off back at the house, where Luke and Manny are babysitting Lily. Claire gets notified on her phone. When Gloria talks to Manny on the phone, he says they burnt a batch of cookies. The oven is broken, so Claire instantly knows something is wrong. She gets Gloria to come back to the house with her, where everything appears to be in order. Turns out, Manny and Luke were throwing a big party, but everybody hides quietly upstairs in Luke's room while Claire and Gloria look around. Gloria is convinced that Manny can do no wrong, while Claire knows that her son is up to something.

Phil and Mitchell had the cliché yet still funny plot line of getting high, and very paranoid. They each take a gummy bear with pot in it from a friend of Phil's, hoping to enhance their movie going experience. Neither has ever tried it before. When they get the notification about the fire alarm going off, they rush home, hoping to get in, check that everything is okay, and get out before the effects of the marijuana kick in forty-five minutes later. When they arrive at the house, they get roped in to helping Claire look for proof of Luke's wrongdoing. Paranoid and loopy, they manage to find the entire group of Luke's friends hiding in his bedroom. At first they decide to lie and tell Claire there's nothing going on, because they don't want to have to stick around to discipline the kids while high. However, when one of the party guests falls from the window and onto the ping pong table that Cam, Jay, and their new friends had just started using, the game is up.

There were so many hilarious things going on here. I loved the fact that Luke tried to psychoanalyze his mother to get out of trouble. He asked her why she hated herself so much that she wouldn't allow herself a weekend away. She had to invent a problem just so she could come back. That seemed to make Claire actually think about herself in a serious way, but of course the whole thing is undermined by the fact that Luke really was throwing a party, and Claire wasn't being paranoid.

Lily goes along with this party because Manny bribes her with soda. This causes her to get a sugar rush and run on the treadmill until she practically collapses. I liked the mention that Lily looks a little too comfortable taking swigs straight from the bottle, and also Mitchell's plaintive: "my baby accepted a bribe!"

High and paranoid Phil and Mitchell were great. I think the reason this worked so well is that they didn't go too far with it. Since there was a delayed kick-in, it's hard to tell when their paranoia stops being from the minor infraction of taking the pot, and starts being from the effects of the drug itself. They bleed into each other seamlessly, and it makes for a lot of comedy. The best part is when they open the door and see all of Luke and Manny's secret party guests. They close the door in the face of these bewildered kids, and try to decide, in their paranoid state, what they should do next. Later, when they go downstairs to tell Claire, they forget what they decided to do and have to stop to confer. It was also funny that nobody seemed to realize they were high, until Jay casually pointed it out.

On a more serious note, I liked how this episode forced Gloria to accept that Manny isn't a perfect obedient little boy. He has his moments of rebellion as well, and it's about time that Gloria accepted that.

The best line of the whole night goes to Claire. When she's still trying to figure out what's going on, she talks to Manny about it, trying to get him to fess up: "Someone's going down for this. Do you think it'll be the white kid? Hmmmm?" That had me cracking up!

That's all I've got for this one. It was about as solid as any episode has been this whole season of Modern Family. I'm happy to say we have a winner!

9/10