Modern Family: The Future Dunphys (4x19)

I have a lot of very good things to say about this episode. I'll separate it into its three sections and we'll look at some stuff from each.

Cam, Mitch, Lily, and Gloria. This was my favorite subplot this week, which is rare. I usually only tolerate Mitch and Cam, but in this episode I thought they were great. If you've read my The Big Bang Theory reviews you'll notice I go on rants about offensive material being played off for laughs. Here's an example of funny offensiveness. Because it's not horrendously offensive, but rather playing off stereotypes and preconceived notions. 

Lily announces that she is gay, and the rest of the episode is her dads trying to deal with that. Gloria is caught up with panic that Manny will forget his Colombian heritage, and tries to force Lily to embrace her Vietnamese heritage. There were a ton of very funny jokes in here. Mitch's lines were great: "Lily is not gay, it's probably just a phase. Oh my God did I just say that? Do not tell anyone I just said that." Later, he says "See, heritage is, uh... well it's something you're born with... Oh my God, what's wrong with me?" and then later - "Honey, you're not gay. You are just confused!" All of these stereotypical responses to a parent finding out about a gay child were genius here, because Mitchell is gay. He is reacting to the news in the same way that his straight parents probably did, and it opens up a whole new facet of the experience for him. Similarly, when Gloria is talking about America's influence on her family, she says "I feel like I'm losing my children to America!" The scene in the restaurant was hilarious, and it touched on a lot of harmful stereotypes and pointed out that they were harmful. I thought it was wonderfully done.

Next we have the Jay and Manny plot. I'll admit I wasn't too interested in the general plot, because I didn't really care about Jay being poor when he was younger. However, there were touching moments in this thread, such as Jay telling Manny that he's proud of him every day. Awww. It was also sort of funny to see Manny fail at something so spectacularly, but see him handle it with maturity. It felt very true to his character.

Then you've got the Dunphys. To be honest, I wanted more from this premise. There were a lot of laughs, but somehow I thought a lot more could have been done with the idea of seeing older versions of the Dunphys. However, for what I got I was still pretty happy. The funniest parts of the episode were when Phil and Claire were calling their kids and giving them conflicting advice. Some highlights: "I don't understand - in the future I'm not pretty?" "No, you hold up okay." (Haley and Phil).  "Mom, stop cying! I know I'm not a big nerd!" (Alex to Claire). I also loved how Haley was trying to take responsibility for Luke as a mother figure, but at the end Luke says: "You're not my mom anymore!" 

On a sweeter note, it was nice to see Phil and Claire hug in relief when we find out that Claire is going to be alright.

The tag to the episode was also funny - Luke and Phil try to make a self-flipping pancake, and actually manage to succeed. While working, Phil says "pancake," and Luke says: "Don't you mean popcake?" Phil responds: "I was thinking flipjacks." Luke says "oh, of course!" And Phil says "It's okay," to his son to assure him that it's alright that he didn't think of the obvious joke. It felt very genuine and true to their relationship. I laughed!

So, overall I liked this episode a lot. It had one truly great thread and two that were still funny, even if they could have done more with them.

8/10