Modern Family: Larry's Wife (5x03)

This was a fairly cute episode. Let's go through the plots.

Gloria is worried that Joe is afflicted with her family's curse, and that that's why he's such a mean baby. Meanwhile, Jay and Manny go to see a movie, and Jay teaches Manny about getting mad and making a scene. Gloria sees the way that Jay is influencing Manny, and figures out that Joe's mean behavior isn't coming from her side of the family, after all. I liked this plot. It was probably the strongest one in the episode. I always enjoy seeing Jay and Manny bonding.

Phil has been selling houses to recently single women. He becomes a shoulder for them to cry on, but it begins to affect his life at home, as he continually forgets to help out around the house while Claire is busy with her new job. It all culminates into a funny scene where Phil gets caught with three of the different women and Claire at the grocery store. The whole thing crumbles when it becomes clear that he's been basically "cheating on" all these women with one another. Claire gets to say I told you so. This plot was sort of funny, but perhaps a bit heavy handed.

The kids of the Dunphy family, meanwhile, get caught up in a game of cards in the basement. Haley keeps losing, and the only person doing worse than her is Luke. They beg Alex to help them. She does, but while she gets her siblings back their money, she loses big in the end and is forced to go on a date with Luke's friend. Honestly, this plot felt sort of unnecessary. It didn't really flow with the other ones, for some reason. I do like hearing mention of Haley's community college, though.

And then, the plot thread that inspired the title - Cam and Mitch are planning their wedding, but to avoid fighting they decide that Cam will handle everything and Mitch will stay out of his way. This makes Mitch's OCD act up majorly, and he starts compulsively cleaning everything in his office. This culminates in his being stuck in an air vent and getting helped out by an intern.

On Cam's side of things, he gets caught in a lie about the family cat Larry, and ends up telling Lily that the cat got married and that his wife died. So, he now feels compelled to throw an elaborate cat funeral for a cat that never even existed. The entire plan gets way out of hand, and he realizes that he wants Mitch to be more involved in planning the wedding, since he can get a bit out of control on his own.

The husbands-to-be agree to work on the wedding plans together. I liked this plot pretty well. Mitch's side of it was very nice, with his growing compulsions and his escalating freak out. I guess I liked it because I have a lot of things in common with Mitch. Cam's side of it felt a bit over the top, but I did like the way his lie about the cat kept getting more and more twisted.

In all, it was an episode with some good and with some medium. I really loved the Jay/Manny/Gloria plot, and there were good things about the rest of them too.

7.5/10