Modern Family: ClosetCon '13 (5x08)

This episode gets a shrug from me. One of the plot lines was really funny, while the other two were just your basic sitcom fare. Let's take a look at each in turn.

Claire and Jay go to a closet convention, hence the title. Claire is new to the convention thing, and she's excited to attend all the panels and participate in the activities. Jay says that all the real work gets done at the bar. In addition, Jay meets up with an old friend Rita and he wants to pull a traditional prank on Claire. The plan is to put a skeleton in Claire's closet in the hotel to scare her. The two of them also have another secret - apparently years and years ago Jay tried to get rid of Phil by having Rita offer him a job out of state. Claire, however, mishears and believes that Jay and Rita had had an affair. Later in the night, Claire tries to confront her father about the affair, and Jay lets slip the truth about Phil. However, Jay then brings up the fact that Claire apparently called immigration on Gloria when she had first started dating Jay. Jay admits that he and Rita made out once, several years ago. With all the air cleared between them, they go to sleep. Claire brings the skeleton home and tries to scare Phil, but he is not fooled.

Alright, so the major problem with this plot line is the "misunderstanding" plot line. What I mean by that is basically when you have a conversation taking place and it has a double meaning, which is supposed to supply comedic effect as one character overhears and wildly misunderstands the real meaning. This has been done to death, and it didn't really offer any new comedic possibilities here. However, I did enjoy the bond between Jay and Claire, and I thought it was interesting to show that Jay really did dislike Phil so strongly in the beginning. I wonder what would happen if Phil ever found out?

Then we've got Cam and Mitch's plot. The two of them go to Cam's family farm, and Mitch is annoyed by the intensely southern way Cam is acting. When Cam's elderly grandmother shows up, Cam has to play straight, and in a panicked moment, he pretends Mitch is a simple farm hand. Mitch decides to play along and act the part at first, but when Cam's grandmother starts cooing over Lily, Cam decides to tell the truth. He tells her that Lily is her great-granddaughter, and that he is in love with Mitchell. His grandmother does not take the news well.

This plot again had the whole "misunderstanding" angle going for it, which I don't find very interesting. There's also the fact that they treated Cam's homophobic grandmother like a joke and didn't even touch on any deeper psychological feelings that Cam might be feeling after being rejected by a family member. Lily was funny though, and I do love all the funny southern jokes.

The third plot, however, was by far the best. Phil, Gloria, Alex, Haley, Luke, and Manny all plan to go to a restaurant, but disaster strikes before they can leave the house. Phil discovers Jay's secret room full of signed baseballs and model ships, and he is particularly excited about a model of Apollo 13. When it gets broken, everyone works together to fix it. They even Skype in Phil's father to consult. The entire thing was a parody of Apollo 13, and it was really funny. Meanwhile, Haley and Alex are fighting over a cute pizza delivery boy. When their hair gets tangled in a model airplane, they have to figure out how to talk to him when he delivers their pizza. In the end, Gloria frees their hair from the plane, and they make up.

This plot was a lot stronger than the other two. It was chalk full of jokes, and it also had a few surprisingly sweet moments, such as the moment between the sisters. I wish that more of the episode could have been focused on this thread. The other two were perfectly fine, but it was the stuff with Phil and the rest that really made the episode shine.

7/10