Modern Family: Marco Polo (6x04)

Actually... not that big of a fan. Usually, Modern Family has at least one plot line that I enjoy, but this week, not so much.

The Dunphy family's house has mold, so they have to move into a hotel room. The five of them are very cramped in the one room, and chaos quickly ensues, as they're forced to stay there for several days. Phil keeps a positive attitude, but everyone else is miserable. Eventually, Phil catches Claire opening the door to another hotel room, and learns that she's been sneaking off to stay by herself and get away from the chaos. Phil is very upset. The children, however, are just relieved to have two rooms to spread out in. Then, Alex, Haley, and Luke learn that the hotel had had vacancies all week, and that Phil made them all stay in one room like that on purpose. At first they're angry, but then they realize that Phil just wanted to spend time with them. Phil, who has been hanging out with a group of Nigerians and mourning the temporary loss of his family, is very happy to see his family embrace their time together at last, as they finally play Marco Polo with him in the hotel's pool. In the episode tag, the Nigerians show up at the door, apparently misinterpreting Phil's invitation that they should drop by sometime.

Cam is on a winning streak with the high school football team, but Mitch just can't get into it. Cam insists on all sorts of patterns and superstitions: he wears the same hat, makes sure to trip over a coffee table, purposefully forgets his keys in the house, etc. all because those things happened the first game of the season, which they won. They're now 5 and 0, and going for 6. At the game, things are going well until Mitch decides that he's going to come and watch, to support his husband. The minute Mitch turns up, Cam's team starts to lose. However, they pull off a miraculous win at the last second... only after Mitch leaves. He and Cam have a talk, and Mitch says that he knows he brings bad energy to football, because he never had good experiences with sports when he was a kid. He and Cam agree that it's okay if one of them likes football and the other one doesn't.

Jay and Gloria are shocked to discover that Manny's friend Sam is a girl - a senior girl with a car, no less... Manny has a girlfriend! Gloria is trying not to be overbearing, so she asks Jay to talk to the girl. Jay does, awkwardly. At the football game, Sam seems to be Manny's #1 cheerleader, but later, Jay catches her kissing her ex-boyfriend. He resolves not to tell Manny about it, but Sam texts Manny and breaks up with him. Manny tells Jay about it, and when Jay says he wishes he could offer a hug and it would all be fixed, Manny hugs him. Gloria sees the exchange, but she stays out of it and lets Jay handle it. Jay offers to make Manny a drink.

So, as I said, I really wasn't a fan of this one. In my opinion, there was a lot of setup here, and not very much payoff. In the Dunphy plot, for example: the idea of the family trying to live in one tiny room together is a funny one. The brief moment where we saw Alex practicing her music, Luke lifting weights, while Haley and Claire fought over the wi-fi corner was really funny. I wanted more of that quick and snappy humor, with joke after joke thrown at you from every angle. Instead, after a brief moment of this, we got a lot of Phil being an idiot, and Claire being inconsiderate. There could have been a better payoff than just simply "Phil wants to spend time with his family." Haven't we done that before?

Mitch and Cam's plot was particularly uninspired. I knew from the second it started that Mitch was going to show up and be a bad luck charm, and that he and Cam would quibble over it. While I like the idea that they decide to disagree about football, the whole thing was done without any real moments of humor. There was also a rather concerning moment, where Lily brings up getting bullied at school, and Mitch is too worried about his own stuff to even hear her. Was that supposed to be funny? Because I'm now rather worried about Lily!

The best of the three plots was the one with Manny, but here too I felt like there were some wasted opportunities. For example, why did they throw away this girlfriend plot into one episode? Haley gets a long drawn-out romance with Andy, and Manny's new love interest is introduced and then discarded all in one episode? That doesn't seem right! And yet, it had some good moments of genuine sweetness. I'm a sucker for Jay and Manny's relationship, and I thought it was sweet how, even though Gloria was concerned about Manny, Jay ended up being the one to talk to Manny about the whole thing. Also, there was moment of good humor, here, when Jay goes to talk to Sam. He ends up badly fumbling what he's trying to say, to make it almost sound like he's hitting on Sam himself. It didn't cross the line into being too creepy, but the suggestion was there, and it made me chuckle.

So, there you have it. I feel bad for not enjoying this one more... it's not that it was terrible or anything, it just didn't really get me to laugh at all.

5/10