Modern Family: Strangers in the Night (6x09)

Quite a few funny one-liners in this episode. I'll try to remember a few of them to quote for you. In all, this isn't an episode I'll be remembering particularly well, but I did have fun while I was watching it.

A white rose is delivered to the Dunphy house, and Alex is offended that nobody thinks the rose could be for her. She tells her family that she has a boyfriend, but Claire, Haley, and Luke all think that Alex is just making up this boyfriend. However, it turns out he's real, but that he is moving to Africa with his family. The Dunphys think this is rather convenient. Later, she says she already has another date, but they continue to think she's making it up. When the boy, an ex-con with a motorcycle, shows up to take Alex out, Phil and Claire are relieved to know that Alex isn't crazy, and really does have a boy in her life. However, Phil quickly chases them outside to stop Alex from going off with such a scary and dangerous guy.

Cute. Nothing terribly outstanding, but very cute. The best part was when Phil and Claire were in Alex's room, and she was talking about her date. She kept saying things that sounded like they were being made up on the spot due to their correspondence with objects in the room. That was pretty funny. I also liked that Alex wasn't making up the boyfriend, but that everything did come across as very coincidental. Alex's boyfriend's name, for example, was Alec, so when Alex claims she has his coffee cup, Claire sees what looks like Alex's own name written on it. Pretty funny.

Jay has a party to go to for the dog of a friend. Gloria thinks the whole idea of a party for a dog is crazy, but she goes with Jay anyway. Turns out, it's a "bark"-mitzvah, and everything there is some sort of dog pun. Gloria can't stand it very long, and she goes home. Manny then encourages Gloria to come back to the party, because he thinks it's important to Jay to share this with her. Gloria comes back, but once Jay has a second to talk to Manny alone, he reveals that he wanted Gloria to storm off, so he could convince her that it was okay for them to do things separately. That way, he could get out of going to a picnic with her. Now, he has no excuse! Manny gets to stay at home and watch a movie on the TV without interruption from Jay, so Jay thinks the whole thing was Manny's plan.

This was my least favorite of the three plots, but there was nothing necessarily wrong with it. I just thought it could have been a lot funnier. Jay's love for Stella the dog is one of the funnier things about this show, but here it didn't seem to be utilized as much as at it could have been. I was missing the extra-hilarious moment in this plot thread, and it never seemed to come. The punchline, where Jay thought that Manny had orchestrated the whole thing, was pretty funny, though.

Finally, there's Cam and Mitch. They've just bought a brand new couch. It is very expensive and white, and they are obsessed with keeping it clean. They won't let Lily anywhere near it. Then, one of Mitch's coworkers tells Mitch all about her divorce. When Mitch offers to help out, she asks if she can stay at his house. Mitch tries to find a way out of it, but eventually he says yes. When Brenda arrives, she drinks a bunch of wine, and talks about how much she sweats and drips in her sleep. They try to set her up on a different couch, but she seems pretty set on sleeping on the new white couch. They give her their bed, but she comes down in the middle of the night and curls up on the couch so she can be closer to them. Mitch and Cam eventually realize that they shouldn't be prioritizing an object over a human being. They watch as Lily reads a book to Brenda to cheer her up, and realize that Lily, not the couch, is their "one nice thing."

The premise of this plot thread was a little bit weak, to be honest. It's all about a couch. However, within the plot thread were some fantastic jokes. My favorite was when the cat was sitting on the couch and Lily asked why Larry was allowed to be on the couch if she wasn't. Cam says "Larry is white," and Lily replies "Hey, you chose me." That was fantastic. The episode tag shows Cam and Mitch horrified by how many products Brenda brought over for just one night of staying with them, as they lament the social pressures girls are under to look a certain way. While they're talking about this, they're using a thousand products themselves, including "calming mister." Lots of good pun potential there.

I guess that's all I've got! Not the best episode, but not bad by any means!

7.5/10