Modern Family: Thunk in the Trunk (7x13)

Eh. This episode just didn't provide anything new. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't memorable.

Cons:

Let's just go through each of the three plots, because none of them deserves to go under the "pros" section.

Claire has started her new job, and Phil is starting to feel like a neglected housewife. In the end, Phil demands respect from Claire, and Claire reveals that her new job is enormously stressful. She's scared of being unable to fill her father's footsteps. Phil encourages her and gives her the confidence she needs, and she thanks him for being there for her during this transition.

Okay, didn't we already deal with Claire's nerves about her new job? I thought we might actually get to see Claire doing her job, but instead this week we get a lot of tired jokes about how Phil is the housewife and Claire is the boss of their relationship. This is absolutely nothing new for either of the characters.

Mitchell and Cam are dealing with strange tenants in the upstairs room. Cam gets paranoid, thinking that maybe, given the oddness of three grown people renting a room together, somebody is being kidnapped or something strange is going on. Mitchell gets paranoid too, and he sneaks up to their room. Turns out, the three of them are in town for some sort of figurine convention, and there was nothing fishy going on at all. Mitchell ends up knocking over and breaking all their figurines, though, and they have to replace them.

See, this plot thread also covers old ground. I genuinely like the jokes that come from Mitchell and Cam dealing with weird tenants, but only if the weird tenants are actually funny. The punch-line about the figurines fell seriously flat.

Then there's Gloria and Jay. Their plot thread involves Gloria selling her sauce at the grocery store, with a life-sized cardboard cutout of Gloria blowing kisses as the advertisement. Jay gets jealous of all the guys ogling the fake Gloria, and so he takes the cutout. He and Manny then work to destroy it before Gloria finds out. She thinks another sauce maker has stolen her advertisement, and vows revenge. Jay then comes forward and admits that it was him, and that he has more time to be jealous now that he's retired. Gloria tells Jay it's okay to be protective of her.

Again, nothing new. Jay is jealous because people are looking at Gloria? Gee, I don't think that joke has ever been made before! And the cardboard cutout wasn't even particularly scandalous.

Pros:

I know I just insulted all three of the plot threads, but fortunately all three of them had some really funny jokes to pull this episode out of utter monotony. Basically, while I didn't like the setups or the stories, there were some decently amusing things going on within those setups and stories.

In Claire's plot, I loved the joke about how she was now a powerful white male. She said she loved it, and she could totally understand why powerful white men don't want other people to have what they have. The joke comes full circle at the end, when she confesses to Phil that she's scared of being the boss, and spends every moment afraid of being discovered as a fraud. She really is a powerful white male! I also liked seeing Phil on the hover board. He got a lot of mileage out of that one.

Mitchell and Cam's plot thread was the worst dud of the night, but I did enjoy Cam's initial paranoia. The guests upstairs were a married couple and a third guy named Tommy. Cam was trying to figure out if Tommy was their captive, and why he only had one name. Those moments were pretty great! Unfortunately, from that point on the plot thread lost momentum and started relying on silly physical gags.

Jay and Gloria's plot thread had the strongest moments of humor in the whole episode. They ran an ongoing gag about how Jay and Manny had to dispose of the cardboard cutout as if it were an actual body. Jay tries to run it over and drown it, but nothing will take it down. At one point, Manny wrestles with the "captive" in the trunk of the car as Jay turns the music up in the front seat to keep Gloria from hearing. They finally defeat the cutout with the shredder, but the head gets stuck, and then grotesquely ripped off and hidden in a box by Jay. All of those moments had me laughing. If only the premise around them had been stronger...

Well, there you have it. This was not a great episode, or even a very good one. It didn't do anything insultingly bad or wrong, but I just didn't enjoy myself while watching it.

6.5/10