Modern Family: Halloween 4: The Revenge of Rod Skyhook (8x05)

In comparing this episode with previous Modern Family Halloween specials, unfortunately it falls a little short. I mean, who can forget the haunted house episode with Gloria trying to force her voice into an American accent? However, this episode wasn't horrible, either. It was just kind of... standard.

Cons:

This show still does not know what it's doing with Alex. She stays home on Halloween while Luke is having a party, and ends up making out with her ex-boyfriend Ruben for some reason. I really wish they would send Alex back to school and let her have her own plot threads.

Cam and Mitchell's plot thread was all about Cam getting revenge on a little kid who took a whole handful of candy instead of just one piece. The kid, dressed as Darth Vader, runs away from Cam, who's dressed as Batman. I liked elements of this thread, which I'll get to in a second, but in some ways it felt overcrowded. There was this shoe-horned thing where apparently Cam was mad at Mitchell for never standing up for him, and then in the end Mitchell did stand up for him, and that sort of went nowhere. Also, Cam blames the kid for throwing an egg at him but it was really Claire, even though I have no idea when Claire had time to run over and throw eggs, since she was involved in her own plot thread. And Cam ate too much candy and had a sugar crash. All perfectly fine ideas, but unfortunately they all struggled for lack of screen time.

Pros:

However, I did love Lily in the Cam and Mitchell plot. She's always the beleaguered martyr during these little adventures with her dads, and it inevitably produces a few laughs. I liked it when Mitchell started to ask Lily a question to settle an argument with Cam, and Lily knew what he was going to say right away. I get the feeling she's going to grow up to be a mediator.

Jay, Gloria, and Joe dress up as Jesus, Mary, and Joseph respectively. The idea is that because of his name, Joe will be Joseph, even though of course as the child he really should be playing Jesus. Gloria spends the episode worried that she's being sacrilegious. This wasn't my favorite of plot threads, but I loved how convinced Jay was that his idea was right. Christians... weigh in on this one. Is it cool to dress up as Christ on Halloween? I had a Catholic friend in college who did it once. I always thought it was legit, since she herself was devoutly religious. But I'm just an ignorant atheist over here. What do I know?

Then there's Manny, who dresses up as Dalton Trumbo, complete with a bathtub. He wants to go to the cool party instead of to Luke's party, because he thinks there's a chance of finding people with more depth. But nobody at the party recognizes his costume or seems to get him. Jay is just happy that Manny didn't go to Luke's party because now he can get revenge on his Closets, Closets, Closets, Closets rival, since it's his granddaughter throwing the party.

This leads to a forked path for the plot thread. On the one hand, Jay gets his revenge in the best way possible. He "forgives" his nemesis, dressed as Jesus, knowing that he's just gotten the upper hand. (As an added plus, Earl is dressed as the Devil... so that was fun!)

And then on the other side of that, you've got Manny, who is tired of pretending that he's okay with never fitting in. Manny is a character that this show has had no idea what to do with for several seasons. He's annoying and sometimes funny, but he never has any emotional complexity or growth. In this episode, I think we finally got a hint of that. His mom always tells him that he's more interesting than his peers, that he's going to have a more interesting life. But when is that supposed to start? He's tired of being an outcast. Later, at Luke's party, he does end up meeting a girl dressed up with a table surrounding her, and the two bond over their obscure and bulky costumes. I think Gloria is right when she says that Manny will have an interesting future to look forward to... but that doesn't mean it's easy to be on the outside looking in.

The most successful plot was the Dunphy's. Luke throws a party, but it ends up being a total dud. Claire and Phil don't want to interfere and embarrass Luke, but they want to help him out. So, Phil, wearing his beaver head costume, goes into the party pretending to be a student. Meanwhile, Haley goes to the other party and tries her hand at being a promoter by talking up Luke's party. This doesn't go so well, however, because Haley ends up getting high and therefore distracted. Claire thinks of a new way to get people to go to Luke's party -- she'll be a mom. She interrupts teens making out, offers to take pictures of groups of kids doing jello shots: "what a cute way to serve jello!" and turns the music down and the lights on. The kids start leaving in droves, and end up at Luke's place. Yay!

I loved the collective family effort that went in to making Luke's party a success. It would have been predictable to have Luke's party turn in to an out of control rager, but instead they went the opposite route and had the party turn out to be a dud. That was creative and unexpected, and led to some nice moments from Phil and Claire. I liked that we brought up Haley's job as a promoter again, even if she wasn't as successful as we might have hoped. And Claire's interference was hilarious!

Best joke of the episode:

Phil, dressed as a beaver, after having slipped on spilled water: "What did the beaver say when he slipped in water?"

Mitchell: "Dam it?"

Phil: "Damn it."

That's where I'll stop. This doesn't rank at the top of my list for classic Modern Family holiday fare, but it did okay!

7.5/10