Modern Family: Sarge & Pea (8x11)

This episode had two really solid plot lines that could have been deeply emotional and had a good payoff, but they were rushed. It's a shame, because I saw a lot of promise, here.

Cons:

Cam, Haley, and Alex had a plot thread that failed to capitalize on its potential. Basically, Cam is pissed at a woman for standing up and filming her son during a dance recital, blocking Cam's view of Lily's solo. He later sees the woman at a coffee shop where Alex works. Haley is there hanging out. Cam poses as the woman's blind date to try and get information out of her, while Haley pretends to be the woman when the actual blind date shows up. The other two plot threads in this episode were about family relationships and the difficulty of navigating a parent/child bond. But this one was played for cheap laughs, even when the woman reveals that her son is always picked on, and dance is the only time he's ever himself.

Haley going on the blind date with the random guy was not as funny as they wanted it to be, either. Alex didn't even act like Alex. She makes one disparaging comment about her own fate as a barista, but nothing other than that. Are they ever going to give her a purpose in this show again?

Like I said, this episode was so crowded that a lot of the emotional stuff didn't have time to breathe. For example, Phil and Luke have this great moment when Luke yells at his dad for always encouraging him, because it puts a lot of pressure on him to succeed. We see Phil and Gloria talk about this later, and we see Luke and Manny talk about being scared of going to college, both of which are great scenes... but we don't see father and son have a reconciliation and talk about the soon to be changing dynamic in their relationship. That was a missed opportunity.

Pros:

But like I said, the setups here had a lot of promise, and just because they weren't totally capitalized upon, doesn't mean the episode was a failure. There were a couple of funny jokes in Cam's plot thread, especially the parts where Alex kept slipping information to Haley via napkins so she wouldn't blow her cover.

Gloria spends the episode pranking Manny to make him ready to face college, while Phil encourages Luke to take up a bell-ringing class, all while the four of them are on a college tour together. This is Manny's safety school, and it's a reach for Luke, which puts some strain on Luke's confidence. Gloria and Phil both lament the challenges of their boys growing up, while Manny and Luke admit to each other that they've both only applied to this school because it's a place they have a chance of going together, which would make the whole thing a little less scary. I loved the moment when Phil and Luke are trying to have a conversation in the pauses between the bells ringing. And I loved Manny admitting that he wanted the comfort of having Luke around. Sometimes it feels like Luke's insecurities are a one-way street, but Manny has his own hangups.

Surprisingly, the real winner plot thread of the night was the one with Claire, Mitchell, Jay and DeDe, their mother. They are all attending a wedding together. This is one of those plot threads where the setup is actually rather weak - we never see the bride or groom, we don't know why Claire and Mitchell's spouses aren't in attendance, and the fact that they are at a wedding at all seems totally inconsequential to the plot. But somehow it works really well. Claire and Mitchell are prepared to spend the night running interference between their parents, sure that things will devolve into arguing. Instead, the two get along very well, causing Mitchell and Claire to get upset. Why couldn't their parents have been this loving and connected when they were a nuclear family?

This leads to Jay and DeDe apologizing to their grown children, saying that they stayed together back then for the sake of the kids, but they know now they did the wrong thing. Jay and DeDe are both remarried and living adult, mature lives. They can reconcile in their own way. It was nice to see them reminisce about the past, while still knowing that their relationship would remain in the past. And Claire and Mitchell got some emotional catharsis by getting a genuine apology from mom and dad!

Joke highlight of the week: Gloria is talking about all the things she's accomplished in her life, and one of them she casually throws in is that she won Star Search. Phil just looks at the camera slightly when she says that. The comedic timing was just... superb.

That's where I'll stop. I think I'm harsh on this episode because I see what it might have been. For what we got, it was a middle-of-the-road sort of thing.

7/10