Modern Family: Finding Fizbo (8x15)

A rather unremarkable episode in most every way. I wouldn't say that anything here was actively bad, but there also wasn't enough for me to really enjoy it all that much. Let's take a closer look.

Cons:

Manny has written a play, and he asks Claire, Gloria, Alex, and Haley to do a reading of it. The four characters are thinly veiled versions of the four girls, which leads to everybody getting insulted to varying degrees. I actually liked this plot thread for the moments we got with the four women, but it also had the unfortunate consequence of reminding me how aimless Manny's character is nowadays. He's writing plays now? Okay, that sounds like something Manny would do. But what does this play teach us about Manny? Nothing. It's just all about how he sees the women in his life. I'm not sure what could have been done differently, but I wanted something more substantial here.

The same thing can be said for Phil's plot. He plans a bachelor party for his dad Frank, who is getting married to Phil's childhood babysitter. Lorraine has a grown son, meaning Phil is getting a brother. Everything goes wrong at the bachelor party, as the activities Phil set up for his father are deemed too boring by Lorraine's selfish son. This leads Phil to tell his dad that he's worried about sharing him with this new family, and Frank reveals that he and the wife-to-be are planning on moving to California to be closer to Phil - and farther from Lorraine's son. Lately I've been praising Phil-centric story-lines for the fact that they are emotional, and focus on Phil's familial relationships and his enduring positive attitude and hope. For whatever reason, this plot thread just didn't get there for me. It didn't go far enough to be outrageously funny, and it didn't go deep enough to be touching.

Pros:

I did like one thing about Phil's plot, and that was the fact that Frank, Phil's father, is just honestly such a chill guy. He's really happy with all of the thoughtful activities that Phil has planned for him, but he doesn't mind his future son-in-law hijacking those plans, either. He's up for anything, and it makes him a really likable character in my book.

In the plot with the play, I liked the touching moments between the women. Alex is hiding her new relationship with Ben, but Haley encourages her to not be embarrassed about her love life. They share a hug. It was nice to look at these two and remember that they're sisters, and they're also adults who can talk about adult things. Claire and Gloria get into it about Claire being cold and unloving. Gloria wonders why after all of these years, Claire never says "I love you" to Gloria, while Gloria says it to Claire all the time. Claire admits that she's been accused of being cold in the past, and that she finds it hard to express herself. She tells Gloria that she loves her, and the sentiment is returned. The two share a hug. It's done in a way that acknowledges the cheesiness, but that still somehow works.

The thing that pushes this episode mostly into the positive sphere, despite being sort of lackluster, is the Cam and Mitchell plot thread. The return of Fizbo was never something I was hoping for, but it worked quite well here. Cam is horrified to discover that somebody has been donning his Fizbo costume with a scary mask, and terrorizing the community with minor scares. His consternation over this horrifying revelation distracts him from the all-gay bowling tournament that Cam and Mitchell's team is about to win. In the end, they discover that Fizbo was a self-sabotage - a member of their own team, the Britney Spares, has been impersonating Fizbo because she doesn't like the way Cam took over the bowling team and made everything about him.

This episode had a lot of laughs, my favorite of which was when Cam politely asks a woman in her car to close her door as he and Mitchell chase Fizbo through the dark streets: "close your door, ma'am, we're in pursuit." We have the return of Martin, who is still hung up on Jay, even though Mitchell insists that his father is as straight as they come. We have a ton of stupid yet somehow funny puns for each of the gay bowling teams. Underpinning this slap-stick humor, however, is a lovely foundation of respect and trust between Mitchell and Cam. Predictably, at first Cam is offended that Mitchell isn't taking the whole Fizbo thing as seriously as he is. But once Mitchell sees how upset Cam is, he backs him up and uses his detective skills to help crack the case.

I guess that's all I've got to say about this one. This is an episode of TV that I pretty much forgot as I was watching it. Nothing offensive or wrong, necessarily, but nothing that I'm going to be remembering or wanting to come back to watch again.

7.5/10