Modern Family: Sex, Lies and Kickball (9x04)

Yeah... Not a winner.

Cons:

The most uncomfortable of the plot threads belongs to Alex and her parents. Basically, Claire makes jokes about Ben, and Alex decides to retaliate by using an erotic paint kit, and leaves the resulting painting for Claire and Phil to find. Claire decides to call Alex's bluff by framing and hanging the picture in the dining room. This leads to a conversation where Claire realizes that she is mocking Alex's boyfriend in the same way that Jay always mocked Phil, and that it's wrong. Alex admits that she and Ben faked the painting, since Ben was too nervous to perform.

Modern Family has always been a bit of a sexless show. There have been moments that delved into the fun role-playing side of Phil and Claire, but other than that, there isn't much exploration of the rest of the family and their sex lives. I never really gave it much thought, but now I'm wishing the show had decided to steer clear of this topic. What a creepy, creepy exchange between Alex and Claire. I'm honestly okay with the idea of exploring boundaries between an adult woman and her parents, when it comes to boyfriends and the like. There could be a good story in there somewhere. But this? Ew...

Gloria and Jay's plot thread had a lot of good moments, but one or two that just had me rolling my eyes. Jay's best friend Shorty is back from Costa Rica. Gloria immediately latches on to him as a replacement for Manny, while Jay jealously guards his friendship with Shorty and laments that he seems to be pulling away. The good in this story outweighs the bad, but I hated how Gloria kept making fun of Jay for calling Shorty his "best friend." I had no idea that that term was weighted down with any sort of bullshit stereotypes. At the end, when Jay overhears young women calling each other "best friend," he realizes why it's weird. Except - oh, wait - it's not weird at all. Way to add baggage to a term that is totally innocuous and innocent. Sheesh.

Pros:

That said, I did like the idea of Gloria grasping on to Shorty as a Manny replacement. It's such a Gloria-ish thing to do. I also like the fact that Jay is willing to be a little bit more emotionally vulnerable than we typically see him. He feels hurt by his friend and is able to talk about it in a mostly mature way. They end up sharing a hug by the end of the episode, which I thought was sweet.

Cam and Mitchell spent the episode not bickering with each other, which I thought was a nice change. Turns out, their friend Pepper and his husband whose name I keep forgetting have adopted a son named Lionel. They think that their friends are suppressing Lionel's love of sports, etc. so they intervene. Turns out in the end, Lionel likes the snobbish lifestyle he now leads with his new parents, and Cam and Mitchell probably shouldn't have stuck their noses into somebody else's business.

There was nothing particularly enlightening or brilliant about this plot thread, but it had a good mix of visual humor and funny lines, and had a good twist there at the end, with Lionel actually liking his dads' way of life. Lily got a couple of her famous acidic barbs in for good measure, and in the end she gets what she wants - horseback riding lessons!

I guess I'll end the review here. I was really put off by Alex and Claire's plot thread, and I don't think that's what they were going for. The rest of the episode didn't offer me anything good enough to offset that entirely.

6.5/10