Modern Family: Winner Winner Turkey Dinner (9x07)

This episode gave me whiplash, and definitely not in the good way. There was so much going on here that none of the various plot threads had time to land!

Cons:

Usually, I like it when the whole gang is brought together for holiday episodes, and the concept behind this episode seemed sound: Jay usually singles out one family member to toast at Thanksgiving, but this year he gives the honor to Claire, Mitchell, Cam, and Phil, all of whom have made personal triumphs recently. Of course, we then learn that all of these triumphs are based on lies, and shenanigans ensue.

Actually, if the story had stuck to those four characters and their false triumphs, it might have been okay. But here are some of the other things going on in this episode: Manny is trying to get to an exclusive pre-Black Friday suit sale, Luke is failing as a babysitter and asks Manny to use Photoshop skills to cover it up, Gloria is trying to get 100,000 steps in a week on her fitness tracker, Alex is doing a study on positive vs. negative reinforcement for school, and Joe has been expelled from his school after Jay argued with his teacher over the true history of Thanksgiving.

That's a heck of a lot of information to pack into 23 or so minutes of showtime, and the episode ended up so crowded that almost none of the character beats could hit their mark. The punchlines of the various mishaps were rushed. The attempt, I think, was that each of these characters' lies would lead to the rest of them being unveiled. Like Claire taking the wrong route on a race she was running, thereby winning handily, is uncovered, and then Claire discovers that Gloria put her step tracker on Claire to help cheat at her own goal. Luke's Photoshop lie is also revealed when Manny doctors a picture of Claire running the correct route to try and prove where she really was, and so on and so forth. It reminded me of a botched version of the hilarious Las Vegas episode, where the idea is to keep a frenetic pace and show all of these tiny little story lines intersecting and nearly colliding. Unfortunately, it did not work out.

Pros:

The best of the stories was also the one that felt the least connected to the rest of the episode - Phil. While everybody else was getting tangled up in messy story threads that interwove and overlapped with little success, Phil was off in a corner trying to get over his claustrophobia so he could pull off a classic magic trick involving a phone booth filling with water. There were silly slapstick antics, and Haley being a surprisingly supportive helper, and at the end Phil actually pulled off the trick with aplomb, impressing his family. They declare him the true winner, and it was actually quite sweet.

Modern Family, even when it fails to produce a good episode, usually still manages one or two funny lines. Some highlights this week include Cam trying to state that just because the opposing football coach is a woman is no reason to root for her: "another straight person coaching football!" I also liked Phil's "I'm sort of a hero in the sustainable magic community."

There you have it. This half hour of television was too crowded to fully enjoy, unfortunately. Better luck next time.

6/10