Modern Family: He Said, She Shed (9x11)

Sometimes these people are kind of the worst to each other, aren't they?

Cons:

Claire just wants a place where she can unwind, so she petitions the HOA for permission to build a shed in the backyard. Luke and Phil wanted a batting cage, so Luke sabotages his mother by writing a fake letter. Later, Luke lies and says that Phil was the one to sabotage her because he was afraid that she'd start spending too much time in her "she shed" and their marriage would fall apart. Okay... this plot thread sucked? There were some good laughs in it, but... come on... Luke was horrible. And not just the normal amount of horrible. I can see him sabotaging things, but the fact that he then made up a lie about Phil was just one step too far. I really thought he was going to fess up, but no. Also, Claire is way too forgiving, and seems to totally buy in to the fact that Phil would lie in such a stupid way to get what he wants. That seems like a sign of a deeply broken relationship to me. Maybe I'm taking this too seriously, but... yeesh.

The same sort of thing happens with Jay and Joe. Joe is apparently really good at golfing, so Jay excitedly decides to cultivate his skills. He takes it too far and puts too much pressure on his young son, to the point where Joe has a total breakdown. This was another plot thread where I was waiting for the heartwarming conclusion - okay, so Jay takes things too far, Joe falls apart, and then Jay should have a talk with his son and maybe Joe finds a different thing that he likes to do and Jay encourages him? Nope! We end on Joe falling to pieces. We see that the two of them go back to playing hide-and-seek, their pre-golf form of entertainment... but that's it. What the heck?

Cam and Mitchell's plot didn't piss me off, and I think that's only because the unhealthiness in their relationship has been built up and feels like it's earning some actual payoff down the road. But there was still a problem with their plot thread, and that's that it lacks focus. At first I thought it was going to be about Lily's birthday party, and all of the shenanigans that you can get from a bunch of preteen girls being vicious to adult men. But we see Cam, Mitchell, and Pam freaking out about this meanness, and then there's no follow-through. So then I thought the plot thread was going to be about the shocking revelation that Cam and Pam's father left their family for a year to have an affair. Pam knew, but Cam had believed the lie that his father was off fighting in "the war." But before we can really get in to the comedic or dramatic possibilities, it turns out that instead this plot thread is about Mitchell and Cam being competitive about therapy. Cam doesn't want to go, but then in his very first session he immediately opens up and the therapist declares that he's done, and has already fixed his problem. This makes Mitchell angry, because he's been going to therapy for years and has never received such praise. That could be a plot thread all on its own, and I'm not even saying it's a bad one... but it was all cut to just one scene at the end of a thread with a lot of other underutilized elements.

Pros:

Given the length of the "cons" section, you might think I really hated this episode. But actually, there was still a lot of humor to be found here.

For example, even though I thought Luke's behavior was abhorrent, I did enjoy the dynamic duo of Phil and Luke. The fact that Luke has been discreetly "taking care of things" based on an imaginary signal from his father is just the kind of silly fun I would expect from him. The fact that Luke was able to forge a convincing letter from the HOA was also brilliant - it accurately demonstrates his odd mixture of stupidity and ingeniousness.

Manny had a funny bit about his mother never going to see him in his ribbon twirling competitions. This does seem wildly out of character for Gloria, as she has always been supportive to the point of smothering, but it was so funny to see Manny's bitterness at a years-old betrayal come to the surface. In the end, Gloria was forced to sit through Manny's performance, sans music, while Jay decided to take his turn hiding in his game with Joe to avoid watching. That made me chuckle.

Despite wishing we could have gotten more material, I did really love the scene with the therapist in Mitchell and Cam's story. The fact that Cam was able to reach a cathartic moment so quickly, while Mitchell has made very little progress, was so true to my understanding of them as characters. Cam is the overly emotional one, while Mitchell is the repressed pragmatist... and so it follows that Cam's emotions would be easy to understand and sort through, while Mitchell would need to wrestle with them for longer. The bit about the bowl of candy being a "test" was just too funny, especially when the therapist lets Cam know that he "picked the right one" at the end.

I guess what I can say about this episode is that the comedy worked, but the character stuff did not. By and large, I found myself annoyed and horrified at the actions of Luke, Phil, and Jay, and dismayed at the lack of proper resolution. I feel like this show is beginning to limp along a little bit... it's too bad, because the earlier seasons where absolute gold.

7/10