Modern Family: The Escape (9x21)

There were a couple of things in this episode that I quite enjoyed!

Cons:

Jay's sister is in the hospital after a stroke, and seems to be having problems with her memory. Jay, Claire, and Mitchell all try and take advantage of this for personal gain, but then it turns out that the old lady was just faking her befuddlement to pull one over on them. This plot thread just felt too mean-spirited to me. You had Jay and Claire trying to get material gain out of a distressed woman, which was bad enough, but then you had the light and comic plot thread of Mitchell wanting to try coming out to his aunt again, because the first time, she was super homophobic about it. That's sad! That's Mitchell wanting approval from a family member, and not being able to get it. That's having a relative who thinks you're going to hell for being who you are! I just didn't get the comedy there, and they didn't take it seriously enough for it to be a real character point.

Phil, Cam, and Gloria get grouped up a lot of times and they lament how hard it is to be married to a Pritchett, which is pretty fun... but I didn't appreciate the fact that Gloria was able to sniff out drugs where the two white people were not. Somewhere along the way, the jokes about Gloria being Colombian and growing up there have become really uncomfortable to me.

Pros:

That being said, the escape room bit was pretty fantastic. Phil, Cam, and Gloria get stuck in a room on their way to an escape room, and have to find a way to get out. There's a lot of silly physical comedy, which I love, and there's also the fact that each of them easily slips in to the stereotype of their character that their spouses said would happen when they got into an escape room. Phil is bouncing off the walls, Cam is freaking out, and Gloria is yelling. It works because we feel so comfortable with these characters that we don't question their behavior here - they are acting exactly as we would expect them to.

My favorite plot of the night belongs to Haley. She goes to dinner with Arvin's parents, but is deeply hurt when Arvin lies about her career and education to his mother. Arvin was trying to shield Haley from his mother's judgmental nature, but of course Haley is hurt that Arvin seems to be ashamed of her. Thanks to some Nerp stickers that she's been wearing on her arms to try and calm herself down, Haley ends up collapsing and going to the emergency room, where the comedy of errors begins. The hospital evidently called her emergency contacts, all of whom are boyfriends she had programmed in her phone. Andy shows up first, then Dylan, and then Arvin... even Rainer pokes his head in at the end.

I really like Arvin, honestly. It's sweet to see Haley trying to impress his parents, and even though Arvin screwed up in the moment, he came clean to his mother and rushed to Haley to apologize. The two end up confessing their love to one another, and as odd as this pairing is, I really believe in it. It was fun and silly to see Dylan and Rainer, but Andy was actually kind of hard to stomach. As much as I do truly enjoy Arvin, my face lit up when I saw Andy. I missed him. For a moment I wondered if he was going to stick around and if there was a chance for him and Haley again, but we learn that he has a girlfriend, and it seems that Andy and Haley are both happy in their current relationships. Sigh. I miss that boy. Still, I'm pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoy Arvin, even with Andy there to compare him to.

That's all I've got for now. I wasn't impressed with one of the main stories this week, but the stuff with Haley made up for it.

7.5/10