Modern Family: Blasts from the Past (10x12)

This episode had a good heart to it. It wasn't perfect, and some of the comedy was a bit cliche, but overall I found it pleasant to watch.

Cons:

The place where I felt the cliches were the strongest was with Dylan's hippie mom. She does a bunch of predictable "new age" stuff, talks about home birth, makes homeopathic remedies, kisses Phil and Claire both on the mouth when meeting them. It's not painfully bad or anything, but it's also not fresh or insightful. It would have been better if maybe Dylan and his mother had interacted more, so we could see how Dylan grew up and how his mom shaped him as a person. The comedy was pulling only from a general and non-specific well, instead of springing from the characters themselves. And the weird joke about her being in a sexy music video that Phil loved when he was a kid... that was bizarre and didn't really seem to go anywhere.

I also thought Manny's little moments in this episode were weird, and kind of insufferable. Suddenly we learn that he had a short fling with some girl at the library, and that he rejected her for someone else. Is he still with Sherry? These little snippets were played entirely for laughs and didn't seem to have any bearing on the rest of the story. They felt out of place. Manny is low-key the worst.

This is one of the most nit-picky comments I could possibly make, but I did notice it, so I guess I'll say something: Claire and Phil are learning to speak Italian, and we get a few moments where they speak Italian and their conversations are subtitled. The joke of course is that they get things wrong because they're not fluent. But the subtitles show perfect grammar, with just a misplaced vocabulary word here or there. From my experience, it's not vocabulary that makes a language hard to learn; it's verb conjugations, and grammatical structure, that will lead to errors. Sorry. I know that's incredibly neurotic of me to point out.

Pros:

Mitchell and Cam have a lighthearted little spat in this episode as they both get jealous of the other for looking at other men. They apparently had a very sexy night a few weeks back, and Cam realizes that Mitchell was inspired by an old Playgirl magazine, while Mitchell later realizes that Cam got worked up by looking at all the hot men at the gym. I like it when Mitchell and Cam have realistic fights that are rooted in a seemingly solid relationship. That's what we get here. There's some hurt feelings, but I think for the most part, they both know the situation is more funny than it is serious. I love that Lily took the Playgirl magazine, and the awkward talk that Cam and Mitchell try to have with her. I like they try to be good fathers to her, and that even though she's embarrassed to be having this conversation with them, she's still comfortable enough to feel no true shame.

Jay and Gloria usually have my least favorite plot thread, but this one was pretty cute. Gloria and Jay are fighting over who has the coolest ancestor to inspire Joe. Both of them have these crazy stories of their great-great uncles or whatever, who apparently did all sorts of heroic stuff. When Gloria and Manny look in to this Pritchett ancestor, they find out that rather than being an American hero at the Alamo, he actually betrayed his own side and left as a coward. Jay, in revenge, finds some dirt on Gloria's ancestor, but then he sees Joe being so excited about his history and heritage, and decides not to say anything.

This sweet little story made me realize that Jay and Gloria's stories can often be a little mean-spirited. It was nice to see a resolution like this, where Jay kept his mouth shut and let Joe have the win. Parents should do this sort of thing for their children. Also, it was fun to hear the crazy histories of Jay and Gloria's ancestors, and Manny's only funny line in the episode was when he remarked that "we're 30 seconds away from finding out they killed each other."

I do love Claire and Phil planning a fun bicycling trip in Italy. They have a solid relationship that's genuinely a pleasure to watch, and it's fun to see them get excited about big life stuff. Of course, they decide they need to stay home just in case Haley's twins come early, so they can be there for their daughter. Obviously Haley's pregnancy came as a big shock, and the circumstances are less than ideal, but Phil helps Claire to see that there are going to be good times ahead. They get to be intimately involved with the raising of their grandchildren, and that's pretty great. I also loved Phil accidentally injuring Dylan, and then wondering if he might have subconsciously wanted to hurt him. This was such a funny subversion of the expected, since Phil has always been such a big fan of Dylan.

So there you have it. I liked the genuinely loving atmosphere of these stories. It was an episode that made me understand these people as a family who really care for one another, and that felt sorely needed at this late stage of this veteran sitcom.

8/10