Modern Family: New Kids on the Block (11x01)

Wow. Thirty seconds in, and there's a joke about infants being chubby. A few minutes later, and Manny is negging a woman to try and get back with her. I guess Modern Family is back.

Cons:

Sorry to start on such a negative note, but sheesh. Sometimes I forget how hit and miss this show can be with its comedy and commentary. Haley wonders why the babies are crying: "do you think they know they're chubby?" and Gloria helps her son to manipulate his ex-girlfriend, and I'm supposed to laugh? Sigh. Come on, guys.

I don't know that I laughed once watching this whole episode. Let's just go through some of the plot threads, shall we?

Jay is making a commercial for his dog bed company, and Manny's ex-girlfriend is the voice of Stella. She likes his authority as director, but then gets fed up when he makes her do too many takes of the line. This is really insulting stuff, and there was not a single laugh anywhere to be found. The only suggestion of something amusing was the idea of Jay being against Manny directing, but then Jay was barely there for the rest of it, so it was wasted.

Alex is on a research trip at the south pole and keeps video messaging her family, clearly miserable about the way things are going there. There's a recurring bit where nobody has time for her, and in the end she purposefully misinterprets words from Jay and uses them as an excuse to come home. The joke appears to be that once more Alex is on the sidelines. To me, this just re-affirms the fact that this show hasn't known what to do with Alex's character in years.

Mitchell throws away Cam's clown figurine, and Cam gets a bunch of theatre kids from the school to come in and pretend to be "at risk youth" in order to set a trap for Mitchell to confess. So here we have a story that jokes about kids who have real life problems, and reinforces the continued narrative of Cam and Mitchell being crappy partners who are always lying to each other. What fun.

Pros:

The only semi-successful plot thread was with Haley and her new babies. It wasn't the perfect story, and it didn't particularly make me laugh, but at least there were a few moments that made me smile. I liked the idea of Phil trying to put Haley to sleep so that Claire could take care of the babies unsupervised. It was cute to see Phil tricking Haley into a warm and drowsy car ride, and I love the fact that it worked, almost too well. I also liked Haley showing her parents how she used to sneak in after curfew, by jumping on the roof and entering in through the window. It was a nice moment of triumph for her as a mom, as she showed herself willing to jump into action when she was worried about her kids. And it was also funny, as it was a callback to Haley's not-so-distant days as a misbehaving teen.

While I found Mitchell and Cam's plot thread to be uninspired, I did like a couple of the individual quips. Lily's dry humor is always funny to me, and there was a moment when one of the kids said that she had to be getting home, and Cam retorted that nobody knew or cared where she was. That was so harsh that it rounded the bend and became almost funny, once the truth about these kids was revealed. I still found the general idea to be a tad distasteful, though.

I honestly can't think of anything else complimentary to say. I didn't mean to go into this season with so much negativity. I used to have fun with this show, but I'm just over it at this point. I guess we'll see what the rest of the season holds!

6/10