Modern Family - "Party Crasher" - Review

For a show like Modern Family, there’s usually a theme (or moral to the story) for each week’s episode. And the montage at the end of the episodes with the voiceover sometimes feels grafted onto the episode, when in fact many of those stories for the week don’t exactly fit together. In other instances, sometimes the montage (like in last week’s “New Year’s Eve”) fails to capture the theme as nicely as they could, which is the case for this week’s episode. To me it’s obvious though, it’s not “milestones” as Jay tells us at the end, but “kids”.

The series has constantly returned to the well for stories on parent-child relations to make the point of how important they are. At its heart, the show is about family and why we care about our family. We’re meant to understand that even when they’re at eachother’s throats that the Dunphy, Pritchetts, and Delgados are one big, weird, happy family. But it’s not enough to say: “Okay, this is a functional family unit that likes one another”; we have to be given proof, and much of last season failed to give me proof and then attached a sentimental moment and a voice-overed montage and simply expected me feel all warm and cuddly about it. But that’s not the case; the groundwork has to be laid out for the dust levels in the room to start suddenly rising. The series has been doing a much better job of this this season, and it’s been doing it most successfully when it confronts its parent-children relations.  

Jay and Gloria are about to have a new kid. Their story is all about what having a new kid is going to entail for life once it arrives. Manny is feeling neglected, fretting over the soon to be here baby. Jay and Gloria get to have another adventure, and Gloria thinks that this type of adventure (where they do a lot of illegal things – including stealing a cake, and illegally exiting a parking garage) won’t be happening anymore. Jay, however, lets her know that that’s simply not true. Having a baby is a new adventure, even though it’s not exactly the same as the adventures they had today. 

Sometime down the line that baby is going to be Lily, a precocious toddler stirring up trouble. Mitchell can’t figure out what’s wrong with Cam. He believes that Cam still isn’t adjusting to work. Turns out though that Cam’s doing fine at work (as his surprisingly good troupe of acapella singers prove), but feels that now his relationship with Lily is being hurt for it. Lily stages a wedding where she “marries” Mitchell, and Cam wonders why she didn’t choose him. Cam keeps accidentally hurting Lily in his attempts to feel included. Of course Cam is just going a little crazy and being a little obsessive. Well, kids can do that to you.

Much further down the road, your kid is going to be Haley. They’re going to grow up and all that baby and toddler trauma you’ve put yourself through to raise them will be in the past. But as a parent, your responsibility to your kid isn’t going to end. Haley is dating a slimey jean designer from the store she works at. Phil wants to nip it in the bud immediately, but Claire knows that if she lets this simmer for a bit that Haley will show her hand and run like hell away from this jerk. Haley eventually does, but she’s angry at her parents for not intervening and for treating her differently since she screwed up at college. Without realizing it, Phil lets her know that she’s always going to be his little girl, and nothing is going to stop him from looking out for her. 

The series parallels its stories really well when it wants to. Sometimes it’s far too blunt with these connections of people doing similar things or dealing with life events at different stages. Here it’s almost too subtle with the point. That milestone crap Jay spews out at the end only fits because the baby arrives, and on some level the Laws of Sitcom demand we’re force fed a message about how damn significant this moment is, as if we’re not already clear on that fact. What’s more interesting to me is what the forthcoming of such an event does to people. How do people react to this, and how does it cause them to reevaluate their own lives? We got that in the above three stories. Though it wasn’t Modern Family’s best or funniest work yet, it handled these stories nicely. But that’s the point the show is at in its lifespan. It’s ceased to be as consistently funny as it was when it first started, but the creative forces haven’t given up on effectively telling stories about these characters, who, when dealt with properly, are fun to spend time with. 

Stray Observations:

-Sarah Hyland and Ty Burrell have been having a great season this season. And here they totally sell the wonderful emotional moment where they admit their true feelings about Haley’s douche boyfriend. Great staging as well with the elevators. Even when the series fails to be as funny; when its still telling its stories well, it usually does some nice emotional work and this season has a lot of memorable, touching moments.

-I don’t know about everyone else, but I loved the jean related jokes: “What are you 32-34?” “What are you 36-38?”, “Just trying to get into girl’s jeans”, “I had to reach underneath your jeans”

-“We always knew there’d be a strong possibility she’d be a bad driver”

-My notes on Jay and Gloria’s illegal rumpus: “STEALING CAKE!” How does a series with such a black and white view of things make no commentary on the questionable nature of what they did? It usually skirts that line, but doesn’t cross it.  
-Jay and Gloria's new baby is here! We'll see how well the show handles this.

Grade: B-

What did everyone else think?