Modern Family – Recap & Review – Moon Landing

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Modern Family
Moon Landing

Original Air Date: Feb 3, 2010

Faye O – TwoCents Senior Reviewer
faye@thetwocentscorp.com

This week’s Modern Family was fantastic! Each week, we get to learn more and more about the characters and their relationship with each other. I also love the fact that each week, each character is present and has a storyline; there’s never a week where they leave someone out in order to shine on someone else, like most other shows do with a cast this size.

This episode centered around 3 main storylines. The first was the Mitchell, Gloria, and Manny’s storyline. Gloria had been in a car accident and Jay had hired Mitchell to be her lawyer to get out of the ticket or any other fine. After getting an account of the accident from Gloria’s point of view, Manny decides to step in with his version of the story. Here we learn that it was Gloria’s fault, but she refuses to admit that she’s made the mistake or is in the wrong. In fact, she cannot even take criticism on her driving (it’s something to do with being Latino). In the end, Mitchell confronts her about this fact, and she gets very upset. She leaves for a couple minutes, then returns and apologizes for everything, since she has now realized that it was her fault. However, it turns out that in her fury, she has driven into the cupcake shop that she had just walked out of, and needs Mitchell to get her out of this one.

The second storyline was the Jay and Cameron storyline. Cameron loves racquetball, and has tried forever to get Jay to play with him. The opportunity finally arises when Mitchell is busy working on Gloria’s car accident case. Jay is less than thrilled to be doing this, since he’s been avoiding it for years. Then, while at the gym, both of the guys are getting undressed so they can change, and end up butt bumping each other. Cameron calls it a “moon landing” and Jay is extremely disturbed by this. They play a round of racquetball, and Jay loses. He blames it on the fact that he was distracted and disturbed by what had happened in the locker room. They rematch, and Jay wins this game. While in the locker room after the games, Jay accidently butt bumps who he thought was Cameron again, and tried to prove that he could laugh about it now. It turns out to not be Cameron, but this doesn’t stop Jay from repeating the act 6 or 7 times! Once he realizes that Cameron was not the one standing behind him, he runs away very fast. It was hilarious!

The third storyline was the Dunphy storyline. There is a lot going on in this story. First, Haley has broken up with Dale, her boyfriend, for being “stupid.” Alex and Luke are collecting bottles and cans to help build a new school. Phil was trying to close a real estate deal with someone thinking of backing out, while trying out a mustache since one had been drawn on his picture on a bus bench. And finally, Claire was reconnecting with an old co-worker, Valerie (played by Minnie Driver)! Things are CRAZY at home while Claire is gone. Alex and Luke collected many bottles of alcohol, and in the box they find a rat. Luke ends up in a chair in his underwear holding a bottle of Jägermeister, while Alex is trying to kill the rat. Haley is fighting with Dale, and ends up throwing his clothes out the window. Phil is using the porta-potty outside their house since their water had been turned off, and got trapped inside due to Dale’s car. While all of this is going on, Claire is having an interesting lunch with Valerie, where she learns that Valerie has nothing but pity for Claire. In desperation to show that her family is wonderful, and nothing to be pitied for, she brings Valerie home. They walk in the house and see Alex chasing a rat, Luke holding a bottle of Jägermeister in his underwear, Haley yelling at Dale and throwing his stuff out the window, and Phil trapped in a porta-potty. This is not what Claire had hoped for, and Valerie ran out very fast. As upset as Claire got, she realized that she loves her family; quirks and all, and that they truly love her. It was very funny, as well as touching.

I loved this episode and I hope that you all did too! What did you think? Leave your TwoCents in the comments!