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Modern Family
The Musical Man
Original Air Date: Apr 13, 2011
Karen Belgrad – Associate Editor
karenbelgrad
@thetwocentscorp.com
Modern Family returned after a brief absence tonight with a new episode that ran the gamut of subjects from advertising to middle school productions to … cancer.
The show isn’t quite in the dreaded sophomore slump, but it is walking along the edge of it. So let’s recap and review what went on tonight and discuss what the show can do to right itself.
Jay’s brother Donny pays a visit: Jay’s never-before-mentioned sibling, Donny (played by guest star Jonathan Banks, who will always be Gheorge Comaneci in the made-for-TV classic Nadia), pops into town for a visit. The two have a classic television sibling relationship full of broken chair type pranks and brawling, but no real communication. At Gloria’s urging, Jay tries to have a meaningful talk with his brother, but is greatly chagrined to learn Donny is recovering from prostate cancer. He goes soft on Donny until Donny calls him on it. Then Jay socks Donny in the gut.
This was a pretty cliché story for Modern Family. We’ve seen the estranged relative with the dark secret on a million shows before and this didn’t bring anything new to the table. I’m always happy to have a Jay storyline that doesn’t involve him mocking Gloria, but the pay-off for this felt so dark that the comedic value was just lacking.
Cam produces an middle school play: Cam sabotaged his way into being the musical directory of Manny and Luke’s middle school play. He reworks it into a complex “Musical Trip Around The World”. The plot had some of the best dialogue of the night (I’ll list some below), but it really came down to yet another storyline of Cam being overdramatic and Mitchell rolling his eyes at him. Yes, this time Cam called Mitchell on it and asked him to be supportive, but that just meant that Mitchell rolled his eyes out of Cam’s eyeshot. I’d really, really like for them to give them a story line that didn’t follow the same path all the time. In the end, the play is an unmitigated disaster when scenery tips over and the “We Love The World” signage becomes “We Love The Word” with an unfortunately placed “F”. The only saving grace of the story was the quippy one-liners, some of my favorites being:
“Why do you have to throw a wet blanket on my dreams?” “ I do not. “ You do it all the time. And you know what I end up with? Wet dreams. I heard it as soon as I said it, just leave it alone.”
“Pear, brie, and jambon” (aka Cam’s idea of PB&J)
“Years from now some of these children will still be talking about the way I Sondheim-ized them.”
Phil gets a new ad campaingn: The Dunphy clan is shocked when Haley gets average scores on her SAT exams. However, Claire stresses when Haley announces she may not even want to go to college. Claire and Haley take off for a day of driving in the family minivan which is decked out with Phil’s new ad wrap for his realty company. Unfortunately, the ad is more wrapped than planned, leaving the side of the vehicle with Claire’s photo with the tagline “I Can’t Be Satisfied” and Haley’s with “Let Me Make Your Dreams Come True”. The women drive around town, getting honked at, while Claire waxes poetically about college to Haley and, in turn, she becomes nostalgic for the experience. Before Phil realizes the error, he does have a great phone moment.
Phil has 19 missed calls, answers one from what he thinks is a prospective real estate client “looking for the little one”, but offers up “older one with a lot of character”, but he’s not sure if “the carpet matches the drapes” as he hasn’t checked in a while. The caller offers to take both of them and Phil assumes the caller is planning to “flip one.” Asks if he can call back and set up and appointment so he can give them both a “good scrubbing.” Very proud of himself until Alex shows him photo of the van. “I guess I’ll be seeing you Wednesdays and every other weekend.”
When Claire and Haley see the van, they are predictably mortified, but Claire is appeased to learn that the majority of calls were looking for the “hot blonde.” It gives her back a little feeling of still having “it.” The story line could have been a miss, save for the awesome combination of ignorance and ineptitude that Ty Burrell brought to Phil tonight. It was definitely more of an individual performance than anything else as he sold that plot like a flappable house.
In a closing note, if you were Emma, would you go for mature Manny or dinosaur armed Luke?
Well, those are my TwoCents! With a handful of episodes left in the second season, I’m crossing my fingers and toes for more consistent and humorous episodes to come our way. But what are your TwoCents? Share your comments and feedback below!
TheTwoCents 
“We love the F word.” HILARIOUS.
I would go for Luke. He acts his age, unlike Manny who is a 60 year old stuck in a kid’s body. And not a hot one at that. LOL.
This episode was so-so for me. I thought the musical part was meh, the Phil-wrapping-the-car shtick was bleh and Jay and his brother was bizarre.
But I still laughed. 🙂
Jay’s never-before-mentioned sibling was actually mentioned before – Jay talks with him on the phone. It was in the penultimate episode from the first series “Hawaii”.