I've decided that I'm going to start commenting on episodes of Modern Family. Since Modern Family is a comedy, there isn't much to analyze and make predictions about like there can be with dramas, I'll just be posting my thoughts on the episodes. Anyway, here are my thought's on last week’s episode 2.17 "Two Monkeys and a Panda".
All in all, I thought that this episode was very different from all of the previous episodes of Modern Family in the sense that it dealt with some serious issues, but it still managed to be pretty funny.
My favorite storyline was definitely Mitchell and Cameron's storyline where Cameron was making a book for Lily about her adoption and discovers that Mitchell made a mistake filling out Lily's adoption paperwork and writing her name on the documents. Instead of writing her name as Lily Tucker-Pritchett, he wrote it as Lily Tucker Pritchett, making Tucker her middle name. I loved it when Cameron got mad and told Mitchell that he thought he did it intentionally to give her his (Mitchell's) last name "Top billing" as Cameron put it. That made me laugh really hard. :) I also thought it was pretty funny when Cameron clapped Lily's hands together every time he said the word "adoption" to help her have a positive association with the word since he had watched an episode of Oprah that had a girl who didn't find out she was adopted until she was sixteen and was so devastated that she ran away from home and became a stripper.
We also learned that Mitchell was initially the calm one when they were preparing to bring Lily home and Cameron was the one who was completely freaking out about the adoption, which is different from the way things were when they brought Lily home in the pilot, with Mitchell being the one who was very nervous about the adoption and Cameron was the calm one. I loved the scenes where they showed Cameron practically having a meltdown as they did everything around the house to prepare for when they brought Lily home. Eric Stonestreet was hilarious in those scenes. :)
In the end, Mitchell admits that he did intentionally fill out the paperwork that way, because he was afraid that Cameron would decide that he couldn't handle being a dad and would walk out on them both. If that happened, Mitchell didn't want Lily to have the name of the man that had left them both. Mitchell also said that he made a few adjustments to Cameron's story that he had written for Lily, and he read the story to both Cameron and Lily. When he finished reading the story that ended with the word “adopted”, Lily clapped her hands all on her own. Mitchell, Cameron and Lily had a group hug over the fact Cameron had been the one to teach her that. I found that moment very sweet and touching, and it reminded me of why I love Cameron and Mitchell so much as a couple. :)
Also, Mitchell said that he had called a lawyer to fix the mistake that he had made on Lily’s adoption certificate. We also learned that only Mitchell’s name is on the deed of their house, which Mitchell said that he would also fix.
I thought that the Jay and Gloria storyline was pretty funny too even though it dealt with a somewhat serious subject, the fact that Jay will most likely die long before Gloria and that she might get remarried to someone else after he dies. This was something that I’ve constantly thought about when I’m watching the show. The whole subject came up after Jay decided to buy two burial plots inside a crypt because he had had a friend that recently died and felt like he needed to make preparations for when he died. Gloria didn’t like the fact that Jay wanted to have their bodies placed in drawers when they die, she believed that people should be buried in the ground when they died.
As she was yelling at Jay for wanting to have their bodies buried this way, they ran into a couple that was checking out their burial plots, They also told Jay and Gloria that they like to meet the people that will be in the burial plots near theirs’. They also pointed out that given the fact that Jay is significantly older than Gloria, he would probably die before Gloria, so she would probably remarry and sell her burial plot to someone else and than they (the couple) would be buried next to a complete stranger. I personally thought that the whole thing with the couple wanting to know the people that they are going to be buried next to was beyond weird. After all, they’ll be dead. It’s not like they’ll be throwing dinner parties for the other people in crypt. As long as they are buried next to each other, what does it matter who else they are buried next to?
Of course, the couple asking them about that made Jay think a lot about the possibility of Gloria marrying someone else after he dies. He always figured that he was Gloria’s soul mate and any guy she might marry after him would just be “some putz” as he put it. Now he was starting to worry that he might be the “putz” Gloria married. In the end, Manny told him that when Gloria and his father, Javier, got divorced, men everywhere were chasing after her and were even proposing to her from moving cars. (That really made me laugh.) Manny said that when he (Jay) came around, he didn’t think that he had a chance at winning Gloria over. He commented that Jay was always so nervous and sweaty, that he felt sorry for him, which Jay said was because he had to climb three flights of stairs to get to Gloria’s old apartment. Manny also told Jay that it was during his first fight with Gloria that Gloria realized that Jay was the man that she was meant to be with, because had finally met her match. This made Jay feel better. I love how Jay asked Manny what he thought of him at first, and Manny told him that he didn’t even bother to learn Jay’s name for the first month that he and Gloria were dating.
I also loved the parts where he told Jay that he was dating a younger woman like Jay did. (She was 13 months younger than Manny.) In the end, Manny said that things didn’t work out with them, because Manny made a joke that went completely over her head.
In the end, Jay told Gloria that he was okay marrying someone else after he’s gone, which she responded by saying, “ I know.” Jay also gave her a coffee tin and told her that he wanted her to have him cremated and his ashes put in the can and the can put on the living room mantle when he dies. In a couch interview, Jay says he wants her to do this, because he figures it’ll drive any “putz” Gloria marries after he’s gone crazy and laughs thinking about it.
Phil went to the spa, because he and Claire had gotten some gift certificates for a day at the spa at a charity event. He asked Claire to join him, but she was really busy with things at home. I love when Phil said that if they didn’t use the spa certificates soon, then all of their money would just go charity. I laughed really hard when Phil said that. :)
Hailey and Alex were fighting because Alex borrowed Hailey’s favorite shirt. Hailey was worried that Alex would ruin the shirt somehow, and Alex ended up accidentally ripping it when it got caught on the front door while Alex was walking out the house. Claire decided to go buy Hailey a new sweater, but she ended up having to go to a bunch of different stores to find the exact same sweater that Hailey had. She ended up finding it, but she had to grab it off of the store manaquin when nobody was looking. She realized that the security tag was still on the sweater and she ended up staining the new sweater when she was trying to take the security tag off just as Hailey got home.
Meanwhile, Phil got advice on how to be a better husband from several women who were also at the spa. I love how just as Phil was starting to figure out what he should say to Claire when she’s upset, he got all confused again after they told him he should turn off the TV when Claire tells him it’s too loud and he had thought that he should just turn it down. That was hilarious. I also loved the bit of reversing the gender roles that the writers did between Phil and Claire when Phil gets home from the spa and he asks Claire if she notices anything different about him and she tells him she doesn’t because she’s busy dealing with Hailey and Alex, which hurts Phil’s feelings.
All in all, I loved this episode for the most part. The only thing that I didn’t like about it was Claire’s storyline with Alex and Hailey. I just found it kind of boring since Alex and Hailey’s fight was over Alex wearing Hailey’s sweater. I probably would have liked that storyline more if their fight had been over something more than just a sweater. I don’t think their fight needed to be over something catastrophic, just something bigger than a sweater.
That being said, I give this episode a rating of an A-.
