Modern Family – Just say no to Botox

Usually television watching is a solitary activity, during which I contemplate where my life may or may not have went wrong. Last night, however, I had my sister and my brother-in-law over. This means two things: I watched Modern Family with an audience, and I drank too much wine to actually do this review Wednesday night.

I obviously would have given this episode a positive review regardless, because it was kind of amazing. But now I have living proof that it’s not just me: after the cold open, my sister was crying, she was laughing so hard. “Is this the season finale? It’s so funny!” It wasn’t the season finale, but by God, Modern Family tapped into an irrefutable truth this week: watching other people fall down and make asses of themselves is hilarious.

Whether it’s Mitch in the pool, Claire and Phil down the hill (that’s a fun rhyme), or Jay’s melting candle face, we had plenty of opportunity to laugh at and not with a lot of folks this week. Cam’s falling into the pool was obviously hilarious, but I loved the gate conversation between Jay, Gloria and Manny. I feel like everyone has had that conversation in one form or another. “Every damn time!”

As much as I loved the slapstick in this episode, the running joke of Phil trying to make Claire have her freakout so he could go to Vegas was probably my favorite thing: “You know what’s sad? The ending of Titanic.” Of course, when Claire finally does have her freakout, it’s sad and lovely. Having your kids grow up and leave you is a fear all parents have, and they captured it beautifully.

While Phil wasn’t actually helpful, Haley surprisingly came through for Alex. As much as I was on Alex’s side at first (who doesn’t love a big “f you” speech?), Haley actually taught Alex an important lesson: everyone has their stuff. Modern Family is often touching, and this was certainly one of those moments. Some people aren’t popular, but they have a million opportunities for their future. Some may have a lot of friends and boyfriends, but are flunking out of Biology. Not to get all Oprah on you guys, but you never know what people’s lives are really like.

This episode was completely solid from beginning to end: there wasn’t a single weak minute in it, and there are definitely some special mentions that need to be given out:

• Gloria was incredible in this episode. Sofia Vergara had the best line deliveries out of anyone this week. Whether she was admonishing Jay about the Botox or asking where her bread was, everything she said cracked me up.
• The makeup team who was responsible for Jay’s face deserves an Emmy: Not only did it look horrifyingly realistic, but the way it kept on getting worse as the episode went on was above and beyond.
• Phil’s line about winning Treasurer of his high school Spanish club is going to be my new go-to whenever I do something awesome: “It was kind of a grande deal. I was up against an actual Puerto Rican.”

Clacked by Kona Gallagher
on May 19, 2011 @ 08:27 EST5EDT