Modern Family - season 2 thread (1 Viewer)

[Adam Lenhardt]

I hope they make Clive Bixby and Julianna an annual Valentine's Day tradition. The bent-over-backwards double entendres that Phil comes up with in his Bixby persona absolutely kill me.


I loved the bedroom scene at the end, too:

A) That the Lock from the last episode has liberated Phil and Claire to do it whenever they feel like it whether the kids are home or not, and

B) This exchange: ♫... Imagine me naked! ... ♫ Claire: Am I a bad enough parent to ignore that? Phil: You are. You're reeeallly bad! -- and then they go right back into it, completely ignoring the very sexually explicit "Say Anything" moment going on in front of their house.

 

[Hanson]

Let me preface by saying that I watch Modern Family every week. I LOL freqently. I like the show. But I don't love the show. The comedies I love are like Community and Parks & Rec -- smartly written shows where the writers meticulously set up every gag and premise. But Modern Family frequently exhibits lazy sitcom writing and the recycling of old gags. Case in point, Claire and Phil's "hotel room mix up". The problem with re-using this trope is that it can't happen anymore (well, it can, but you'd have to be in some fleabag motel that still uses real keys). So in the episode, Phil mistakenly picks up a stranger's keycard from the bar. But there aren't room numbers printed on the keycards for security purposes. So how did Phil make his way to the wrong room? If he went to the front desk to find out, he would have to show ID and then get a new keycard, but they wouldn't direct him to the wrong room. Okay, so maybe some careless hotel employee gave him the room number without checking ID or the hotel brazenly prints the room numbers on them. But after the woman left the bar and found out the keycard she had was not working, she would have gone to the front desk, shown ID, and gotten a new keycard, at which point the old one Phil was holding would be deactivated. So he still wouldn't have been able to get in, considering the woman was already in the bathroom when he got there. Furthermore, they telegraphed the gag by clearly showing Phil taking the wrong keycard off the bar. Yet they wrote the scene as if it were a surprise reveal that the two were in different rooms. Either the writers thought the audience would be too dumb to figure this out or they copied the formula lock stock and barrel and didn't even think about how they were writing it. I also found it lazy that they turned Gloria into a sneaky ball buster for no reason other than to have another surprise reveal. They have shown Gloria to be scheming at times, but she doesn't bust Jay's balls. And on Valentine's day to boot? One of the things I dislike about HIMYM is their recent tendency of giving the cast new character traits just to further that week's plot. That's the vibe I was getting with Sophia. Overall not one of my favorite episodes.

 

[EricW]

One of the things I dislike about HIMYM is their recent tendency of giving the cast new character traits just to further that week's plot.

RECENT tendency?!?!? aww, honey....

 

[Hanson]

It was pointed out to me that the woman was not in the bathroom but rather came through the front door. They still don't write the room numbers on the key cards.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The key card thing was definitely a throwback that no longer works in the era of key cards. I disagree when you say:

Furthermore, they telegraphed the gag by clearly showing Phil taking the wrong keycard off the bar. Yet they wrote the scene as if it were a surprise reveal that the two were in different rooms. Either the writers thought the audience would be too dumb to figure this out or they copied the formula lock stock and barrel and didn't even think about how they were writing it.

I don't think the reveal was supposed to be a surprise to the audience; the scene as written and performed is like a slow-motion car wreck -- the humor comes from knowing that the bathroom Claire's in and the bed Phil's on are in two seperate rooms, and watching them dig themselves deeper and deeper into the hole. The purpose of the editing was to build the tension: who's in the bathroom of the room Phil's in? Is someone going to walk in on Claire naked in the bathroom?


The thing with Gloria didn't bother me much, because she's always been the least defined character on the show. Basically, she's a volumptous figure and an over-the-top accent. Everything else pretty much comes out of left field. So, yes, it's a weakness with the show. But it's one that I think has been there from the beginning.

 

[Mikel_Cooperman]

Not one of the better episodes but still enjoyable.

 

[Gwon Chang]

Holy cow that was funny tonight.


Gloria doing karaoke? Incredible.

Gloria cutting hair? Incredible.

Gloria doing "air bonnies"? LOST IT.


SO funny!!!

 

[Quentin]

Seriously. She is just SO funny and talented. But, God help me, I cannot pay attention to her comic talents because I'm too busy admiring her outrageously smoking HOTNESS!!


Karaoke, funny. Hips gyrating and chest bouncing? WAY more distracting...

 

[Walter C]

Originally Posted by Quentin /forum/thread/303621/modern-family-season-2-thread#post_3784556

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The back half of season two has definitely been an upswing. I really loved tonight's episode, both for the demonstration of generally awful parenting by Phil and Claire and the more serious moments between Jay/Manny and Haley/Alex.