What I’m Watching: Modern Family

Modern Family: Season 4, Episode 23 “Games People Play” (B-)

For the penultimate episode of the season, we have a perfectly unremarkable installment that revisits some traits and tendencies we’ve seen before from all of our characters. While it’s true that Phil has always been less present and aware of what it is his kids are capable of since Claire spends much more time at home with them, it’s less funny when Claire explicitly points out that it’s the case and waits for Phil to wake up to the sheer reality of the situation. That said, it was still entertaining to see Haley, Alex, and Luke get along long enough for things to bubble to the surface and for them all to explode with confessions about their unexpected secrets. Gloria’s ability to break into homes without being detected was an amusing minor plot point in an otherwise repetitive storyline about how Manny doesn’t always want his mother to be present in his life. The fact that he forgot to give them the invitation to the game night after they speculated for a while about why they weren’t invited was hardly satisfying, and I think it would do the show some good to focus on positive familial experiences rather than have its characters assume the worst. Cam and Mitchell proved once again that they can be the world’s most oblivious parents, so set on presuming that their daughter is going to mimic their traits that they don’t even notice when she does something genuinely and uncharacteristically nice for someone else. I do hope that the season finale reaffirms the quality of this show.