What I’m Watching: Modern Family

Modern Family: Season 7, Episode 13 “Thunk in the Trunk” (C)

This show never bothers me so much as when it tries way too hard to be clever by alluding to something else with one of its plotlines. There were two extreme instances of that in this episode. Gloria was predictably oblivious to the fact that the life-size cutout of her in the supermarket might lead to people posing in inappropriate ways with it and make both Jay and Manny feel uncomfortable. The way that Jay and Manny were talking about it like it was a murder and trying to get rid of the evidence was almost immediately irritating, and not terribly funny at that. I also wasn’t terribly fond of Phil realizing that he is now just one of the wives to Claire’s high-powered male executive, a metaphor that didn’t do much for me. Leave it to Cameron, an already nosy and extravagant guy, to be saddled with some very suspicious new tenants who couldn’t have possibly been doing anything near as bad as what he thought they might be doing. That they were restoring figurines and collecting them was a bit strange and specific, and Mitchell toppling every single one of them was truly unfortunate and unfunny. Without any of the children aside from Manny and Lily in this episode, there wasn’t really any saving grace. I’d like to enjoy this show, but episodes like this just represent everything that I think is lacking at this point so many seasons in. I can’t imagine the recently-commissioned season eight will bring anything more promising.