What I’m Watching: Modern Family

Modern Family: Season 7, Episode 16 “The Cover-Up” (C+)

When characters sit down and freely admit that they decided to lie even though they knew it was a bad idea, it’s hard to imagine the plot will head in any positive direction from there. Fortunately, Phil’s situation being compared by an unknowing Luke to the Watergate scandal was only a brief distraction, and instead Phil got to use his typical physical comedy antics to do his very best to hide from his wife the fact that he was trying to sell a house to an attractive African-American woman who fit the bill of his type. Claire catching him first worked out well for him as she was hiding her own delight at Gloria’s yoga instructor spending a lot of time on her and then ultimately making a pass at her. What I enjoyed most about that entire plotline was that Angie’s husband expressed similar feelings for Claire that Phil had shown for Angie. Lily being scared about riding a bike was understandable, and of course Cameron tried to put on a show and then hurt himself while Mitchell was sympathizing with his daughter and being concerned for her well-being. The Jay Talking video show was rather entertaining, and I like that he got so upset about his troll and went looking for him, only to discover that it was his eternal nemesis Earl. The fact that Earl wanted to disagree with him on everything but couldn’t find an issue on which they felt differently was very funny, but not quite as much as Manny’s reaction to the enormously vicious review of his performance in “The Sound of Music” that somehow got printed in a school newspaper.