What I’m Watching: Modern Family

Modern Family: Season 4, Episode 21 “Career Day” (B)

This was a perfectly decent episode, but there was nothing particular hilarious or inventive about it. The best moment was definitely Haley asking to borrow the tooth fairy costume she had put on to help convince an unimpressed Lily, adding that she’d prefer not to reveal to Cam and Mitchell why she was requesting it. It’s rare that Haley gets involved in situations that require her to do something she doesn’t want to, and this was an entertaining aspect of an otherwise drawn-out plotline involving Cam’s accidental selection of a hundred-dollar bill. Gil Thorpe is a great nemesis for Phil, and it was unfortunate to see Phil get so flustered and miss all of the cues from his carefully-prepared video. His full support of Claire taking the job was sweet, and it was funny to see her come home furious after one day of working for him declaring that she had already quit. It would be good to see her get back to some work, but I suspect that the process itself will become an ongoing storyline now that the spark has been lit. Manny helping Jay to write his novel was amusing, though I’m not sure I bought Gloria dissecting it the moment she got home just because she wanted to give Jay a hard time. It’s just as infrequent that we see Jay actually getting invested in something, and even if he’s far from the world’s best writers, it was enjoyable to hear his ideas for the best book he never got the chance to write.

What I’m Watching: Ben and Kate

Ben and Kate: Season 1, Episode 7 “Career Day” (B+)

Here we have an instance of several plotlines that were generally uninventive and recognizable that worked quite well thanks to the efforts of the cast. Career day is a phenomenon that seems to occur more in the cinematic universe than it does in real life, inspiring characters to consider drastic life changes in order to impress young children. I’m always amused by Ben and Tommy’s business ideas, and I liked the quick summary of failed previous inventions. Their door-to-door wine idea wasn’t bad, but it seems that the sex game played by one couple got in the way of that a bit. Ben’s end-of-episode classroom talk was actually somewhat moving for its first half and then quickly went downhill after that. Despite Ben’s efforts to sniff him out, Will actually seems to be a pretty nice guy, and it’s fun to see him express almost as much awkwardness as Kate during their date. It’s hard to top her, however, as evidenced by her greeting to him when he came into her house: “Hi, I’m Will.” BJ’s passionate investigation into why the bar employees were being rude to her led to a predictable explanation – calling them by the wrong names – but it was extremely funny as a result of her inability to care or correctly acknowledge them upon learning the truth. I’m more than a bit concerned for Maddie’s well-being, since BJ seems to supervise her a lot, but it was well worth it to hear Maddie tell her that she threatened a fellow classmate and have BJ go ahead and implement her advice in her own situation right away.