Modern Family: "The Musical Man"

Season 2, Episode 19

An overly busy and ultimately predictable episode

Often when we talk about jokes being “telegraphed,” we are generally referring to punch lines, small jokes whose success or failure doesn’t mean much in the larger scheme of things (in less all of the little jokes are telegraphed, but that’s not the point here.) Last night’s Modern Family instead dealt with the more severe form of telegraphing – the obvious big set piece set up. I was quite obvious when Phil showed the mock-up of the ad, complete with the word “satisfied,” that we were well on our way to a string of sexual double entendres. And given the way that Mitchell was worried over Cam’s direction of the school play – and what we know about Cam as a character/plot device – it was fairly obvious that the play was going to be a disaster.

I don’t want to imply that that telegraphed set pieces will always wreck an episode, or that they were always going to wreck this one. In fact, there were small moments in each – Phil clueless-ly fielding calls, Luke hanging throughout the entire play, Mitchell running outside in order to speak all of the criticisms he had been holding inside – but bulk of this episode was devoted to these set pieces, and HOW FUNNY they were supposed to be, that a majority of the episode felt flat.

Yet there were other, potentially better storylines that could have shone brighter had they had the time that had been eaten up by the set pieces. Claire’s worries about having her best years behind her, for example, were stuffed in between jokes about the misapplied ad on the minivan, and thus robbed those moments of their emotional core. Likewise, the show seemed to be setting up a story about Manny fighting Luke for a girl’s affections – something that excited me because I always get a kick out of those characters bouncing off of one another – but then seemed to drop it entirely, this time for the sake of Cam’s play. It’s almost as if

And then there’s the plotline involving Jay and his brother Donny (Breaking Bad’s Jonathan Banks), which is something I suspect will hold up better on a repeat viewing, but didn’t seem to land on first watch. While it was admittedly more fully formed than either the Clair or Manny plot, there was something about the tonal shift from comedy to drama (for lack of a better word) that just felt off to me. Between the obvious chair-gag set-up and the similar sense of set up to the “butt as caller ID picture gag,” I couldn’t shake the feeling that either a) Donny’s cancer scare was going to be a prank or b) the butt ID picture was going to come after Jay knew about Donny’s prostate cancer, thus seeming like a mean joke, both to Donny and to the viewers. Yet the scene with the two of them outside of the school auditorium was nice enough, a new take on Jay’s familial relationships. Yet even that nice moment was overshadowed by all of the above fears, for me at least, and it unfortunately kept me from connecting to what I can rationally recognize as a well-developed emotional moment.

What did everybody else think?

Additional Thoughts:

“Did the Marlboro Man have any regrets?”

“Our baby is average!” “Medium-five!”

“Well, we took the scenic route, but we ended up in the same place.

“You see, he focused it by making it about the world.”

“You know what I end up with? Wet dreams. I heard it as soon as I said it, just leave it alone.”

“More toast, Manny?” “Why won’t you call me, Emma?” “More toast, Emma?” “Do you have to be ‘on’ all the time?”

“You know who else missed soccer practice? The cast of Rent. And now they have a Tony.”

“That’s funny because women are inferior.”

“I don’t know if the carpet matches the drapes, I haven’t checked in a while.”

“Ruben hasn’t has a bowel movement in a week….Don’t laugh, that’s how Elvis died.”

“Years from, some of these kids are still going to be talking about how I Sondheimized them!"

“I don’t care. I’ll go home with anyone!” “That’s what it should say on the van.”