Modern Family - "Express Christmas"

Season 3, Episode 10

“It won’t be Christmas with it. It’s December 16^th.”

Here’s a question that I’ve never thought I would have to ask: Is Modern Family the sort of show that lives and dies by it’s jokes? I’ve spent so much of my writing about how the show squanders the potential or relies on clichés that I’ve never really concern myself with how particularly funny any given episode is. (Well, apart from those times when a cliché’s predictability erases any chance of surprise, and that stops an episode from being funny. I totally lay into the show for that.) Part of it is that humor is subjective, but it’s mostly because I believe that when a show has strong characters and can afford to real stories – which MF does, along with How I Met Your Mother – it can offer up something to make up for the lack of comedy. But what happens when the humor isn’t enough? Well, we get “Express Christmas”, that’s what.

It’ a shame, considering how strong the central conceit was. My parents got divorced about two and half years ago, not long after my sister got married, to man whose parents are also divorced. That’s meant that the last two holiday seasons, along with the current one, have been a litany of complicated scheduling and (in that first holiday season, anyways) hurt feelings. In that regards, I felt like tonight’s nailed the sense of difficulty that comes from living in an extended family that tried to maintains that bong between its members. (I also enjoyed the metatextual nature of the family celebrating their Christmas on the 16^th, a commentary on how early networks air Holiday episodes of their shows.)

Now, of course a strong premise isn’t enough, so I also enjoyed that the show did that thing that it so rarely seems to do these days, and split up the family by something other than clan lines. Luke and Gloria worked to find the Christmas topper in Jay’s attic. Claire and Haley go shopping. Mitch and Alex go searching for the perfect tree. Cam and Jay wrapped presents and Phil and Manny went grocery shopping.

From here, the show went a step further and built up from these set-ups. Alex and Mitch bond over their shared perfectionist streak. Phil swings by a back alley to pick up a special gift from Jay. Cam tries to share a memory with Jay, and it blows up in his face. And Gloria and Luke’s search for the tree topper crashed hilariously with Alex and Mitch’s search for the tree.

But unfortunately, as skilled as all that plotting was, we have to return to that lack of comedy. There were some strong interactions tonight – note how most of my quotes are exchanges, not single one liners – but I didn’t find any of the jokes all that strong, and nothing really made me laugh out loud like the show is capable of, even when it’s telling lazy stories. While I enjoyed the way that the stories played off each other by the time everyone got to the house, getting to that point felt a bit strained.

Of course Alex takes a perceived slight against Mitch and blows it up into something bigger than it is. Of course the episode ends with Jay and Cam bonding. Of course Phil attempt to get Jay the perfect gift – and go through with Express Christmas – goes terribly wrong, and of course Jay likes Phil’s back-up gift. (And man was Phil getting stun-gunned ridiculously broad.)

For once it felt like the storytelling was actually stronger than the jokes, but I don’t think that was the writers’ intention. The moment where Gloria realizes that Claire and Mitchell are acting out because they’re mad their mom isn’t go to be with them on Christmas, so she tries to step into the role? That was sweet, as was Jay surprising the family with fake snow. But getting there required a lot of hollow jokes, and that’s not really I ride I feel like taking again, even if the destination is so wonderful.

Quotes and Other Thoughts:

Okay, it’s also quite possible that the show teasing me with bringing back Shelley Long, and then never doing so may have also soured me on the episode a bit. Just sayin’.

And speaking of failed jokes, neither the Luke/look confusion, Luke's jokes about Manny getting kidnapped in Mexico, nor Manny's confusion of the meaning behind the word "butterball" ended up being as funny as I felt they could have been.

“She’s kind of at her best at Christmas. She makes a mean cookie.” “What other kind of cookie would she make?”

“You know, grab the wrong kind people get upset.” “You get upset.” “I’m people.”

“I have two daddies.” “He gets it, Lilly.”

“Fine, we’ll put a cork in it.” “Let it scab, Jay. Let it scab.”

“I don’t like the look of this good.” “He looks like everybody else.” “Great, you can tell that to the sketch artist.”

“And it smells like mothballs, just like Nana.”

“Never look back. Never.”