Modern Family - Our Children, Ourselves recap/review

The Dunphy Clan- Alex was studying too much and doing a stress-related jaw movement (Ern TOTALLY does that), so her parents worried that she wasn’t relaxing enough. They wondered who Alex got the stressed-out academic gene from, and they forced Alex to take trampoline-jumping breaks. Alex got second-place in a test at school, losing out to a kid named Sanjay with overachieving parents. Alex made a crack to Claire and Phil that she wasn’t as smart as Sanjay because her parents aren’t as smart as Sanjay’s parents. This caused Claire to question the Dunphy parents’ intelligence and education level, and both Claire and Phil felt pretty dumb. That is, until they saw that a cheesy 3-D movie called “Croctopus” was in theatres, and they decided they had to see it together. At the theatre, they ran into Sanjay’s parents. To improve her mind and show that she was sophisticated, Claire decided to go see a hoity-toity French movie with that couple, and Phil snuck off to watch Croctopus. Claire fell asleep and Phil enjoyed himself. As they walked out of the theatre, they saw Sanjay’s father having trouble with a parking ticket validating device and went to help him. Feeling superior, they then ruined it by trying to get out via a door marked “not an exit.” This was a cute moment, and this episode showed how much those two work as a couple. Their movie taste is adorable.

Jay/Gloria/Manny- Gloria tried to become friends with a couple they met while vacationing. Jay didn’t like them and decided to be upfront about it. This embarrassed Gloria, so she told the couple that Jay was getting older and losing his mind.

Mitchell/Cam/Lily- Mitchell, Cam, and Lily went shopping. Well, Mitch and Cam went shopping. Lily was stealing things. Mitchell then ran into an old high school girlfriend that he had slept with about nine years ago. He then saw her handing ice cream to a short red-headed figure and assumes that’s his son. Mitchell told Cam about his suspicions and they both acted dramatically (and hilariously). We loved Cam “needing to have his reaction.” Mitchell and Cam stopped by the girlfriend’s house to ask her about the mysterious redhead. Jumping to conclusions, they had bought a boy’s catcher’s mitt that said, “Little Slugger” on it as a gift. They met the redhead and found out that he was Tracy’s husband, a red-headed midget. The gift did not go over well. This was the strongest, funniest part of this episode. The midget thing was unexpected. We just thought he would turn out to be a different man’s child. We also liked the part where Mitchell and Cam lied about sleeping with women, using names of female characters in musicals in their lies.

Not the best episode of this show, but still funny. It was more low-key than last week, and after that frantic episode, a calmer episode was needed.

Episode grade: B-