An Assortment of Things
A place where I can share my thoughts, talk about things I enjoy (or dislike) and goof off.
Review for Modern Family Season 2, Episode 22 “Good Cop Bad Dog”
In this week’s episode Phil and Claire switch good cop, bad cop roles for a day. Jay listens to a terrible business proposal. And Mitchell struggles with staying home with a sick Cameron or going to a concert.
-ABC
The Good: Switching roles: Phil, I really liked Phil’s bit in this episode. I liked that Phil was put in a position to actually parent. He’s the fun dad, and most of his parenting moments revolve around him being more of a buddy to his kids then an actual father. I also liked what a struggle it was for him to put that natural inclination away and make his daugther’s do their chores. And things got even better then the girl’s try to trick their father by doing a rush job and then skipping out. And when Phil finds out he goes overboard. Becoming a cruel labor-master in response. Phil is so often paired with Luke that I really enjoy it when he’s given an opportunity to interact with his girls. It brings out new sides in all three characters. And here it was no different as the girl’s freaked out over their father’s heel-face turn in the aftermath of their deceit and Phil took bad cop parenting to new, hilarious extremes.
Highlight: Phil doing his best to hold onto his taskmaster role while trying not to throw up when Hayley yanks a tangle of hair from the bathtub drain.
Jay and Gloria standing together, Jay and Gloria are so often portrayed as playfully in competition with each other. Gloria is loud and exuberant about life and invites all kinds of situations into their life that Jay, who enjoys keeping to himself, would rather not deal with. It’s normally a tug-of-war between them to see who gets their way this week. This week started out that way, as Gloria brought a random man into their home (A common enough occurrence apparently that Jay is pleasantly dismissive of the random strangers sitting around in his house). But Gloria wants Jay to listen to the man’s business proposal and offer him some advice. Which Jay unhappily agrees too. The actual proposal is a rather terrible (and humorous) new dog training technique. When Jay initially tells the man his honest opinion (that is sucks) it leads to Gloria chastising him for his lack tact and compassion (usual stuff) only to realize later that he was right (also usual stuff), but it was the man deciding to turn his life around, and giving up his dog that led to some unexpected places this week. Gloria in all her generosity adopts the dog without consulting Jay. And before Jay can do something else with the dog, Manny comes home and believes that the dog is for him. And I was surprised and very pleased when Gloria backed up her husband when he explained that the dog wasn’t staying. Even though in the end Jay couldn’t go through with it.
Highlight: Jay arguing with the man over whether or not there were billions of dollars in dog training.
The Bad: Mitchell and Cameron’s story this week wasn’t as good I’d have liked. Don’t get me wrong, the story was interesting and a classic sit-com story. But it’s also in continuance with a trend I’ve noticed with these two lately. Cameron, who was this hilarious Jack of All Trades character in the first season. Seems to have devolved into a whining drama-queen. It’s not exactly that the characterization is wrong, Cameron has been the more dramatic of the two men since the pilot when he reenacted the opening of the Lion King with his newly adopted daughter. He’s always been prone to overreaction. But lately it has seemed like every week the story focuses on how Mitchell does something that Cameron chooses to take the wrong way and Mitchell comes off as a standoffish ass a lot in order to make Cameron’s tantrums seem a little more justified. Going forward I’d like to see some episodes with these two getting into situations where the opposing force isn’t each other. What can I say, I like it when my TV couples work together as a couple.
Highlight: The flashback to Cameron carrying Mitchell when he was sick.
The Ugly: Switching roles: Claire, another character who is becoming too one note for me. She’s always been the stickler of the Dunphy clan. But in the past it’s been attributed to her perfectionist nature and tendency to worry over small details. That’s why she and Phil are so great together. He never sweats the small stuff, and is concerned with making sure everyone is happy, whereas Claire makes sure things get done. But the last several episodes she’s been a little bit too much of a hard-ass. So the premise of the episode really had me excited to see her break out of that and have some fun with Luke and Manny. But instead of being cool fun mom, Claire gets so over concerned with making sure they have fun that she sucks all the fun out of it. This would have been a fine development if there had have been a point where she realized that she needed to relax in-order for the kids to enjoy themselves, similar to the situation in the Halloween episode earlier in the season. Instead at the end we have both Phil and Claire agreeing to stick to what they’re good at. Which I fear means even less of the fun character Claire can be when she loosens up.
Highlight: None, sorry Claire, I love you, but this wasn’t your episode.
Overall a solid episode. Lots of great bits in two and half of the the show’s plots. Only dragged down a bit by some rather two-dimensional characterization for Claire and Cameron.