Modern Family

Modern Family

Episode 10: Express Christmas

By: Carlos Uribe

Modern Family is a show about a family that is supposedly modern.

Spoilers Ahoy!

When the whole family realizes their not actually going to be together for Christmas, they decide to throw an impromptu Christmas celebration on December 16^th. This meant that within hours they planned to get a tree, wrap the presents, get the Christmas decorations, and cook the food. The show split the actors up into groups to accomplish each goal, and each group ended up with different results. It ended with an ending that seemed to push the heartwarming ending, but it also still kind of earned the ending. It simply could have been a way better, and way funnier, episode than the end product that we ended up getting.

Phil and Manny are tasked with going grocery shopping for the food. They manage to accomplish this easily enough, but Phil decides to make a quick stop to buy a mint-condition baseball card for Jay. The sketchy guy raises the price on Phil on the spot and Phil doesn't have the extra dough. This ends up getting complicated when Manny, suspicious of the guy selling the card and afraid he's going to get kidnapped (the idea was planted by Luke earlier in the episode), tazers Phil. In the end, the guy leaves with the turkey and Phil ends up destroying the card as he suffers the consequences of the tazer. It was a decent enough story, and while Phil getting tazered was funny at first it simply dragged on far too long.

Cam and Jay are tasked with wrapping the already purchased gifts. Cam uses the opportunity to try and get emotionally closer to Jay, but he ends up failing at first. This causes some drama until Jay resolves it by having fake snow be blown outside the house. This makes Cam feel like he's in Missouri rather than California, and the episode tried getting the emotional ending with that scene. Cam and Jay hug and it's all rather sweet, but we've seen this plotline a hundred times with Phil before. Heck, even Phil's storyline revolved around trying to get Jay's approval, which Phil got with a different present (dog antlers).

Claire and Haley are tasked with buying some gifts along with some other stuff, but oddly enough not the food. I'm not entirely sure why, either. Anyways, Claire uses Haley's epic shopping skills to her advantage and their task is the only one which ended up going right without a hitch. There was a part where Haley apparently impersonated a Target employee, but this storyline largely fell flat. It was just too easy, and it probably sounded better on paper than what was executed. This show can do so much better.

Mitchell and Alex go shopping together to try and find the perfect tree. They do find the perfect tree, but they can't but it because Alex went on a misplaced rant. The two have to settle for a lesser tree, which is quickly demolished as two cars (Gloria's being one of the cars) run over it since the two didn't fasten it good enough. Once again, this really wasn't that funny as most of the jokes simply fell flat. Although I did think it was funny that it was Gloria who ran over the tree, and how Gloria didn't even look back.

Luke and Gloria are tasked with getting a single angel, which is apparently really important to Mitchell and Claire because they miss their mother. Their storyline had the most laughs, but it was also kind of silly. They also mess up their task since the angel ends up breaking along the way. It gets run over by the second car that ran over the Christmas tree, after Gloria accidentally threw it out of the window. My favorite part was when Gloria rediscovered the dog butler. It's honestly quite sad that the best part of the episode was a callback to a previous episode.

The show supposedly used the events to tackle the character's emotions. Mitchell and Claire had mother issues and Gloria forced them to confront it. Cam tried to get under Jay's tough exterior and succeeding. The problem is that it simply felt forced and familiar. The reason I did think the ending barely worked was because the entire family was together, because that was kind of sweet. I wouldn't list “Express Christmas” as a new Christmas classic, no matter how the show tried to make it one with it's admittedly original premise.