I’ve been a fan of Rachael Harris ever since The Daily Show, so I’m always pleasantly surprised when she shows up in a show or movie that I’m watching. What concerns me about her appearance on Modern Family, is that her role in The Hangover as Ed Helms‘s bitch-on-wheels girlfriend has typecast her a little bit. Sure, she didn’t tell anyone to suck her dick on Modern Family, but she did play a pretty terrifying lady.
I really enjoyed the play date storyline for a couple of reasons. One, Eric Stonestreet had the best facial expressions throughout — especially when he was trying to act casual, and two, the Pulp Fiction-esque injection scene. There was a big part of me that actually thought Mitch and Cam were going to let her inject her son. It’s such a ridiculous thing to do, that to have the audience believe it for even a second is a pretty big achievement.
Another achievement in this episode was actually managing to create an enjoyable “what are you talking about? Wait, what are you talking about?” scene. This particular brand of wacky misunderstanding is as old as the sitcom itself, and usually just makes me roll my eyes and count down the seconds until the next scene. However, Gloria and Claire’s cupcake/sex conversation cracked me up. Again, I think it was the facial expressions that did it for me. In this case Ty Burrell’s near-fainting spell.
The three Dunphy kids working through their trauma was also a highlight. “Whatever it was, it looked like dad was winning.” They banded together over a common evil and headed to the gas station. The scene there, in which they kind of came to terms with the horrors they saw was actually pretty sweet. It’s nice that they appreciate the fact that their parents don’t fight all of the time, and that as horrible as walking in on them was, at least they still love each other.
Of course, now the Dunphy kids have the extra trauma of the noise the door lock makes, but all in all everyone is going to be okay.
Clacked by Kona Gallagher 
on Jan 20, 2011 @ 10:30 EST5EDT
