Modern Family: “My Funky Valentine” (1.15)
It feels like we’re just past the season’s slate of Christmas episodes and already we’re flooded with Valentine’s Day. While holidays in reality unfortunately comprise only a week or so of our lives, in TV world they’re usually about three out of a 22-episode season. Fortunately, the first few of these tend to be the best, before shows have already drained the holiday well so many times that we know what to expect. Modern Family sees no reason to buck this trend, so fittingly “My Funky Valentine” focuses on how each of the show’s three families celebrates the holiday, each with their own 100% by-the-books happy outcome.
And there’s no more common V-day plotline than a married couple trying to rekindle their romance (for more examples see the Simpsons seasons 1-20). Claire and Phil, whose last seventeen Valentine’s Days have involved the same Italian restaurant, for once try to break out of their little rut with a night of role-playing. This leads them on a wonderfully awkward path through the evening, courtesy of Phil, who seems to just not really get it. At all. This is best expressed in his arrival at the night’s romantic, or at least interesting, dinner with Claire wearing a name tag. Things only go downhill from there, eventually resulting in a do-over after Phil spends time actually ranting about his irritation with Claire while somewhat still in character.
However much Phil’s stupidity gets in the way of things, Claire is nevertheless determined to have the night she wants, so she ignores these gaffs and comes back from the bathroom wearing only a trenchcoat. This, at least, is something that’s new to sit-coms, even if her soon becoming stuck on an escalator with this feels not just forced but also unnecessary. That being said, the motley group of people who just happened to be headed up the escalator at the moment is still hilarious, even if it’s more like re-telling a bad dream than something that could ever actually occur. So the episode’s biggest plot gets a plus for the big laughs and a minus for originality.
Conversely, Mitchell and Cam’s more original yet mostly less funny evening results from the pair agreeing to babysit Manny during the evening, who’s feeling down after a girl he wrote a poem for is told someone else wrote it. Mitchell and Cam’s bickering is pretty par for the course, but due to Cam’s scheming Manny gets his chance to tell the girl who really wrote the poem. Mitchell then lends the situation his expertise as a lawyer, which doesn’t really achieve anything but does allow him to yell “Shame!” at Manny’s adversary. Admittedly, this moment alone is only worth some pretty rote jokes until then.