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.
Finally, there’s Jay and Gloria’s night out, which is basically them watching a show by David Brenner. Gloria isn’t into him until they arrive, but soon learns to love his mildly interesting comedy, at which point Brenner begins making fun of Jay. He’s a bit offended at the jokes aimed his way focusing on his age, eventually provoking him to leave. Gloria joins him outside and the pair asserts their love for one another in exactly the manner you would guess. They also happen to meet Phil and Claire at the top of the escalator, where Gloria helps her step-daughter out of her jam. This is the only real point where plots come together, and it’s rather contrived even if it’s a pretty good deus ex machina—any deus ex machina that involves naked women generally gets my vote of approval.
For a show with lesser joke-writing skills, “My Funky Valentine” would have been dead in the water with these clichés. Characters end up exactly where they started at the end of the episode and there’s not much here that we haven’t seen in other shows, let alone previous episodes of Modern Family. Still, I ended up charmed by the episode despite my reservations with both the largely unliked plot-structure and the way the show repeated itself yet again. As with most recent episodes, though, it’s hard not to wonder how long the show can keep showing us what we’ve seen before without getting old.
Stray Observations:
“I was giving her a bath last night and I saw a little bit of Martin Luther King behind her ear.”
“Could you be more dramatic?” If you’re asking Cam, then the answer is always yes.
-Phil’s unwillingness to drop his persona during the escalator debacle is a subtle yet great joke, maybe my favorite in the episode.
-I watched this episode with my mom, and the moment while the credits rolled was incredibly awkward. That being said, perfectly in character for Phil and very funny.