Modern Family: "Family Portrait" (1.24)

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After a couple episodes of taking the show to new locations and going as far into unconventional material as it’s willing to go, Modern Family reigns things back into the homes for its season finale. It’s a fitting choice for the show, which really is more about the little, tiny irritations of life than anything else. While trips are universal, they’re a much smaller slice of our lives than the day-to-day that’s become the show’s calling card. The finale shows off what the show’s audience is most interested in, but doing so better than it has before; for the most part, “Family Portrait” succeeded.

But before I get into the specific episode, I’d like to take a few moments to talk about the season in general. It’s no secret by now that I’m frequently disappointed with Modern Family—its stellar casting and some strong early episodes had me thinking it’d be of the best comedies on the air. For me, it hasn’t really lived up to that promise, though I know many others at Paste would disagree. Still, when it’s on, the show is compelling for more reasons than almost anything else due to its realistic characters, who have been able to keep its writing’s shortcomings from becoming as large a problem as they should be. Like the last two episodes, “Family Portrait” kept to this strength and showed us everyone interacting together.

The other reason to watch Modern Family is for its moments of perfect comedic recognition, where it illustrates a moment we all recognize from our lives and creates a joke out of this. It’s this aspect that I tend to quibble with more, not that these aren’t compelling, but simply that the show fails to take things to the next level. Seinfeld was also about little universal moments we all have, but it continued stretching these things out to the point of absurdity. Modern Family is usually more subdued and is happier to simply portray a funny instance that occurs in our lives and then quietly let it resolve (sometimes without even the resolution). Nearly every episode there’s some great observation that gets made, but the show moves on without stretching itself to do something more interesting with it. The times when this isn’t the case makes the rest more disappointing.

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“Family Portrait” took one of these premises, the ridiculousness of family portraits, and really did go for it all the way. All three families must be included, must be wearing white and things must be absolutely perfect in other ways or Claire will crush whoever ruined things for her. When she messes up that stair the Dunphys have been tripping on since the first episode, they end up headed over to Jay’s house and infighting caused by the rest of the episode leaves everyone in an eventual mud fight. Even with the show’s typical group hug ending, it’s a marvellous plot and the mud fight was a fun, if unlikely touch.

The rest of the episode consisted of Phil going to a basketball game with Gloria, Alex and Manny where the adults finally resolve some of their tensions. It’s nice to see Phil for once not be the lecherous, sleazy man he’s sometimes portrayed as. More than that, getting caught ignoring Claire’s call was darkly hilarious. On the other end of the line Hailey’s with Claire and concerned about her zit. Then there’s Luke listening to Jay’s tales from the sixties, which go from boring to amazing as soon as he realizes he can lie. Last but certainly not least is Cam singing at a wedding while Mitchell fends off a pigeon, with the two cross-cut together in an almost glorious bit that falls a little flat because the actor Eric Stonestreet is a pretty lousy singer.

So there’s a lot going on in the episode and none of these plots ends up unrelated to one another, a reoccurring problem during the middle of the season. Things weren’t as good as they were last week, which in many ways felt more like a season finale than what we had here, but that wasn’t on account of this one being a disappointment. No, “Family Portrait” delivered a conventional family sit-com episode about as good as one can be. It’s just that not wanting to break out of those conventions means that it can’t become as great as a show willing to go further.

Stray Observations:
“Is there really a more clear way to describe white pants?”
“The question is why isn’t all of your underwear good?”
-Ridiculicious.
“There’s a pigeon in our house, what do I do?”
“What people do in the privacy of their own sports arena should be their own business.”
“Do you know who cut Martin Luther King Jr.’s hair? Well neither does Luke’s teacher.”
-That was a truly painful rendition of Ave Maria. You can’t have one half of a montage be that epic and the other half so blah. Did they not realize that actor can’t really sing? Or is that supposed to be the joke?
“I know you’re mad at me and I know this foam hand can’t make up for everything.”

Modern Family: “Family Portrait” (1.24)