How funny exactly does a sitcom have to be? It’s hard to escape the notion that the most important thing for any comedy is going to be the quality of its jokes, the whether-you-laugh aspect of things. That being said, some of my favorite stand-up comedians (Lenny Bruce, George Carlin) could talk for a while without any jokes being said, or anything particularly funny at all about their diatribes. They were still great, but it wasn’t the laughs alone that you listened for. On the other hand, you won’t find out much about Mitch Hedberg’s politics from listening to his recordings, but damn could that guy construct a joke.
“Game Changer” really wasn’t all that funny, and most of its jokes came at the end of the scene without many big laughs before then. It was extremely well-constructed, though, focusing primarily on Phil but aptly balancing its side-plots in ways less separated from the show’s centerpiece. Watching Phil’s arc through the show overrode my feelings that I should be laughing more, as both the episode’s jokes and its emotions felt earned.
The episode picks up from Claire and Phil’s anniversary in a sense, as it’s now Phil’s birthday and Claire once again needs to find a gift for a husband who has it all and goes out of his way to make everyone else’s gifts, birthdays and holidays special. She learns that Phil wants an iPad and tells him she’ll get him one, except that she needs to wake up before dawn and falls back asleep. When Phil inadvertently wakes her up, she dashes out of the house on a search for the iPad and since it’s sold out sends the rest of the Dunphys off in search of one as well.
Unfortunately, along the way Claire admits to Phil that she couldn’t find it, which begins a day of disappointments. There may be some immaturity about how much Phil has built up his birthday (especially given that he has children), but really this is more about Phil facing disappointment than the specific issue of his gift. Since Modern Family is determined to stay within the family’s private lives, this is the type of disappointment it can show us, and Phil is hit hard. By the end of the episode he’s completely resigned to disappointments in life. It may be manipulative to have everything in his day illustrate how much better life could be, but it works nonetheless and when everything for his birthday party is one letdown after another—you have to feel for the guy.
The episode also has three bite-sized subplots, the first based around Mitchell feeling inadequate to Cam in defending their family that leads to asking Jay to teach him how to fight. Jay’s also involved in chess disputes with Manny and Gloria. Even less prevalent than these is Cameron trying to help out some neighbors he overhears on his baby monitor. What’s nice about the trio is that they all end up intersecting both with each other and with Phil’s birthday, making them feel less like definite plots than reality. When Modern Family‘s writing gets lazy it’s obvious to see the delineation of storylines, but here they mixed together in an Altman-esque way that for once didn’t feel forced.
So no, “Game Changer” probably wasn’t in the top 10 funniest episodes of the show so far, but oh well. It did everything else right, and many of the actual jokes were strong, it’s just that they were more paced than most sit-coms these days will allow. Right now on TV there are plenty of shows that are this good at joke-writing, but not many that could make everything else work so well. I’m hoping that this is the direction Modern Family takes for the rest of the season.
Stray Observations:
“I was 11 years old. I hit ten straight fastballs in the batting cage, then my friend Jeff Sweeney took one in the groin. I yelled ‘ball two!’ Everybody laughed. That’s when I knew I was funny.”
-I like the idea that teachers try to trick you during spelling bees.
-Even for Jay it’s pretty unrealistic not to know the blitzkrieg checkmate. Come on.
-So the product placement in this episode was pretty horrendous. I didn’t really mind, but I’m guessing some people out there did.
-What exactly is a “gift-wrapping station?”
“You can’t sing ‘We Are the Champions’ without your queen.”
“Honey, it’s ok, I don’t feel things any more.”