Modern Family – Mother’s Day

Modern Family was new this week with “Mother’s Day,” the 21st episode of the second season. Sitcoms always place an extra emphasis on holiday-themed episodes because they can be very relatable, and this episode was a worthy reflection of all the show’s moms. With Mother’s Day just around the corner, Modern Family served up an episode that was both witty and a tear jerker.

Starting with Mitchell and Cameron, they are dealing with the definition of parenting roles. Mitch serves Cam breakfast in bed, and he takes this to mean that he is the “mother” between the two of them. Even at a picnic for Lily’s play group, the women invite Cam into their picture as an “honorary mom.” Cameron is feeling increasingly insulted as he realizes that everyone considers Mitchell the “husband” and Cam the “wife” in their relationship. Mitch explains that they are just a new type of family and that the right vocabulary to describe them doesn’t exist. Out of anger, he grabs a football and throws it as hard as he can…right at an old man. He then chases after him, and Mitch has to remind him to not flail his wrists.

Meanwhile, Claire and Gloria take their children on a nature hike, and all the kids can do is whine. Out of anger, Claire decides to leave them behind so that she and Gloria can enjoy their day. This prompts a conversation between the two of them about how sometimes their kids can annoy them. Claire provokes Gloria until she finally admits that she can be slightly irritated by Manny. She calls him “persnickety” and says his poetry isn’t that good. She turns around to find Manny standing right behind her. Down the hill, Luke, Haley and Alex decide to not apologize for their actions this time. They finally think they have discovered a way to beat Claire at her own game.

While the ladies are away with the children, Jay and Phil are cooking a Mother’s Day feast. Flipping through a recipe book, Phil finds a poem that Jay wrote for his mom when he was nine years old. Upon reading the poem, Jay starts to tear up a little. When the entire family comes home for dinner, Mitchell recalls a story about his grandmother. Jay then tells a story about his mother yelling in the face of his little league coach, which causes him to finally let his tears go. Haley breaks her own rule and apologizes to Claire, followed shortly by Alex and Luke. And in typical sitcom fashion, everyone starts crying and hugging each other.

With only three episodes left in the second season, I look forward to Wednesday nights more and more every week. Modern Family will be new the next few weeks leading up to and including the season finale. Unless the upcoming episodes are absolutely terrible, I think I can safely say that the series has not experienced a sophomore slump like a lot of strong-starting series do. What do you think? Has the second season of Modern Family been better than the first?

Memorable quotes are below the jump:

Memorable quotes

Phil: I asked Claire what she wanted for Mother’s Day and she said “take a hike!” It’s not like that, she’s just bananas for walking around in nature.

Mitch: May I remind you that my big crime was making you fluffy pancakes.

Gloria: Stop. He needs to know the real truth. Manny, Claire was feeling bad because she wants to hit her own children. So I tried to make her feel better by inventing terrible things about you.

Jay: You only get one mom.