MODERN FAMILY Recap: The Wow Factor

I’m covering Modern Family for NiceGirl Lisa for a few weeks so here we go…

This Old House: I may have forgotten Claire, Phil, Cameron and Mitchell were flipping a house. Cam and Claire are doing most of the hands on work and Cam thinks he is running things by tricking Claire into picking the items he wants and Claire thinks she is in running things by overloading Cam with figures when she wants to rein him in. Oddly enough it’s a great partnership.
Unfortunately Cam wants to put a water feature with a fire element into the back yard. He makes this big display of wanting a cascading water wall and fire that burns on the quarter hour. It’s really only because he wants Claire to accept his lesser proposal – the one he really wants – dancing water fountains. Claire starts throwing numbers at him accidentally using the number forty-twelve percent. Cam calls her on her ploy and she calls Cam on his.
In order to break the fountain stalemate Cam brings in Pam (Wendi McLendon-Covey) a lesbian parent from Lilly’s school and a licensed contractor. Cam and Claire lay out their arguments for the fountain or no fountain to Pam. Pam sides with Claire, a fountain is too expensive for a house they are flipping.
Not wanting to take no for an answer Cam summons Pam and Claire to the house later that night to show them the fountains he had put in. He went rouge! Claire thinks she may actually like the fountains until the goldfish he put in the fountain “ponds” start getting sucked into the motor and spit out in the streams of water. It’s a disaster.

Father Knows Best: Phil is home with the kids and he realizes the girls know nothing about home maintenance.
Phil: It’s up to me to show them what a modern self-sufficient woman looks like.
Phil takes the girls through the house showing them things like the water heater which Haley is pretty sure is called photosynthesis. Oh she’s a pretty one, isn’t she? He tries to show them how to light the pilot light and he can’t make it work. After trying to take apart the water heater to figure out what went wrong Phil starts to get frustrated and sends the girls to the hardware store for a special screwdriver. He really just needs the girls out of the house so he can call his Dad for help without them knowing.
By the time the girls get home he has the water heater fixed, thanks to his Dad, and he decides it is okay that the girls don’t know everything about home maintenance because it just means they need him to fix things like he needs his Dad’s help to fix things.

Moby Dick: Jay agrees to watch baby Joe while Gloria spends some time with Manny. It turns out Manny had a day of listening to the stage reading of Moby Dick planned and thanks to Jay’s offer to watch Joe Gloria can now go with Manny. Gloria and Manny take off for their day of bonding and not twenty minutes later Joe starts to cry and nothing Phil can do makes him happy. Phil puts Joe in the car to take him to his baby class but Joe falls asleep before they can get there so Phil decides to take Joe to see the James Bond movie instead. Part way through the movie Joe starts to cry – no one is amused. Luckily one of Claire’s friends from high school is in the theater with her two boys and she doesn’t want to be there so she offers to take Joe outside the theater until the movie is over.
As luck or karma would have it for Jay, Gloria and Manny are in the mall shopping when they see Joe being rocked by Claire’s friend outside the theater. Gloria grabs the baby and yanks Jay out of the movie theater which is a shame, Skyfall was an awesome movie.
That night Jay is talking to Manny about why Gloria is so mad. Gloria comes in from the grocery store still pretty upset. She lays into Jay about lying when Manny comes in to announce the Moby Dick show wasn’t sold out today – something Gloria told him so she could go shopping with him instead.
She apologizes to Manny and glares at Jay before making a grand exit.
Jay ends the episode reading Moby Dick to Manny and Joe with a sock puppet on his hand and a glass of scotch for himself.

The Art of Handball: Mitchell drops Lilly off at school to find the school bully Milo kicking some butt at handball. Mitchell gets goaded into playing handball with him and loses. Poor Mitchell is good at no sports. To help make up for his humiliation Mitchell picks up Luke from school to talk to him about handball. He wants Luke to teach him everything he knows about the sport. Luke agrees to help him.
A few days later back at the handball court Milo is still beating everyone in line. It’s Mitchell’s turn again and he looks more confident than before. Mitchell says if he wins the handball court rules change so more kids can play and if Milo wins Mitchell will give him $20k. Mitchell is winning, thanks to Luke’s Mr. Miyagi style teaching, but he is really being an ass about it. The parents and teachers start to notice and when Mitchell wins he does a champion dance.
Mitchell: Cam is going to be doing drop-offs for a while.
Lilly: We got a letter.

I don’t love episodes where everyone does their own thing, I prefer when they are all doing things together but it was still pretty funny.

Modern Family airs 9/8c on ABC