Mod Fam: Gradu-hateration
I know I’ve been kinda lackadaisical (yeah, I said Lackadaisical; you like that, grandma?) about posting these here Mod Fam recaps, but, you know, it’s a show I kinda hate, so sometimes it’s kinda hard to make myself watch it. But we’re nearing the end of the season so, I’m sucking it up and powering through.
Last night’s Modern Family was all about people laughing at things that were totally not funny. Which has kinda been my whole thesis behind these recaps from the get-go, but whatever. Except the thing is, the unfunny stuff that people were laughing at on the show probably would have been pretty damn hilarious if they’d happened in real life and weren’t just, like, poorly-executed sight gags that you could see coming from a mile away.
So, dykey, alienated, angsty middle child Dunphy is graduating from junior high, which is apparently a thing that happens, with valedictorians and a cutesy little ceremony to mark her transition to young womanhood and high school. So yeah, Melissa Ethridge Dunphy is her junior high’s valedictorian, and she’s just about to sing “Come to My Window” when everyone realizes that Phil and Claire aren’t in the two gapingly empty seats between Little Dunphy and Sofia Vergara.
“Whaaaaa?” everyone says. And then, whoosh, we go back in time to earlier that day to see how it all began.
It starts with a still shot of the Dunphy house and an eerie voiceover: “A séance was held in the great Dunphy house. A séance that has sent one girl on an uncertain and frightening journey into the past, and Victoria Winters finds herself in a sea of familiar faces, but the names and relationships have changed.”
Victoria Winters shows up, clutching the Dunphy family history in her arms, dazed and confused. “I’m the new governess,” she says. But Phil is all like, “Whatever, I wanna go to Vegas tomorrow with my cheerleading buddies, so I have to get my wife to freak the fuck out and cry about our darling little antisocial daughter’s pointless graduation.
(Anyone getting the Dark Shadows references? No? Whatever. Talk to me when the movie comes out.)
Let’s see, what are the gays up to? Oh! Princes Asian Baby—who seriously reacts to nothing—is sailing her royal barge in her princess pool. Which of course is all set up for the fattest gay dude on the show’s pratfall into Lake Loch Pretty Girl Land.
Ginger Spice thinks this is just the funniest goddamn thing ever, which pisses off RoseCamme Bar, and that’s a thing for the rest of the episode. Princess Placid Asian just rolls her eyes along with every other halfway intelligent person watching the show.
Then it’s off to Jay and Sofia Vergara’s house for a few cocktails before the big meaningless graduation ceremony. But, oh no! What’s this? Jay seems to have gotten Botox and now his face is melting! But no one knows it’s Botox so everyone’s super duper worried because it looks like he’s having a stroke, and Oppie and Claire are like, “That Columbian bitch is gonna get all our inheritance cashola!” And across the patio, you can totally see the dollar signs in Sofia Vergara’s eyes. But then Jay is like, “No, stupids, I got Botox!” And Sofia Vergara’s tits literally deflate like whoopee cushions right there, she’s so bummed.
Then Cam, dressed inexplicably as Marlon Brando in The Island of Dr. Moreau, walks into the sliding glass door, opens it, and walks into the screen door. Emmy award-winning comedy, folks.
The next hilarious obstacle in everyone’s quest to get to middle school graduation is Jay’s automatic driveway gate, which he has to keep the poor and unattractive savages from invading his compound and making off with his gold and Columbian child bride.
“Trapped!” Claire wails. “I’ve got to get to my daughter’s ceremony thingie!”
Nobody knows what to do! Marlon Camdo is trying to fix the gate with Crisco, condoms and anal beads—the beads are for his baby, Empress Pretty in Pink, cause he knew she just wasn’t accessorized properly. The Littlest Dunphy is trying to open the gate with his mind. Jay’s face is still melting. But it’s only Sofia Vergara who really knows what to do!
“Here’s this stupid bike that I hate,” she says and throws it over the gate. Then Phil and Claire throw each other over the gate and they’re off on this weird looking bicycle built for two. But then the bike chain breaks and Claire starts to cry and Phil starts to cry and he doesn’t want to go to Vegas anymore.
Oh yeah, meanwhile Sluttastic Dunphy is trying to convince her poor alienated little baby dyke sister that being an outcast is kinda her own fault—which is obviously the case—and that she shouldn’t really sing “Come to My Window” cause nobody at their school knows that song. And she knows a thing or two about being sad about stuff, cause she’s failing biology and is pretty sick of blowing her teacher in the boys locker room after school everyday to avoid having to go to summer school. And Dykey Dunphy is like, “Dude, today is about me!”
So somehow the gate opens over at the Jay’s Town Compound, just seconds before the rest of the Mod Fam gang could carry out their mass suicide pact. And Phil and Claire hitched a ride with some nice migrant workers, so everyone makes it to the deflowering ceremony in time for Dyke Dunphy to self-immolate herself in front of the whole school. Except something that Sister Mary Slutphy said must have stuck with her, because instead she’s like “Everybody Hurts!” And that’s the moral of this week’s episode. And she gets to go to a party! Which, instead of asking where it is and whether there will be parental supervision, Phil and Claire just look at her tearfully and are like, “Go! Fly, little nightbird! We can teach you no more!”
And somewhere in Dunphyport, Victoria Winters is being hanged for witchcraft, while the tragedies she was sent back in time to prevent play out, sealing the Dunphys’ fate.
