Modern Family "Regrets Only" Review

I'm starting to get concerned about Modern Family. The only episodes that have really worked this season have had gimmicky characters like Fizbo and Phil's alter ego Clive Bixby. "Regrets Only" had none of these gimmicks to fall back on and the episode suffered for it.


Phil's relationship with Claire may be the least interesting relationship on the show. The age difference between Jay and Gloria and Mitchell and Cam's relationships offer greater variety of material. Phil is at his best when he's being one of the kids. His attempts to be an adult and deal with Claire just always seem to fall short. Phil's best moments on "Regrets Only" are between him and Gloria. His reaction when she offers to cut his hair by saying "I'll do you." However, his attempt to figure out why Claire was mad at him just came off as a lazy episode.

We know Alex has the classic "Jan Brady" complex when it comes to Haley. Her eternal quest to expose Haley to her parents is usually pretty good but last night's fake job and Haley's attempt to cover it up was lifted straight out of a News Radio episode.

It seems like they really need some common ground they can grab on to for this season, at least on the Dunphy side of the family. Last season the Dylan/Haley courtship gave Phil and Claire something to ground them in parenting. It also created some of the better comedic tension between the two. This season the writers have put the parenting on autopilot and tried to concentrate on the relationship between the parents and it hasn't worked.

Maybe the solution is to take some of the focus off of the Dunphy's. The Jay/Gloria karaoke story actually had some funny moments and more traction than the writers used. I think they could have gotten a lot more out of Luke as Cam's party planning assistant. Even skipping the part of Mitchell forgetting the invitations and concentrated solely on the party.

It seems like I say this every other week but I do hope Modern Family regains their mojo. Last year it was a breath of fresh air and this year has been entirely too stale. Perhaps they need the offseason to see where things went wrong and come back strong in the fall. It wouldn't be the first time a show fell victim to a sophomore slump.