Modern Family - Season 4 Episode 4 - Recap and Review - The Butler's Escape
Modern Family offers a pretty solid outing "The Butler's Escape," an episode that somehow manages to both ramp up and tone down the comical excesses of its more inconsistent episodes. The relationship between Phil (Ty Burrell) and Luke (Nolan Gould) has always been one of the show's most touching. It's a father-son bond that feels honest and organic in a way that not many parent-child relationships on TV ever feel. It's also a relationship that's rarely ever tested, and so "The Butler's Escape" presents the classic sitcom scenario of a child wanting to quit something his parent forced him to do, with the parent struggling to come to grips with his own child's individuality. The episode works not because it plays around with the trope in such a way that it feels brand new, which it does, but because it's simply funny in its execution.
Credit: ABC
Phil isn't really that good at hearing "no" from his kids, and so he refuses to let Luke quit magic lessons. Luke's frustrated "I HATE IT HERE!" followed by a well-timed smoke pellet is one of the episode's best jokes, followed pretty closely by Phil explaining, to the camera, the origin of "The Butler's Escape," an escape trick started by a butler imprisoned in the Tower of London, or something to that effect (Claire is equally puzzled by the story). Phil ultimately relents and allows Luke to quit magic, provided he can perform "The Butler's Escape," a Houdini-esque act that involves escaping a tuxedo wrapped in interlocking chains. Luke's nonchalant skill in performing escalating feats of magic is the episode's best running gag, and it eventually leads to a satisfying conclusion, reaffirming the bond between Luke and Phil, a relationship with far more dramatic and comedic potential than the night's B-plot, in which Claire (Julie Bowen) tries to figure out why Alex (Ariel Winter) has adopted a vicious mean streak.
Upon learning how Luke performed "The Butler's Escape," Claire realizes that Alex's mean streak is the result of not having Haley (Sarah Hyland) around to balance her out with their back-and-forth snipings. It's not a bad storyline by any means, but I can't help but feel like they could have moved this storyline to a different episode and maybe have gotten a full half hour out of it, as opposed to the roughly five minutes we get here. The storyline's inclusion is particularly confusing since Alex is already somewhat involved in the Phil/Luke story, while Claire is directly involved in one of the episode's other big stories.
Cam (Eric Stonestreet) and Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) have played role-reversal before, with Cam going to work while Mitchell took a turn at stay-at-home parenting. This week's iteration of that well-worn sitcom trope is much funnier this time around. Cam's excitement for his first day teaching music at the middle school essentially tells us that this storyline can only end in disaster for him. But the journey to that point involves some of Eric Stonestreet's most measured work with the Cameron character since the show's first season. You can see the emotions playing across his face as he realizes that he's losing these kids, that they're bored to tears and don't particularly respect him either. He expected his story to be the next "Stand and Deliver" of inspiring teaching films, but he couldn't even muster up a "Dangerous Minds." That heartbreak is wonderfully played here, and balances out nicely with Mitchell's frantic day chauffeuring Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons) to and from school. Jesse Tyler Ferguson is great at playing the flustered everyman, and his panic over losing Lily, followed by Cam's calm directions over the phone, is genuinely funny. I was particularly impressed that a plotline that could have spanned the entire episode (Mitchell loses Lily!) was wrapped up so quickly, to dig into deeper territory as Cam and Mitchell explore their roles as individuals, and as a couple. Claire's presence at the end of the episode, having pulled Mitchell out of the fire by helping him around the house, brings about the honest confrontation between Cam and Mitchell, and this proves to be a strong method for tying the ensemble together in a substantive plot.
Less successful is the story that finds Jay (Ed O'Neill) fleeing from the pregnancy-induced snoring of Gloria (Sofia Vergara), which Manny (Rico Rodriguez) complained about, earning him an earful from the pregnant Mrs. Pritchett. The story isn't a failure, really; it's just not as interesting or funny as the other components of the episode. Manny spots Jay hiding out at a hotel, having come home early from a business meeting in San Francisco and electing not to go home straight away. Even though Manny's precociousness tends to bug me, I thought it was a pretty great choice for his character that he hangs out in fancy hotel lobbies to listen to the music from the pianist on hand, claiming that the library is such a "pick-up scene." And I do like the story's resolution, which finds Gloria discovering Jay's lie, and confronting him about it, leading to a heart-to-heart in which Gloria reveals that her favorite part of their marriage is that they can have really intense arguments, yet still have a strong marriage. It was always going to be a rough sell, when the show first started, to convince the world that Sofia Vergara would marry Ed O'Neill. But now, not only do Jay and Gloria feel like a natural couple, they feel integral to one another.
The episode isn't perfect, but it's still early in the season, and episodes like this have me feeling confident about the prospects for the rest of season four. All I ever really ask for are good laughs and the occasional moment of warmth. By that simple measure, "The Butler's Escape" was a staggering success.
Credit: ABC