Modern Family is a family sitcom featuring an ensemble cast of one big, extended family. In the episode, Claire Dunphy struggles to put together the best-haunted house for Halloween. She always goes overboard for her favorite holiday, and this year she wants all of her family members to help her scare the trick-or-treaters; however, each of her family members has a horrible Halloween, making them unwilling participants in her haunted house. Jay, Claire’s dad, unintentionally insults his wife Gloria’s accent; Mitchell, Claire’s brother, embarrasses himself at his new job; and Phil, Claire’s husband, worries that she will divorce him. As always, this episode of Modern Family was hysterical, hiding its heavy-hitting jokes as short quips.
The Modern Family episode “Halloween” is the sixth episode of the second season, directed by Michael Spiller and written by Jeffrey Richman. While Claire spends the episode putting effort into decorating her house and telling her daughter to wear an appropriate costume, her family members go about Halloween in other ways. At Michell’s new law firm, two lawyers convince him that everyone at the firm dresses up for Halloween. Determined to fit in at his new job, Mitch comes to work in a full Spiderman bodysuit. To his shock, no one besides the two lawyers is dressed up. Mitch anxiously throws on a suit over his costume, squeaking down the halls. At every opportunity to change, Mitch gets pulled into a meeting. When he finally gets to a bathroom, Mitch accidentally drops his suit into the toilet, forcing him to scale down the pipes from the bathroom window to get to his car. Fumbling around for his car keys, Mitch bumps into another car, triggering all the cars’ horns around him. He has to awkwardly stand there in his Spiderman suit next to his car as his colleagues stare him down, embarrassed by his behavior.
Physical comedy is notoriously hard to pull off, but Modern Family does it effortlessly. In other shows, physical comedy usually seems forced and childish, as if the writers don’t think the audience can handle a well-written joke. In Modern Family, the comedy is integrated into the situation, making it plausible while still entertaining. During one scene, Jay and Gloria argue over Gloria’s accent. Gloria stresses that her accent isn’t very thick and adds that she asked Jay’s secretary to order some “baby Cheez-Its”. She opens a box, expecting a box of Cheez-Its, but realizes it is filled with baby Jesus sculptures. That’s what’s great about Modern Family – on paper, it may not seem very funny but the actors and the direction make the scene hilarious.
I appreciate how Modern Family subverts stereotypes in each episode. Both of Claire’s daughters represent a stereotypical high school girl: Alex is a nerd and Haley is popular and loves to party. We all have these types of girls in our lives, but they are not one-dimensional and neither are Alex and Haley. Neither girl on the surface seems to care about anything more than books or lipstick but because the show revolves around family, we learn how family-oriented the girls really are. Phil Dunphy is also very dedicated to his family which is why he panics when his next-door neighbor gets divorced out of nowhere. This scares Phil, so he clings to Claire to make sure she knows how much he loves her. Claire is already so busy that this gesture just bothers her, making Phil even more concerned. Once all the extended family arrives at the Dunphy’s they are all in a bad mood. Mitch does not want to dress up anymore, Gloria fakes an American accent to spite Jay, and Alex just wants to study. As trick-or-treaters come inside to get candy, the family gives an unenthusiastic, annoyed performance that bores the kids instead of scaring them. Claire becomes so frustrated with her family that she yells at them and blames them for ruining her Halloween. In Claire’s eyes, Halloween is the only holiday that she truly appreciates anymore since Gloria took over Christmas with her Colombian fireworks and Mitch and Cam use Thanksgiving to cook whatever is trendy that year. Defeated, Claire runs outside where Phil comforts her, but they are interrupted by the screams of children coming from inside. Realizing how petty they were, Claire’s family starts successfully scaring trick-or-treaters to make her feel better.
The only problem I have with this episode isn’t even with the episode itself, it’s about Cam. When Mitchell is hired and wants to gush about his new job, Cam makes it all about himself and dramatically explains why he hates Halloween. It’s a bit irritating because although it’s just Cameron’s personality that we’ve grown accustomed to over the seasons, he is still distracting and taking away from Mitch’s happy moments. Thankfully, the episode had plenty of happy moments too. By the end of the episode, all relationship problems have been fixed. Gloria finally stops speaking in an American accent because Jay says he fell in love with Gloria before he even saw her; he fell in love with the liveliness of her voice. Phil also confesses that he was worried about divorce because of what the neighbors went through and Claire tells him he has nothing to worry about.
Modern Family uses comedy to relate to viewers’ everyday struggles. We have all had embarrassing moments at school or at work, but Modern Family makes them endearing and heartfelt. The family aspect is at the forefront and the characters work together to solve their problems, and this episode was no different. “Halloween” was a great episode, perfect for the spooky season. I love that despite being a comedy show, the family dynamics are true to life. No one is mad at each other for too long and they work out their problems – even if the problems seem insignificant. Claire, the main character of the episode, is shown to not only be a very hard worker, but this episode shows her fun, quirky side too. She usually juxtaposes Phil’s childish attitude but in this episode, it was almost the opposite. In the end, the characters innocently poke fun at Gloria’s quirky sayings but she finally has enough and tells them to stop. Modern Family episodes usually have the characters reflect on what they learned at the end and this episode didn’t focus on that too much. Instead, they replaced the segment with Gloria’s unique sayings which was still enjoyable. My main critique is the amount of ads on Hulu – just let me watch Modern Family!
