Claire spends time away from the family at a reunion, Phil wants to team up with Jay on his bowling team and Cameron makes a horrible mistake.
Modern Family delivered its 16th episode of season 4 yesterday evening with, “Bad Hair Day.”
Meanwhile, Cameron is home alone, and has decided to dress Lily up for a home photo shoot. Mitchell returns home with baby Joe and after 6 hours of Lily being dressed up, she has had enough and announces, “I quit!” after Cameron tells her that eating more than 5 animal crackers on a photo shoot day is too much.
Phil receives a phone call from Jay and is then told that he’s off the bowling team. Jay declares that the match is too important and because Phil is a wildcard, he can’t be trusted and that the stakes are too high. Phil takes the news fairly hard and begins to cry. After Jay’s crushing blow, Gloria phones Jay and lets him know that Manny didn’t get his solo, and obviously, retail therapy is in order to help Manny feel better. After a quick shopping spree, Jay tries to get rid of Manny by sending him home on a bus. Clearly bowling is on Jay’s mind, and, with no hesitation, Jay is on his way. It isn’t quite over, as Jay does have a heart really. There’s a nice heartwarming moment shortly after, where Jay drives alongside the bus and persuades Manny to sing to make him feel a little bit better about himself.
Lily is back in the photo shoot and Cameron is pulling out all the stops. But, here’s the kicker, Lily glues a wig on to baby Joe’s head. Cameron takes it fairly cooly, but Mitchell is panicking. Cameron takes Joe to the bathroom and tries to work the best of his magic to unstick the wig. With steam pouring out the bathroom, we really did hope the wig had fallen away, but no, Cameron has instead styled the wig into a “Bieber-like” with a huge blonde side-swept fringe across Joe’s forehead. Saying Mitchell isn’t too pleased is a massive understatement. Cam’s proud of his effort though.
[scrollGallery id=1165 autoScroll=false thumbsdown=true]
Claire, who up until now had been fairly quiet this episode, is at her reunion where she spots her old classmate, “Tater” played by Ed O’Neill’s former colleague in Married…with Children, David Faustino. Phil turns up unannounced much to Claire’s dismay. However, even with Phil keeping his eye on Tater, he really should be watching out for Claire’s old lecturer who Claire is flirting with. Phil thinks that Tater was Claire’s ex, when in reality, it was the lecturer, Professor Cooke!
Claire reminds Phil it was 20 years ago and that all feelings are dead and buried. Claire loves her life with Phil and is really happy, but just wants to know what her life might have been like had her relationship with Professor Cooke blossomed. And just like that, Claire gets her wish answered. Cooke’s wife joins the party and is completely stressed and sarcastic towards everyone in the room, intolerable of everyone and despises everything about Professor Cooke. Claire apologised to Phil deeply for even thinking along those lines.
Meanwhile, Cameron and Mitchell bring Joe back to Gloria and Jay’s home. Before they can see the damage, Jay belts out the news of winning the bowling tournament. Mitchell is worried, and he wants Cameron to take the fall in a trade for going to Missouri with Cameron. Cam tries to wrap Gloria around his finger, but Gloria isn’t even close to sanity right now, picking up a machete and a baseball bat in the process shouting at Jay down the corridor Cameron darts upstairs to find Manny. Cameron asks Manny to tell Gloria that he (Manny) gave Joe a haircut to which Manny agrees. Cameron flees before Manny realises what sticky situation he’s got himself into. “How bad could it be?” says Manny…very bad. Very, very bad.
The plot thickens. Manny then goes to Luke and bribes him with needing a letter signed in a trade to take the blame for the haircut. Luke makes the deal, but takes the pen instead of a forged letter by Manny. A win for Manny, and now Luke is in the doghouse.
Luke isn’t phased by this, and goes to find Jay. Luke picks up the bowling trophy and bribes Jay saying that the team member who replaced Phil was actually a one time pro, which is against the tournament rules. Now, the ball is in Jay’s court. Jay now confesses to Gloria that it was him, who gave Joe a haircut. Gloria takes a look, and freaks. But, she isn’t actually all that mad, she’s happy that Jay told her the truth and that no harm is done. Usually Gloria would go crazy, but she’s trying out a new side to her, one with a bit more understanding. Poor Gloria with that bad ankle, thank God the day at the Spa she secretly went to helped her stay calm!
“Bad Hair Day” was a slightly longwinded episode, but it did have its funny moments that would charm the majority of Modern Family fans. It was certainly not Modern Family‘s finest hour, but served more so as another filler episode for this current season.
Modern Family returns next Wednesday on ABC, with “Best Men” guest starring Elizabeth Banks at 9pm ET/PT.