Modern Family, "The More You Ignore Me," (7.6) - TV Review

November 11th, 2015, 9PM, ABC

Annd we’re back from fall hiatus!

Tonight’s Modern Family is all about the illicit. To the surprise of absolutely no one who’s watched the show in the past four years, Luke is arrested (for the shockingly extremely minor misdemeanor of driving without a license and without an adult present because he was hoping a girl would share a grief make-out session with him) and has to deal with the punishment meted out by his disappointed father and extremely blasé mother, who thinks Phil is being too harsh, even refusing to address his son by his birth name. Claire’s belief that the emergence of Luke’s rebellious side is a healthy thing (and that Phil could be more “Dangerous” in his own life which is why he believes the ducks chose to bond with Claire instead of him) is soon put to the test when they catch Alex coming out of a liquor store – and Claire freaks out as she drives off with a case of beer in a strange man’s grungy truck. Luke, meanwhile, manages to lose one of the ducks – and get Manny to hook up with his long-time crush (and the subject of his grossly pervy peeping) Tammy LaFontaine. Elsewhere, Cam and Mitch have taken to selling Cam’s homemade barbecue sauce at local farmers markets for spare cash thanks to a bumper crop of tomatoes back on the Tucker family farm – they meet instant rivals in recent frenemys Andrew and Simon, and Andrew offers to hire Mitch again. The very idea makes Cam go to Gloria for assistance in improving his blend, and over dinner Jay introduces the family to Gloria’s family hot sauce, which is so wildly good that Cam’s jealousy causes him to tip the bottle all over the table. In apology he offers to help Gloria re-create the stuff from memory, but she hasn’t made any since she was eight years old. Mitch, meanwhile, ignores the offer by trying to help Jay create a video presentation for his Titans of industry award, which rapidly turns into a disaster but inspires Mitch to try a new avenue. And finally Haley tries to deal with the burgeoning weirdness she feels upon bumping into Andy and Beth while on a date with Dylan at the movies and being forced to be seat mates – a weirdness only she feels as the encounter stretches into a full-on double date, which ultimately encourages Haley to reevaluate her romantic connections.

This was quite an episode, managing to pack a lot of action into its thirty minutes. The best plot is definitely the Claire/Alex/Phil one, which managed to draw several loud laughs from your humble reviewer. Luke isn’t terribly obnoxious, which is enough to make him tolerable – that Manny manages to snare Tammy’s attention is a fitting reward after Luke’s gross peeping. Meanwhile, there’s Gloria and Cam’s partnership, which I hope develops into something recurrent; they should be fun bouncing off of one another on a more regular basis. Jay’s touching search for the right words to sum up his life and career actually manages to bring some heart into the process and adds a good thoughtline to the entire process. And lastly, it’s extremely weird to see Haley being the adult presence in the this episode, and yet it works beautifully; and her hook-up with Dylan meets its inevitable fate in this episode, finally, and we can all assume the best is yet to come for Haley.

“The More You Ignore Me” ultimately proves to be a good, solid episode of Modern Family; not distinguished in particular, but lots of fun.
The Roundup

Phil is still trying to get the ducks to imprint on him, as seen in the last episode.
Tomatogeddon!
Joe’s learning how to tie his shoes – Gloria teaches him how by recreating a hanging.
”I’m walking with giants, Gloria! And that’s a good way to get stepped on!”
Andy has indeed lost all of the weight he packed on during the first episode of the season.
This is Simon’ second appearance this season. Lots of characters reoccur in this episode
”Does everything at this table have meaning?!”
”Why do I look so pale and sweaty?!” “You’re old and Irish.”