S9E5 "It's the Great Pumpkin, Phil Dunphy"
Phil and Claire are the ones in the Halloween spirit this week, with Phil engaging in a prank war with two young neighbors, and Claire bringing Halloween to the office, though the mother of the two kids is obviously opposed to the prank war, and Claire's employees reveal that they were not fans of Claire's Halloween enthusiasm. Phil and Claire talk, and they realize that they don't care what everyone thinks, they will celebrate Halloween. This story stayed true to their characters, but was not funny.
While Jay works on their kitchen, Mitch and Cam are staying with Jay and Gloria. I don't see the purpose of this, other than for them to annoy each other, which of course they do. This, however, is exactly what happened in the season three episode "Me? Jealous?" Gloria and Joe are frustrated with Cam's behavior, which is obnoxious beyond what I would expect from Cam, and Mitch is irritated by how long Jay is taking to complete the kitchen. After the kitchen is completed, it burns down again, which makes this all feel pointless. This story wasn't all bad though. There were funny moments, like the fact that Cam thinks Gloria's hometown stories seem made-up, and that Gloria thinks her accent is almost completely gone.
The Dunphy children have their own embarrassing days. Haley auditions to perform on a cruise ship, which is a very random thing for her to do. Luke has been seeing two different girls and loses both of them (are we supposed to feel bad for him, because I don't think that anyone does). Alex breaks up with Ben (which has obviously been coming, but is treated like a minor plot point, when they have been together for a little while), and discovers that he cheated on her. Thank God the two of them are over, they were so uninteresting, and Ben was an annoying character.
The fact that Claire and Phil were the only ones celebrating Halloween was odd, and it's not like the writers didn't do Halloween stories for the rest of the family because they came up with better ones. Gloria and Cam's part of the episode was unoriginal, Jay and Mitch's was pointless, and the Dunphy kid mini-stories weren't any good. There was also very few funny moments in the episode. I would say that this is actually Modern Family's worst episode yet.
Score: 2.5/10
What did you think of "It's the Great Pumpkin, Phil Dunphy"? Leave your thoughts in the comments!