Monthly Archives: April 2010

With no How I Met Your Mother or Lost on this week, I was really excited for a new Modern Family to fix my need for new episodes of a favorite show. Sweetening the deal? It was to feature a guest appearance by Fred Willard as Phil’s dad. Maybe it was high expectations, but I ended up being a little disappointed. “Travels With Scout” was a mixed bag of an episode, with some incredible moments, and some that were just undeveloped and fell below the bar already set so high by the show.

In the “A Story,” Phil’s dad Frank arrives in an RV at the Dunphy house with a dog, Scout, that he and Phil’s mom got from the pound, but cannot keep because she’s allergic. Scout is going to the Dunphys, which was previously unbeknown to the reluctant Claire. She worried that she would end up taking care of the dog, much like when she had to do Luke’s paper route for him, as seen in one of my favorite sight gags of the night. But Phil is just happy to have his dad around, mostly because he’s an older version of Phil. Everything is great, but then Claire discovers Frank crying alone in his RV. She thinks this means that Frank and Phil’s mom split up, a fact Phil is reluctant to accept. Meanwhile, Scout is getting himself settled in the Dunphy home, stealing underwear from the laundry, getting himself out of the crate, and asking to be let out. The best part: Luke has trouble with the latter two, getting trapped in the cage and running through screens. In the end, Frank reveals he’s actually just sad to let Scout go, so Phil decides to let him keep the dog. The only problem is that now Claire has grown attached to him, and the look on Julie Bowen’s face when she realized that Scout was leaving was hilarious and heartbreaking.

While all of this was going on, Dylan was freaking out because his band’s drummer’s parents were getting back together, and he’d have to move, leaving them in a lurch right before a show. Luckily, former music teacher Cameron was there for the rescue, and after fooling his bandmates with bad drumming, Cam unleashes his skills (“dude, you should label your sticks”) and joins the band for their gig. This, however, comes amidst protests from Mitchell, who doesn’t like the idea, but also because they have “Pepper’s apres-ski fondue party.” But Cameron rocks at the gig, and Mitchell’s mind changes. That is until Cam’s solo goes on way way too long. When the band’s drummer returns, Cam is forced out of the band, much to his sadness.

Meanwhile, Jay takes Manny to go see a horror movie that stars an old high school friend of Mitchell’s as a psycho killer. Jay thinks this is a brilliant idea…that is until Manny has the living daylights scared out of him. Manny freaks out when the broken doorbell won’t stop ringing (he thinks it’s possessed), and offers to protect the house with his fencing sword. Jay still doesn’t believe its that big of deal until Manny shares the bed with he and Gloria, and wakes them up with his night terrors. So Jay has his second brilliant idea: invite the actor over to house one night so Manny can see that he’s not a psycho killer and that his machete is just a prop. This sets up a hilarious chain of events, when after the doorbell doesn’t work, the actor comes to the window (where he’s horrifyingly lit from below), holds up his (fake) machete and says, “Are you Manny? I’m here for you!” Absolute perfection.

So if there were so many great moments in “Travels With Scout,” why didn’t it work as an episode? For one, the overall pacing seemed off. Episode seemed to drag at parts, and while it had these great bits, didn’t tie together well enough to function as a stellar episode. Like I said, there were some absolutely hilarious bits, and each individual story seemed well constructed, but there seemed to be a lack of overall coherence that dragged it down. Because of the great bits, I’m being a little more generous with my grade, but I’m hoping next week kicks it up a notch.

Michael’s Score: 65
TUiW Grade: B-