Review - Modern Family S03 E08 - "After The Fire"

     Modern Family (MF) is one of my favorite shows lately because it brings something new to the old table of Sitcoms. There is a sort of clean fresh new feeling that fills my want for better Sitcoms.

The latest episode, "After the Fire" S03 E08, as all the others before, has generously met my expectations and I thought I'd share a few things with you.

     Now the first thing I noticed during my initial viewing is that this particular episode is somewhat inverted compared to the usual MF structure. 

This is what we usually get : 

1. Each part of the family has a story

2. Each part reaches a tipping point in their quest to resolve their story

3. The whole family meats up and understands how the particular stories have something in common to make one great family story

4. Soft Indie rock type guitar plays in the background while one (sometimes more) family member summarizes the episode to give a final "lesson" 

     "After The Fire" starts out with the whole family working together to help a mutual friend's family whose house burned down. They changed the set-up, but they still need to prepare the rest of the show and have to do it the same way they usually do. 

So, not 2 minutes in, Claire tells Jay to stop lifting heavy boxes because he may get hurt > Phil tells everyone how some of his co-workers are leaving to build their own business > right afterwards Jay's back seizes up > opening sequence > directly after Cameron offers to drive the truck Jay was supposed to drive. 

The episode's set-up ("Starting Plots") happens in less than 4 minutes, approximately a fifth of the duration of the entire episode. Notice that Jay says "I love you" to Phil right in the middle of the episode. 

     Rapidly, we get an unexpected structure alteration : just before the middle of the episode, two secondary plots are set-up. This is very ambitious, because usually too many plots means either missed opportunities, unfinished plots or both. 

This is a basic layout of the plot system in this episode : 

The layout looks pretty complicated, and the episode is as well, but everything happens smoothly and that's one of the great things about MF : it may get complicated, but it's very well done so that you understand easily without the show insisting too much.

     However, there were some loose ends in my opinion. I would've liked to see Jay get more uncomfortable with Phil after saying "I love you" and that would've made their conversation much funnier and opened it up to a whole arsenal of innuendos and quiproquos. 

Also, in past episodes, we discover Claire and Gloria's rivalry and I thought there would be much more fuss around Gloria's vase that Claire broke. I hoped they would go a little farther in the issue of the lost helicopter to, once again, open the path to a very extravagant reaction from Gloria for example. 

Another thing : to get Cameron on the road with the truck, Jay gives up the keys very fast. I believe that if there had been more soft-homophobic comments from Jay, it would've made Cam's statement "I expect this from Jay's generation, but not from the future generation." much more powerful.

     Let's put things into perspective : there were many different plot-lines going all over the place, but the message (rather, MY analysis) of the episode is that the family wants to help another family in need and ends up getting scattered and broken up. That's why the episode starts out with everybody already together : their unity ends up in separation. The episode puts a lot of emphasis on how much they are close to better the contrast where they are all separated, confused and even afraid of each other. 

Yet, since we are in a sitcom, all ends well and the resolution really mirrors the initial state at the beginning of the episode. 

In conclusion, this was a very good episode, especially to analyse the structure and links between the various plots that are set-up very quickly. I also particularly liked the absurd "sleep-clowning" that afflicts Cameron : a little sprinkle of absurdity goes a long way !

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Thank you,

TRJ