Should you watch it, wiki it, or wait for the recap? Watch it.
The Dunphys don’t believe that Alex has a boyfriend, and start worrying that she might be delusional. Meanwhile, Cam convinces Mitch to let his co-worker Brenda stay the night, only to find that she might be more trouble than he seems. Jay attempts to weasel his way out of Gloria’s event, but finds unexpected opposition.
“Strangers in the Night” is the ninth episode of the sixth season of Modern Family. It continues the trend this season of focusing on the kids’ boyfriends/girlfriends (after all, you can’t really have the adults going on romantic flings right? It’ll be antithetical to the premise of the show, and I don’t think they’re quite ready to handle a divorce yet, nor would we want to see that) and also on Alex! Yay she’s growing out of the nerd phase good and proper now
It also showcases many different levels of humour, more so than in previous episodes. In fact I’d say this is one of the best non-themed episodes of the season. It gives us some character expansion (I won’t say development because there isn’t actual progress) and fleshes out aspects of their personality that have been touched on before.
Highlights
Varied humour
We get to see situational humour, wordplay, and many different contrasts between the characters desires and their rather unwanted circumstances. There are several sly nods and looks to the camera, and the characters’ reactions in the background are hilarious to watch (check out Alex and Claire’s reaction to Phil’s “hot people in the house” comment).
Spotlight on Alex
Alex doesn’t get enough development or spotlight, since she’s the smart middle child of the family and that’s all there is to her. Her college visit episode was an excellent development of her character (what happened to the love interest there?) and now we’ve got a more rounded, holistic view of the character. Hopefully she gets into more relationship shenanigans so that we can look at BGR from a different perspective.
Lily is actually useful
As much as Lily stinks, she actually performed an admirable function in this episode, which was to show that Cam and Mitch are good parents after all. Also, there was very little of her spoilt little princess behaviour.
Jay’s character development
As I mentioned previously, it’s more of a character expansion, since it’s a follow up on his dog hobby. I can’t remember when he got Stella, but it’s fun to see another writer picking up on this point and following up with it, rather than a brand new hobby that needs exposition and build up. Stella’s kind of meh though, but the dog party was great to watch.
Letdowns
Dog party segment was too short
But there wasn’t enough of the dog party! We wanted to see how fanatically obsessed the dog owners could get. We’ve already seen Jay’s infatuation with closets and how over-the-top it could get, and this dog party was a perfect excuse to showcase more of Jay’s obsessive behaviour! It’s a pity we didn’t get more than a few shots of the dog party goers.
“Strangers in the Night” was a good episode that showcased the best of Modern Family. The only thing lacking was a family gathering at the end, but each family had enough going on in their own plotlines that you really didn’t notice this aspect. Great episode as the mid season finale approaches
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