On the bright side, “iSpy” does manage to hold a theme across the three small family subplots this week. Many of the characters are suspicious of mysterious behaviour from somebody in their immediate family. Gloria woke up in the middle of the night to her husband’s dream, featuring some heavy breathing and moans for his “baby,” which she hates to be called. As a result, she wonders if her husband was dreaming about another woman. Meanwhile, Mitchell has lunch with a gawky IRS agent friend, Brett (Noah Weisberg), who reveals to him that he got calf implants. Mitchell is nervous about informing his chatterbox husband-to-be about this gossip and tries to keep this news a secret, but Cam knows there is news to spread.
At the Dunphy household, Claire is curious to some of her children’s mysterious daily activities. Haley has an art exhibit that she neglected to tell her family about, but her mother wants to know whether it is a legitimate art show or if Haley is hiding something – she does nap for much of the day, even between classes. Meanwhile, Luke and Manny head off to their friend’s Xander’s house without much notice, and she is worried that they could be getting into some substance-related abuse.
Modern Family was on a fifth season ascent over the past couple of months, especially with the season high of “Three Dinners” two weeks ago. However, “iSpy” is too tired and redundant to make much headway with any of the characters – save a bit of artistic credibility for Haley, who is becoming one of the show’s most valuable components this season. The only actor whose comic timing resonated this week was Ty Burrell. (Oh, and Aubrey Anderson-Emmons had a couple of cute moments, but she is becoming less and less prominent as the weeks go by, much to our despair.)
Phil Dunphy’s buffoonish smile, awkward gestures and sly one-liners are always good for a chuckle or two, but none of the rest of the extended Pritehett-Dunphy-Tucker clan was doing anything special. Here, at least we got the goofiest Dunphy wearing a garish umbrella hat, equipped with a Google Glass-like device that allows him to snoop on whatever his drone is flying above. Burrell has the gleeful, daring energy to make way with whatever loony contraption writer Abraham Higginbotham throws at him. Unfortunately, the other characters are trapped with subplots about their inability to keep secrets, which seems like a storyline present in every other Modern Family episode.
Meanwhile, the final scene where the family members scurry to Haley’s exhibit and end up insulting each other over keeping secrets and maintaining privacy on their cell phones was rushed and didn’t pack a lot of clever verbal or visual humour. Also, I’m not sure if it was the lack of budget or a lack of foresight into how art exhibits work, but the showcase was unconvincing. Haley’s photographs were decent but not spectacular enough that any community college would want to display them. Without the enhancement of black-and-white, the pictures were rather ordinary.
Finally, for an episode so focused on the dilemma of how much privacy somebody should have from the people they love, the writers did not wrap up how Haley must have felt having her family show up and disrespecting her own privacy in an imaginative way. Perhaps there were too many story strands to fit together in too little time, but the final sequence seemed like a rushed attempt to bridge the themes and characters together. On a dramatic and comedic standpoint, the final five minutes were poorly paced and un-involving.
“iSpy” feels like it could have been a fresh and funny episode of television had it aired many years ago. But with a rushed dramatic conclusion and a dearth of quality jokes this week, Modern Family was stale, failing to live up to its name.
