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Worldly Distractions: Modern Family 5.14 - iSpy


crazyforkate

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blog-modernfamilygloria.jpgmodernfamilygloria

 

With the Sochi Olympics coming up, television schedules are going to be disrupted throughout February, so don't be surprised to see some irregular posting. However, Modern Family continues to soldier on, so we might as well take a look.

Phil has been holding a "Farewell to VHS" home film festival about a decade too late, much to the exasperation of his family. To get out of it, Haley lets slip that she has a photo exhibition for one of her classes. Claire's mad that she didn't tell them, so she decides to snoop and learn more about her daughter's life. It literally never occurs to her that this might be the cause. Luke and Manny head over to some friend's house, but they're vague about it. Claire and Alex comment that the friend (Xander) is a known bad influence. Phil decides this is a good time to talk about what a bad boy he is. Opening credits.

Gloria fusses over baby Joe. Jay is trying to avoid Shorty for whatever reason. His wife, naturally, is grouchy. However, it's not about her husband's disintegrating friendship - it was the fact that he had a sex dream. About someone else. Naturally, Gloria's pride is quite wounded. We get the unappealing sight of Ed O'Neill moaning in his sleep. There are some nice Latin stereotypes, too. Not very modern, are they?

Mitchell is out for lunch with a friend, who confesses that he recently got calf implants. HAHAHA gays are so superficial and stuff! This segues into a conversation of Cam's gossipy tendencies.

Phil happily greets Jay, who has come to pick up Manny at the Dunphy residence. Jay brushes him off, then recounts in an aside how he enjoys crushing his son-in-law's hopes. Claire overhears the conversation and zeroes in on the fact that Manny didn't tell Jay where he was going, which confirms her belief that all teenagers are filthy liars. Jay mentions his little problem with Gloria, which he assumes is because he lent money to a friend. A female friend. Phil is sympathetic and calls Jay "buddy". It's kind of creepy.

The kids call their parents out for e-stalking them. I have to say, it's way harder to be a kid when your parents are young enough to know how to text. I never had that problem. Phil gets hold of Luke, who claims that they went with Xander to "Sammy's". However, Claire debunks that pretty quickly when she's able to pinpoint his location with GPS. They're nowhere near their friend Sammy. Haley mentions that the location Claire found is a salvage yard and notorious toking spot. They ask her if she's sure. "I'm 420% sure," she says, while Phil stands there agape - but only because he thinks she's bad at math. And they say Haley's the stupid one.

Mitchell comes home to find Lily and Cam playing with Barbies. This immediately ranks in the top 20 of the cutest things I've ever seen. Best dads EVER. Cameron asks for all the hot gossip about their friend. When Mitchell evades the issue, Cam immediately gets suspicious. He lists all the techniques Mitch uses to divert awkward questions, including giving presents. This is confirmed when his fiance immediately hands him a new garlic press. Cam deduces that this is juicy, and after putting on the "hurt" act, he gets his way. Mitch fesses up and swears Cameron to secrecy. This hurts Cam, who never realized that he was seen as a gossip, and they have quite the lovers' tiff.

Alex crawls around in her room, stumbling over a sleeping Haley to grab a piece of paper. She ends up waking her sister, but luckily Haley can accept the explanation that "I was watching you sleep - you look so pretty."

Phil and Claire try to break into the salvage yard, motivated by the sounds of the kids laughing. Alex calls to tell her mother that Haley's work is actually a big deal - she was one of five students chosen from the class. (And yes, both Alex and Claire display a stunning lack of confidence in Haley's abilities.) They resolve to go to the show. Claire hangs up to find Phil, wearing an umbrella hat (those exist post-90's?) and about to maneuver a remote-control airplane, with camera, over the salvage yard wall.

However, the truth is much more interesting than smoking up - they're making some sort of cool stunt-ridden movie. Phil maneuvers the camera out, and he and Claire flee the scene. Mostly, Phil's just hurt that Luke did a movie without him. Oh, the trials of parenthood.

We catch up with Luke and his pals, dripping with zombie makeup and confused about the flying camera. Luke quickly figures out what happened - Spielberg has caught wind of their idea, "zombie parkour", and wants to steal it for his own gain. You can't fault him for creativity, anyway.

Jay comes home and instantly walks into a fight with Gloria, in which he makes the fatal mistake of accusing her of snooping in his phone. Now she's insulted and curious about what the phone might contain. He pretends to get a call from Alex, when in fact he's calling her to ask how you can delete emails. Meanwhile, she's deleting a text from Uncle Mitch, which Claire picks up on and gets snippy about. Everyone has secrets, I guess.

Over at the Tucker-Pritchett residence, Mitchell catches Cam texting with a guilty look on his face, and immediately accuses him of spilling the secret. To prove his innocence, he even hands Mitch the phone. Mitchell saves himself by refusing to look at it, saying he trusts his partner. Cam is vindicated. Once Mitchell leaves, he immediately receives a barrage of texts, giggling over each one.

Everyone shows up at the art show, where Jay and Gloria are still mad. Claire's also pissed at Mitchell for a snarky text. Luke and Manny show up, and Phil and Claire vow to hide their day's activities. Spoiler alert: they're not very good at it. Soon enough, Luke and Manny have figured it out. Everyone accuses Claire of being overly suspicious. The boys are insulted at the mere idea that they would smoke grass. Clearly, no one here has ever been to British Columbia.

The entire family snipes at each other about trust. Jay finally confesses the money problem, which leads Gloria to bring up the sex dreams. Cameron calls for some privacy in this cruel world. Of course, Mitch instantly reminds him that he's not so considerate when it comes to secret calf implants. Several people start grabbing at each other's phones. Phil is left to bask in the madness.

Of course, everything has a reasonable explanation. Cameron apologizes for his gossip. Alex and Mitchell, it turns out, are in cahoots about Claire's birthday present. Jay admits that he helped out a waitress who had fallen on hard times (oh, come on, that's totally code for "secret love child" or "massive Mob involvement"). The dream, it turns out, involved baby Joe in danger, hence his shouts of "baby, baby". He assures Gloria that she's all he ever wanted. Of course, an interview clip informs us that Jay wasn't dreaming about the baby - it was the dog. Figures.

Haley's photos turn out to be a collection of her entire family. Of course, it captures them all perfectly. Everyone's thrilled at her skill. The photographer herself shows up and is horrified. The kids all fight with their mom for her casual invasion of their privacy. "Use of the drone was completely justified," Claire trills. She claims it's in their best interests, and so what if she steps over the line? I'm horrified. Orwell, meet your lost novel.

A man from the college congratulates Haley - people have been buying her photos. Everyone forgets their conflicts and rejoices in her success. Over the end credits, we get a montage of her photos. And yes - they are pretty nice. I especially like the one of Claire getting all judgy over Gloria's prominent rack.

This episode offered little that we hadn't seen before, but it's been nice to see Haley develop over the season. Rather than the ditz of the beginning, she's become someone who is continually underestimated, and manages to prove her naysayers wrong. Also, Claire might just be a tyrannical dictator - but that's best left for another episode.

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  • Posts

    • Xan

      Posted

      The egg apron is a deal breaker for me.  That was just an insult.  "You think you deserve a gift?  I'll show you your place!"

      And I'm a little bit tired of the social media scolds.  If they didn't put their lives on the internet, we wouldn't have opinions.  They did so we do.  If most of us think that he's a bully, he probably is.  I guess it's another case of the husband being so full of himself that he was sure the interview would show him in a good light.  It didn't.

      • Upvote 1
    • Xan

      Posted

      I always find these Trump fantasy worlds very bizarre.  He's never in a nice suit meeting a world leader or even in a fireman's suit saving a child from a burning building.  It's always some fake macho outfit and, in this case, driving a car with a Confederate flag on it.  Their heroes don't seem that heroic.

    • JDuggs

      Posted

      On 12/22/2023 at 11:51 PM, JDuggs said:

      It looks like Micah is in a relationship, or very good friends, with this Florida realtor Veronica Peters. I’ve seen photos of them together on Micah’s IG, but I always thought she kind of looked too old for him. Maybe not.

      This was on Moriah’s IG:

        Hide contents

      image.thumb.jpeg.e5583f82734714ccb023fc889e4f0f90.jpeg

      And this was on Veronica’s personal IG and professional IG:

        Hide contents

      image.thumb.jpeg.e637a588be2f14fc379935962e743f47.jpeg

        Hide contentsimage.thumb.png.bfaa9a4a2ac77388067acef5c5afb81c.png

       

      Quoting myself from six months ago. I think this really is Micah’s girlfriend. She doesn’t seem quite as public about their relationship as she did back then.

      This photo of Veronica didn’t get copied over from my old post.

      Spoiler

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      • Upvote 1
    • JermajestyDuggar

      Posted

      There was a post on social media talking about this recent interview with Ballerina Farm and asking what people think about some of the things in it. So many commenters were like, “it’s her business! It’s not your life so why do you care?” This is the type of thing that bugs me to no end. Ballerina Farm posts their lives willingly! They post their children’s lives! Of course people will speculate and care! If they didn’t put their lives all over social media none of us would know anything about them. 

      • Upvote 1
    • LongTimeLurkerOG

      Posted

      On 7/25/2024 at 6:47 PM, LilMissMetaphor said:

      Just FYI in case someone missed it the first time round, this is what Art wrote on Reddit a year ago addressing some of the concerns that were brought up.  It's very telling if you read between some of the lines.

      "I don’t lie or make fraudulent claims to get money. That’s what a grifter is. I’ve closed all previous fundraisers and not all of them were successfully funded – for instance my legal name change and wedding fund did not get funded, so I still haven’t had a chance to do those things.

      I’m unable to work for a variety of medically supported reasons. It’s not okay to ask disabled people for proof of their disability simply because it’s medical information. To entertain the question is to concede that it’s okay to go ask other disabled people for their private medical history. It’s a common misconception that people pretend to be disabled for benefits or monetary gain, but it’s rare and doesn’t really make sense to do because benefits and fundraising add up to so little.

      I have been going to Seattle to look at possible places to live because it’s literally unavoidable, and I’ve been in severe pain because of it. That doesn’t mean I could do manual labor on a consistent basis. I don’t even drive, so I’ve had to cover gas and ask friends for help with rides.

      Have you ever tried working at a call center? I have. They’re severely strict and demanding, and incredibly demoralizing without paying much. They’re not an accessible alternative for people who can’t do more demanding manual labor. “Get a job like the rest of us” is ableist and is a fundamental misunderstanding of how accessible jobs are. It’s no better than yelling it at someone panhandling on the street. The supposedly “easy” or “low-skill” jobs are still difficult to do.

      I do use what resources I can, but it’s a total myth that there’s a robust social welfare system anywhere in the United States. If there was, we wouldn’t have so many hundreds of thousands of homeless people here, with millions more just a few missed paychecks away from joining them.

      The toxic mold was confirmed. My partner is literally terminally ill from it. If you read the actual updates, the name of the illness and the research surrounding it have been detailed. We have a letter from the pulmonologist that we sent to the landlord explaining that the environment my partner was in was causing the illness. Again, you’re demanding medical proof that you have no reason to ask about. Some things can’t just be washed out.

      I am as clear as I can possibly be about specific needs so that people know what they’re helping to support. I have said again and again that people shouldn’t give unless they can spare it and want to help. I even said that in the post linked to in this comment thread. My patreon is explicitly to support my writing.

      So why am I still fundraising and making money off telling my story? Because I literally have no other real options. I’ve been formally diagnosed with PTSD, it’s not “alleged trauma.” If it was working all that well, I wouldn’t have to keep detailing my needs.

      The real grifters in our society are billionaires, not poor disabled people. You sound like you just hate us for trying to exist."

      I remember reading this before. Well, they can take all their reasons and Stop. Grifting. Plenty of people with disabilities work and /or receive assistance (as I mentioned previously, my exPOS, who has disabilities so I'm familiar with a number of options and money). Some family, have / had disabilities. I've been an advocate for services and staff training (and provided training) for Years with previous positions - because it matters to me. So, yea, Artemis get. a. job. 

      57 minutes ago, Ozlsn said:

      Art lists manual labour and call centres. And that's it. Not any jobs they could look at involving writing, from editing to writing student essays for money (yes it's dodgy but people do it). Not even playing video games for money (get character to a level where they have cool stuff for someone.)  Nothing about remote work, which there is more of now, and not even entry level white collar work.

      On the one hand I agree with them that the social support is inadequate, and that detailing your medical needs shouldn't have to happen - but they just grifted nearly $5000 to move and for a holiday, and with the amount of effort that took they probably could have held down employment of some description and to be honest would probably be better off.

      So many WFH/remote legit jobs now. Hell, you can play games on your phone and earn gift cards; donate blood and get gift cards. I knew a homeless couple that donated plasma for higher amount g.c.

      Absolutely! The amount of money; it's disgusting. And that amount of effort... At some point, even we don't want to or circumstances we don't want to deal with and adult, because... We're adults! Plenty of things I want to ignore or not deal with, just have go away but persevere because the alternative... not an option.

      2 hours ago, Bookworm1564 said:

      My all-time favourite Art post is the one where they say “Just for today, you can double the impact of your support with this opportunity” as if this was the moment we were all waiting for.

      Like a sale for limited-time-only 🤣



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