While last night’s Modern Family didn’t quite make me double over with laughter the way its first two episodes did, it nonetheless pulled off the trick of effortlessly straddling the territory between absurdist humor (Ed O’Neill’s Jay smashing a remote-control plane into son-in-law Phil’s face) and genuinely moving (Julie Bowen’s Claire giving dad Jay a conciliatory kiss on the head to thank him for an act of kindness toward her injured husband). Plus, it’s not as if there weren’t plenty of laughs in this episode, which focused on unexpected pairings — Jay and Phil; Claire and her grade-school stepbrother Manny; Claire’s daughter Alex and Jay’s hot young wife Gloria; and, of course, Mitchell and Costco.

If I had to hand out a trophy for episode MVP, it’d go to Sofia Vergara as Gloria who, behind the ridiculous beauty and thick accent, is a rather complicated character — maternal enough to push for regular family outings (whether or not her husband and his children want ‘em); savvy enough to cut through Alex’s wall of insecurities in one short lunch; and vain enough to ban the word “step” in describing her new family relations, except when she’s slapped with the “grandmother” label. I also love her confessionals with Jay, where her blithely fawning comments about her deadbeat ex (“Once, on a dare, he even boxed with an alligator”) are equal parts innocent reminiscence and pointed reminder to her new (and older) spouse that he’d better appreciate he’s with a woman who at least from a superficial standpoint, could definitely be doing better. Vergara (who was terrific even on the short-lived Hot Properties) proved just as funny in her scenes opposite Ariel Winter (as Alex), a pint-sized actress who doesn’t exhibit any of the cloying tendencies so common among child actors. In fact, Winter’s eyebrow raise (embedded below) after Gloria answered her question about how many men she’d slept with — “Eight. Next.” — scored one of the biggest laughs of the night. Ditto for Alex’s reason for not wanting to borrow a hand-me-down dress from her older sister: “No. That sends an ugly message. That I’m Haley.”

Interestingly enough, earthy Gloria’s 10-year-old son Manny seems to have already inherited his mother’s therapeutic gifts, as his playdate with trampoline-obsessed “nephew” Luke turned into a sweet heart-to-heart with Claire. READ FULL STORY »