The 10 very best episodes of ‘Modern Family,’ ranked
Smash hit sitcom Modern Family revolved around the misadventures of a family with a lot of variety. All the Pritchett family members had their own quirks and eccentricities (even the kids), and they were very, very funny. Let’s take a look at the ten best episodes of the show.
First of all, there’s Claire and Phil Dunphy (Julie Bowen and Ty Burrell) and their three kids Haley, Alex and Luke (Sarah Hyland, Ariel Winter, and Nolan Gould.) Then there’s family patriarch Jay Pritchett (Ed O’Neill), his younger wife Gloria (Sofia Vergara), and their son Manny (Rico Rodriguez). Last but not least, we have Mitchell and Cam (Jesse Tyler and Eric Stonestreet) and their adopted daughter Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons).
1. The Musical Man (2×19)
Cam takes over as director of Manny and Luke’s school musical, and everything soon goes awry. Cam’s enthusiasm drives everyone crazy and the finished play is a total disaster… but a hilarious one. It does after all end with all the kids declaring their love for the F word.
This episode also has a great Phil subplot where he accidentally emblazons an suggestive ad (featuring his own wife and daughter, no less) over his minivan, and frantically tries to hide his mistake.
2. Arrested (4×07)
Haley didn’t really want to go to college, but she did go in the end, and unfortunately it didn’t work out so well. After a mere six weeks she gets herself arrested for underage drinking and the whole family is dragged into it. Mitchell is recruited as Hayley’s lawyer while Cam, disastrously, takes care of the kids.
It later transpires that Haley wasn’t arrested for underage drinking, but for assaulting a police officer (albeit by falling on him), and neither of her parents are happy. Phil, usually so easygoing, finally blows up at her and that shocks Haley out of her complacency. But she still gets thrown out of college.
3. My Funky Valentine (1×15)
A Valentine’s Day episode! Phil and Claire go out on the town with their role-playing alter egos, Clive Bixby and Julianna, but things go very wrong when Claire gets her coat stuck in an escalator at jusssst the wrong moment. Meanwhile, Jay and Gloria go to see comedian David Brenner, and Mitchell and Cam try to help Manny win over a girl he likes.
My favorite part of the episode is Mitchell’s lawyerly “SHAME” at Manny’s romantic rival, but you may find your favorite moment is the parade of embarrassment when Claire can’t take her coat off in public for… reasons.
4. Family Portrait (1×24)
The cast and crew pulled out all the stops for the first Modern Family season finale. Claire really wants a nice portrait of the whole family, but various shenanigans — including a kiss from Gloria to Phil, and Mitchell’s battle with a pigeon — threaten to derail the whole idea.
The ending is predictable, true, but it’s no less heartwarming for that. Jay starts a mud fight at the photo shoot and everyone gets dirty, but Claire realizes she actually prefers things that way. The muddy, happy photo made another appearance at the very end of Modern Family as a way of bidding farewell to all the characters.
5. Airport 2010 (1×22)
Another favorite episode of mine. Season one of Modern Family was really, really good, okay?
In this episode the whole Dunphy-Pritchett clan are heading to Hawaii, much to Jay’s consternation, as he was looking forward to having some couple time with Gloria. Things soon start to go very wrong, because Mitchell forgot his wallet, Claire is terrified of flying, and Haley’s boyfriend Dylan (Reid Ewing) is trapped in the Dunphy house after spending the night on the floor of Haley’s bedroom. The whole thing is bound to be very relatable to anyone who’s ever tried to go on holiday with a group.
6. Baby on Board (3×24)
The season three finale and a critically acclaimed episode. Cam and Mitchell have plans to adopt another baby, but everything goes wrong. Soon, everything is dramatic as a telenovela and it turns out the baby’s grandmother will be taking the child instead. Cam and Mitchell are forced to re-evaluate their plans in a sad, touching scene.
Other characters make some big life changes as well. Hayley gets accepted into college (after first horrifying Claire by wanting to move in with Dylan) and Gloria drops a massive bombshell: she’s pregnant!
7. Halloween (2×06)
Everyone loves a good Halloween episode and Modern Family had one of the best. Claire decides to create a haunted house with the whole family participating and she goes way overboard. Mitchell on the other hand decides to wear a Spider-Man costume to work for Halloween and then goes into crisis mode when it turns out nobody else wore one. Oops.
The scene where everything goes wrong in the haunted house is one of the funniest moments of the show. Haley’s “sexy Mother Theresa” Halloween costume is hilarious as well.
8. Fizbo (1×09)
Sometimes, under the right circumstances, clowns can be funny. And Fizbo, Cam’s clown alter-ego, is incredibly funny. He shows up during a party Claire and Phil throw for Luke, despite Mitchell really not wanting him to.
By the end of the party the bounce house has collapsed, Luke’s arm is in a cast and there’s a scorpion on the loose. And Fizbo would become a staple of the series from that moment on.
9. Connection Lost (6×16)
Claire is trying to track down Haley after a fight… but everything in the episode is told to us via screens on a laptop while Claire sits in an airport. After some digging and some phone calls with the rest of the family, she concludes that Haley has gotten married in Vegas!
It’s a really inventive way to do an episode, and it won a lot of praise from critics when it first came out.
10. Las Vegas (5×18)
Absolutely the funniest episode of the show in my opinion. It’s a comedy of errors as all the adults head to Vegas, and each of them tries to have fun in their own way, be that magic (Phil), gambling (Claire) or stopping her husband buying a hideous dog statue (Gloria). Along the way, they’re assisted by a concierge called Leslie (Stephen Merchant) who constantly draws his own conclusions about what’s going on in the hotel rooms.
“Las Vegas” has a variety of great guest stars—Merchant of course, plus Fred Armisen and Patton Oswalt—and it is, in my opinion, is a sitcom masterpiece.
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