Synopsis: In the interest of victory, Cam benches Manny, who had been the starting kicker for the school football team, and Gloria and Jay are left bitter at Cam. Phil and Luke attempt to edit the footage of Mitch and Cam's wedding so that their is no evidence of Phil sneezing on the cake and giving everyone his cold. A play-date between Lily and a highly intelligent six-year-old goes awry when Mitch calls Lily's friend a know-it-all. Claire attempts to go to work even though she is deathly ill and can hardly stand. Haley kisses Andy after a long talk about how it's a good thing that they resisted their attraction to one another.
Review: The first thing to be said about this episode critically is that there were just too many individual stories packed into it. I had to keep track of five different situations and, while Modern Family has always pushed the envelope as far as many different situations, this one had me wishing that I could toss out two of them so I could focus on the three that I liked. Claire's cold situation didn't deserve its air time. She merely stumbled into a lunch meeting looking quite ill and that was the end of it- no resolution or twist of any kind. Haley and Andy's kiss was thrown into this episode as an investment in continuing that story arc later this season, which should be enjoyable later, but it certainly didn't bolster this episode in any way. At least it wasn't totally useless like Claire's cold.
Focusing on the good three stories would've made a killer episode. It was quite funny to watch Cam start a ringer as kicker for the football game ahead of Manny, his desire to win beating out his desire to be a good uncle. Phil and Luke's edits of the wedding video were hilarious and seeing Mitch lash out against an amazingly talented six-year-old was thoroughly entertaining. At the end of the episode, I was just sad that I wouldn't get to see these scenarios play out further thanks to time taken up by the lame stories.
My Grade: B-
Reviewer's Quotes: "There’s more variety in “The Cold,” which starts a bit slow but hustles in its second and third acts. It’s also built on a theme, one which is not particularly observant, but makes “The Cold” nicely cohesive. Nearly every member of the family is killing themselves to look good for everyone else." -Joshua Alston (avclub.com)
Nielsen Rating: 3.6 (10.63 million viewers)
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