I Hate to Break It to You, But....

A much better episode this week. The storylines were funnier, and I felt like this was a genuine family again.

We open with Phil telling terrible jokes (nothing new) and then find out that he’s practicing his material for the SCARB, a big real estate banquet that he’s hosting.  Claire just knows that Phil is going to bomb at this banquet. I mean he’s telling jokes like “I’m going to ‘Phil’ in as host.”  Only his son thinks he’s funny (you know, since Phil has the sense of humor of an 8 year old).  Claire just doesn’t know how to break it to Phil that he’s not that funny.

It turns out Mitch is also having some trouble telling his significant other the truth, only his issue is biking shorts. Cam has started working out again and he wears these terrible biking shorts that expose everything. It’s so bad that they just blur it out (nice touch). Of course, Cam is ridiculously sensitive about his body (he’s ridiculously sensitive about everything) so Mitch doesn’t say anything.  Then Mitch has the great idea that he and Claire can do each other’s dirty work: he’ll talk to Phil and she can talk to Cam. This way Mitch and Claire don’t look bad to their significant others.  Claire mans-up and tells Cam (which ends with Cam running away in tears). But of course, Mitch just can’t break it to Phil.  Terrible.  But surprisingly Phil does really well at the banquet. Everyone finds him funny…even Claire. I knew this was going to happen because we can’t have Phil realize how bad his jokes are….we need his corniness for the next episode.  Back to Mitch and Cam.  Cam overhears Mitch complaining about the risqué biking shorts, they have a fight, they kiss and make up. Everything’s great until Mitch accidentally alludes to the fact that Cam has hairy shoulders. Yup, Mitch shot himself in the foot with that one. He just can’t win today.

Meanwhile, Gloria makes Jay go to his employee’s daughter’s Quinceañera (basically like a Sweet Sixteen) because he never goes to any parties thrown by his employees. She thinks he’s an elitist, which of course he is.  Jay wants to prove his wife wrong, but when he gets there he doesn’t know anyone’s name. He pretends to know everyone there, even paying Manny to help him learn people’s names. But of course his plan goes wrong when Gloria learns that they aren’t even at the right party; this is an engagement party!  No wonder Jay doesn’t know anyone here.  Jay is totally clueless and is shamelessly pretending to be friends with these people.  Apparently all Hispanic people look the same to him.  The climax is when the bride and groom dance, and Jay thinks it’s a father dancing with his daughter….and then they kiss.  Jay is outraged!  You can just see the disgust he feels, especially when the audience starts clapping. What was interesting is that there was no conclusion to this storyline…it ends with Jay trying to break the couple up. Maybe the writers are trying to spice things up by NOT neatly ending every story, but this just seemed like they forgot to come back to this storyline at the end. I would have liked to see Gloria stick it to Jay for being so ignorant.

Haley helps Alex become popular because it’s not good for the family (i.e. Haley) if Alex runs around doing the popular girl’s bidding.  Alex takes Haley’s advice and soon it seems like she’s got the hang of it. Then one minor slip up ruins it all.  I would have liked to see Alex be popular for a little longer than just 2 minutes in one episode.  At least give her a whole episode to feel the power of popularity.  It would have pissed Haley off if she wasn’t the only cool kid.  I liked this storyline; I just wish they had spent more time on it because it definitely had a lot of potential.

Overall I enjoyed this episode way more than last week’s. I appreciate the fact that every storyline didn’t have a neat, happy ending.   Seems like even the writers were getting tired of the standard formula.