"Good Cop, Bad Dog": A Partnership

Welcome Back!  This week’s episode airing on May 11^th was entitled “Good Cop Bad Dog” and dealt with the many antics of the three different family structures.  This current episode uses the three different storylines like last week’s episode, “Mother’s Day”, to show the different forms of partnership in the three family structures.

Cam and Mitchell have tickets to go to the Lady Gaga concert, but there’s one problem: Cam is deathly sick with the flu.  Mitchell must now deal with the decision of whether to go to the concert he’s wanted to go to since they bought the tickets, or take care of Cam for the night.  Mitchell decides to spend the day helping Cam the best he can before the concert and then take their child to his sister’s and attend the concert.  The writers are trying to show that sometimes it can be hard to show a good sense of partnership when these situations arise.  Although the two love each other, material things like the concert can get in between their mutual caring behavior towards each other.  The storyline here explains how it can be hard to always be there for our partners in life and even though we love them, sometimes we falter and make mistakes.

The next storyline on this episode of Modern Family shows how Jay and Gloria bring their special personalities together to help a man on the episode.  Gloria, being caring and compassionate to all people that she meets (even complete strangers from the grocery store), brings home a man that has a “great” business proposition for Jay.  She knows that this proposition is not a good idea, but cannot say no when asked to help the man.  Jay being blunt and a good business man tells the man that his idea is just plain bad.  The combination works well together because each one completes the other and is able to be compassionate on one half and then a strong decision maker in the other half.  This storyline shows how the differences in their personalities work in great partnership to interact with others and have a great relationship.

The last storyline shows the Dunphy couple and how they choose to parent their children.  Similar to Jay and Gloria, the two show how their two different personalities interact with each other in order to parent their children the best.  The two play the “good cop, bad cop” routine when parenting their children with Phil usually being the fun parent who gets to reward the children, while Claire deals out the punishments.  The two try and reverse their roles, but are horrible in these new roles.  The storyline shows how we need to be ourselves and do what we do best and that makes the partnership work the best.  When we miss with this philosophy, the scenarios do not end in the best ways.

Modern Family teaches us that the great partnerships are found in many ways but it is important that the two halves work together to help get the best answer.  Also, the writers are trying to tell the viewers that although partnerships may falter at times, it is important to not give up and keeping working hard together to find out how to be the best partnership possible.  Thanks for reading and hope to see you next episode!