Modern Family recap: Haley comes clean to Arvin and Phil flips the script on Jay

In the latest episode of Modern Family, Haley further complicates her love life, Phil uses Mean Girls tactics on Jay, and Manny’s sexuality is questioned.

Last week’s episode laid the groundwork for how this season of Modern Family will go for a few characters, and this week advanced that narrative for two of them. I still suspect Jay will be passing away this season and he, again, was front and center in this episode in a story-line involving Phil.

Part of the theory around Jay passing assumes Phil will be the one stepping in to fill his role. The tease about a character dying revealed that the family dynamic would change and Phil stepping up as patriarch would be the logical move. There was a hint to that thrown into this episode.

We also had Dylan reintroduced into Haley’s life last week and the easy answer would have been to have Haley dump Arvin for him, but the writers decided to go another route.

Manny

The third story of this episode followed Manny. He’s now back from his cross-country trip and tells his family he has a new Canadian girlfriend. He mysteriously can’t produce a picture of her, however, which leads to speculation that she doesn’t exist and that he may be gay.

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Cam and Mitch also had Canadian girlfriends before they came out and further this theory. Gloria spends most of the episode trying way too hard to convince Manny that he can come out to her without saying that this is what she’s thinking.

Finally, Manny confesses in a very Manny way that he and his new girlfriend had sex. Gloria is shocked and upset. She doesn’t get to react, though, because more is happening elsewhere in the family.

Phil and Jay

At the start of the episode, Jay tries to speak to Phil, but Phil just blows him off. He watched the movie Mean Girls and decides to be cold toward Jay. Jay tries to make jokes with him and talk to him, but Phil is giving him nothing. It’s the complete opposite of the way their interactions usually go and it’s definitely getting to Jay.

That’s when Alex reveals that they watched Mean Girls and suggests that Phil is “Mean Girls-ing” him. Jay realizes that this is the case and turns it right back around on Phil. It’s working, but this just makes Phil bring out the big guns.

Right after Manny’s confession (and Alex subsequently mentioning her “hot sex” in front of Phil and slinking off camera after she realizes her blunder) Phil walks up with a plate of steaks and proceeds to throw one on Jay’s grill. This is the ultimate insult, but leads to the entire family confessing that Jay over-cooks his meat.

This was a huge moment, as Phil taking over the grill feels like a step towards him taking over Jay’s role in the family.

Haley

At the start of the episode, Haley admits she’s been ignoring Arvin’s calls because she isn’t sure if she should confess to kissing Dylan. Mitch and Cam give her conflicting advice, then her parents also give her conflicting advice later. When she takes a poll and four of her 9 family members say she could confess, she gets frustrated because it’s a tie yet again. (Haley, math). She decides to call and confess.

Connectivity issues on Facetime cause her to have to say it three times because she keeps freezing and Arvin is heartbroken. He hangs up on her and Haley doesn’t know what to do.

She ends up going back to Dylan to tell him that the kiss didn’t mean anything, but this time he confesses that he never stopped loving her. He takes it back to the day he met her and they end up making out in his room. At the end of the episode, Haley has a moment with the camera where we expect her to say she’s going  back to Dylan. She instead says that she’s in love with two men.

This was not the conclusion we expected for Haley, but it should be interesting to see how this plays out. She’ll no doubt continue to talk to Dylan, but we don’t know how many episodes Arvin will spend outside the country. If this is the last season, it would be a complete shock if Haley didn’t end up back with Dylan but we shall see.

Modern Family returns next Wednesday at 9/8 Central on ABC.