The Kiss (2024)

"The Kiss" is the second episode from Season 2 of Modern Family, it aired on September 29, 2010.

Plot Summary[]

In honor of her late grandmother, Gloria decides to cook more traditional Colombian meals, which is met with some ribbing from Jay - but see who gets the last laugh. Meanwhile Claire finds herself becoming the overbearing mom when she finds out Alex likes a boy, and Haley's idea of sisterly advice is not helping matters; and Mitchell and Cameron have a tiff over Mitchell's freakish aversion to PDA.

Episode Description[]

The Dunphys have the same issues as every other family: never being able to match the lids to their disposable containers. And Alex has a boyfriend, which she naturally denies, but despite the sandals she wears that Haley thinks makes her look like a lesbian, Alex has been sending flirty messages back and forth with a boy on her mobile phone, which Claire naturally found and read. Therefore Claire must send Haley in. Assuming said messages are not from a drifter...as the Dateline-obsessed Claire fears...Haley goads Alex into kissing the boy. Haley kissed her first boy at 11, and Alex is now 13. Alex is convinced and goes to Jeremy's house to talk to him about it. Alex wants him to like her, and finally asks him to kiss her...in front of his entire soccer team. Embarrassed, she quickly runs away from Jeremy's house.

Mitchell and Cameron are shopping at a store for shirts, and Mitchell actually loves Cameron's fashion sense. But Cam settles on one, Mitchell says he loves him, and they don't kiss.

CAMERON: Mitchell has problems with public displays of affection. I remember at a New Year's Eve party once, at the stroke of midnight, he high-fived me. Two problems with that. One, gays don't high-five. Two, gays don't high-five.

Mitchell has no problem kissing Cam at home, but Cam does. But Mitchell writes it off as Cam being too needy. After all, nobody kisses at a bowling alley.

Gloria is cooking a traditional Colombian dinner for the entire family because her dead grandmother had been showing up in her dreams to convince her to adhere to her customs. Jay's dead uncle told him in a dream that he wanted steak for dinner. Gloria is not amused to say the least, but Jay has to go install a printer. He'd rather do that than call in tech expert Phil. And I don't blame him, given that awful DJ/rap sound Phil made at a party for Jay one time. But several failures later, he does. And Phil is excited because Jay always teases him about what he can't do, and now Jay is in his house...at Jay's house.

While Phil fixes the printer...by having to go reset the wireless router in the attic, and scaring Manny and Luke in the process...Jay returns to making fun of Gloria's dead grandmother. She yells at him until he backs off and promises to make amends by participating in her traditions. Jay has to slap the chicken to scare off death from the food and wear shoes around his neck to symbolize walking in the footsteps of her ancestors.

GLORIA: I made all that up. That's not a real custom in Colombia. We're not lunatics! But if you mess with us, we mess with you. THAT'S the custom.

Alex returns home, but the entire school already knows she asked Jeremy to kiss her. Alex and Haley go ballistic (Haley apparently thinks this will ruin her life somehow), and Claire tries to stop both of them, only she ended up revealing she read Alex's texts and made Haley talk to her for that reason. Now both of them are ticked at Claire. And Alex goes off because Claire got them to believe she was a saint as a kid.

At dinner, Cameron apologizes for being too needy, and Mitchell apologizes for being so closed off. Gloria gives a toast to her grandmother, Cameron thinks it's beautiful and goes to kiss Mitchell, and falls headover teakettle over the couch. Cameron is understandably ticked off, but Gloria and Claire tell him not to take it personally because Jay never shows (or ever showed) affection. He doesn't get why he's being ganged up on, especially since the closest his own father ever got to affection for him is a kiss on the back of the head when he thought Jay was his sister.

Claire insists that Jay tell Mitchell it's OK to kiss Cam in front of him, but both Mitch and Jay would rather drop it entirely. Claire thinks Jay is too closed off and it rubbed off on his children.

JAY: (to Claire) Oh, you have trouble showing affection in public places? Was that before or after you were delivered to my door at four in the morning wearing only your underwear and a police blanket?

Of course, Claire's kids heard that, and Claire insisted that was a joke.

JAY: Of course it was a joke. I've got a million of them.

But when Phil basically rewires Jay's entire computer network just to print one photo of Gloria's grandmother, he simply gets a "thanks" from Jay. That is the last straw, and everybody insists Jay kiss both Mitchell and Claire. He begrudgingly does so, and all is right with the world again. Mitchell even kisses Cameron.

GLORIA: In Colombia, we kiss for everything, because a kiss can mean so many different things. It can be the start of something new, it can be how we say 'this is the person I love', it can be romantic, it can also be worth waiting for (Jeremy drops by and actually wanted to kiss Alex, but they agreed to wait).

Now if only Phil could get over his aversion to paint…

Main Cast[]

(The characters striked out do not appear in this episode)

• Jay Pritchett
• Gloria Pritchett
• Manny Delgado
• Claire Dunphy
• Phil Dunphy
• Haley Dunphy
• Alex Dunphy
• Luke Dunphy
• Mitchell Pritchett
• Cameron Tucker

Trivia[]

• No recurring characters appear in this episode.

Continuity[]

• Phil's help for Jay's printer is mentioned again in After the Fire

Guest Starring[]

• Aaron Sanders as Jeremy

Goofs[]

• At the end of the episode, when Gloria is talking about different types of kisses, she and Jay kiss. The closed captioning then reads, “And sometimes a kiss is power. That one is definitely my favorite.” However, the first sentence is not heard in the audio, only the second.

Gallery[]