- Claire recruits her family to help gather signatures for a petition to get a stop sign, Gloria loses the family dog, Jay helps Manny try to sell wrapping paper for school, and Cameron leaves a mess in the kitchen for Mitchell.
- Everyone sets their eyes on a goal: Jay is determined to help Manny sell wrapping paper for a school fundraiser; Claire petitions the city for a stop sign to be installed at a high-traffic intersection; Mitchell is hell bent on proving a point with Cameron, and neither one of them will back down; Phil and Luke will stop at nothing to create a viral video sensation; and Gloria is desperate to find Stella after losing him.—ABC Publicity
- Claire (Julie Bowen) is on the warpath once again. After hitting the brakes hard at a dangerous intersection, she was quite upset about it. Alex (Ariel Winter) wasn't too thrilled, either, as Claire practiced her "stop short" maneuver Frank Costanza used to do on passengers and Haley (Sarah Hyland) smeared her lipstick (not according to Alex, though). But they get going, and run over Phil (Ty Burrell), whose combination of speedwalk and Speedwagon wasn't helping. Claire decides to start a petition to get a stop sign put in. The family is ecstatic, because it typically meant Claire wouldn't be policing them while she worked on her project, including Phi and Luke (Nolan Gould) going pants-optional and attemtping to recreate a viral video of Luke putting a basketball through the hoop off of Phil's head. However, she needed everybody to help her collect signatures so it would be brought up by the city council. Oops.
While Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) berated Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) about making a mess in the kitchen with his experimental cooking (and for forgetting when the adoption agency wanted to reschedule their home visit), Manny (Rico Rodriguez) had to sell wrapping paper at school to pay for a Drama Club trip to see Les Miserables. Gloria (Sofía Vergara) thinks it's no problem; Jay just needs to crack out the checkbook. However, Jay (Ed O'Neill) is prepared to go Willy Loman on Manny, giving him life lessons about selling. ("A good salesman goes after Moby Dick in a rowboat and brings the tartar sauce with him.") Manny is just confused. Gloria still hasn't made her peace with Stella, but I have to take her side about the dog jumping too close to the hot stove. She puts Stella outside and then remembers she tends to leave the gate open a lot. Big oops.
Manny wasn't used to rejection...or hills...so he was ready to give up after going to three houses. But Jay told him he was selling more than wrapping paper: he was selling Christmas. ("What's the difference between try and triumph? A little oomph!") And yes, Manny was told to write that down. Meanwhile, Gloria enlists Cam's help to find Stella. Complete in an undershirt, he calls out for the dog. (Ironically, Eric Stonestreet and Marlon Brando probably ended up around the same weight, although not when Brando made A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).) Only Mitchell calls him because he left the kitchen a mess. Cam tells him to wait until he got back, and Mitchell vowed not to clean it up. Of course, Mitch is the biggest neat freak this side of Monica Geller and Felix Unger, so the temptation was too great. Until Lilly wanted some raisins and Mitch had to go into the very messy kitchen and get them. (BTW, for those of you who might have been worried...like on the IMDb board...Lilly refers to both Cam and Mitch as 'Daddy', like there was ever a worry she wouldn't.)
MITCHELL: For the record, I am not a neat freak. In fact, in my first long-term relationship, I was the messy one, which is why she broke up with me. (pause) Well...
Going door-to-door wasn't working well for anybody: not for Claire trying to get her signatures, not for Gloria and Cam trying to find Stella, and not for Jay and Manny trying to sell wrapping paper. ("Do you love Christmas?" "Actually, I'm Jewish." "Well, then you must appreciate a good value!")
Claire comes home to find Phil feeling no pain...or anything else for that matter. Luke throwing a basketball at his head a few dozen times may have had something to do with it. Claire couldn't get any signatures, although she got a sprinkler aimed at her. She berates everybody about not getting any signatures, or even doing the things they said they would do instead of getting signatures. Claire is going off the deep end because, unlike the mom from The Blind Side (2009), her family didn't have her back.
PHIL: Your mother's right. She's the quarterback of this family and we need to protect her just like Blind Side did.
LUKE: She just said the mom was Blind Side.
PHIL: Well, she's confused. Blind Side was the black kid who played tight end.
ALEX: Offensive line.
PHIL: Sorry. African-American kid.
Manny was ready to give up, but Jay wanted him to keep trying. Manny confessed he wouldn't be as talented and tenacious as Jay, and he felt ashamed about it. Jay smiled and bought his wrapping paper. (MANNY: You'll never go broke playing to a rich guy's ego. Write THAT down.)
Claire made it to the traffic committee meeting, only Duane Rogers () was not very happy his birthday cake wasn't an ice-cream cake. So you can imagine how thrilled he was when Claire presented only 34 signatures instead of the requisite 50. But then the family comes through with 20 more. Duane will take the proposal under advisement, which Phil is all to happy to translate as Washington-speak for "get lost." (More true today than ever.) He's blind-siding his wife. Luke made a viral video of Clive Bixby (Phil's alter-ego) driving while on the phone. ("Meet you in two minutes? Baby, I can do anything in two minutes.") Phil demonstrates he might hit a kid at that intersection, but Duane didn't care and told them to leave. On the good side, Phil getting hit in the head repeatedly with the basketball already had 78 his.
Cam finally made it home and was happy that Mitch left the mess. Cam starts picking up the dirty dishes and was freaking out a bit. Mitchell finally figured out Cam's scheme and started making a huge mess of the entire apartment, even giving Lily a princess hat with whipped cream. Cam breaks down and admits he hates cleaning up and put it off knowing Mitchell would do it. Of course, that's right when the woman from the adoption agency comes for the home visit.
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