- Phil, Luke, and Haley cause nothing but aggravation for Alex when they tag along on her tour of Caltech. Jay and Gloria have trouble finding the perfect gifts for their anniversary.
- Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) and Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) thought it was time to take a new family photograph to put over the mantle. The fact that Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons) stuck a drawing of herself into the old one because she wasn't in it was their first hint it was time. Everybody looks great, Cam is a great photographer (although the powder blue sweatsuit he wore while coaching football didn't film well), and they take the picture. Lily has some smiling issues. It was sort of the same look on the face of a walker from The Walking Dead (2010) when they know they're about to get a survivor. Needless to say, Cameron and Mitchell are trying to be delicate about how to tell her. They ask her to look at the picture and see if there's something they could improve on.
LILY: I think we should take one more. This (Cam's face) might need a little powder.
Finally, they go for blunt honestly, and it backfired badly. Now Lily thought she had a horrible smile, that she was ugly, and that she was never going to leave her room again. Cameron and Mitchell were horrified but had to give Lily credit for being over-dramatic. Mitchell calls Claire, who tells him to just let her smile the way she wants. Kids have phases like that all the time. Luke looked like he was about to sneeze in all of his third grade pictures, but trying to change that just makes kids rebel even more.
Speaking of rebelling, that was Alex's (Ariel Winter) plan as the Dunphys took a visit to Caltech. Claire (Julie Bowen) was along so she could convince Alex to go there. Not because it was a great school but because it was only 45 minutes from their house. Luke (Nolan Gould) was there as punishment because he cut a class at school, and Haley (Sarah Hyland) was there of her own accord. She wasn't even invited to go.
While Claire went with Alex on the tour, Phil (Ty Burrell) took Haley and Luke to one of the labs where they could make $50 doing an experiment. Phil went through a few of those in college...some of them on purpose...but when they got to the room, the lab assistant left them alone in the room for an extended period of time. There was also what appeared to be a one-way mirror and a big red button that said "do not push." Phil concluded they were already in the middle of the experiment. Luke really wanted to push that big red button but Phil stopped him, saying that he needed to follow the rules. Luke countered by saying Phil was upset not at him for cutting class but for the reason he did so: he was making a film (about a superhero who was like a hummingbird and had a heartbeat of 1,000 times a minute) and needed to finish a scene. Phil broke down crying, knowing he would have done the same thing in Luke's situation. He lets Luke push the button...only to be stopped by Haley. She was suddenly wracked with guilt because she broke the rules all the time, and now she was living in her parents' basement with no future. She wanted everybody to follow the rules for once. Phil and Luke convinced her she had talents of her own, and all three of them decided to be united. Mainly to prove to the people watching them that they wouldn't jump through their hoops anymore and have a monkey in a diaper laughing at them. (yeah, that was Phil again) They agree to push the button...which simply turned the A/C on and it couldn't be turned off. The lab assistant was not happy becuase none of this was the experiment: he just wanted them to fill out a questionaire. (and no, that wasn't a one-way mirror)
On the tour, Alex admitted to Claire she was only going on the tour of Caltech to say she gave it a shot. There wasn't anything overly-impressive about it, and she wanted to go to a school on the East Coast to get away from the family, much to Claire's dismay. But while they toured the dorms (which meant the parents weren't there), Alex ran into Jason, a brainiac from Boston who wanted to go to Caltech because it had one of the best applied physics programs in the country, even though he'd rather go to school closer to home. He didn't think it was smart to make a mistake on a decision like this just because he wanted Sunday dinners at home and getting his laundry done for him. Alex gave that some thought...along with the knowledge Jason thought she was really cute and was flirting with her. Claire apologized for pushing Alex into going to Caltech but Alex decided to give the school some thought.
Jay (Ed O'Neill) and Gloria (Sofía Vergara) had anniversary gifts to give each other. Jay was worried because he didn't think he did enough. And since he knew Manny (Rico Rodriguez) wrapped Gloria's gift for him, he got him to confess she bought him a Panerai watch that Jay had been lusting over for a while. Jay's gift to her was a ceramic bunny he made in a class because that was his first pet name for Gloria (well...second pet name, but Manny was crazy about his mother being called Sexy Pants). Manny convinced Jay it was still a wonderful gift, so Jay gave it to her, saying he put a lot into it. Gloria smashed the bunny, thinking there was jewelry inside. Jay lied and said he meant for the jeweler to put the bracelet she went crazy for at the store inside the bunny, but he would go get it...before he started crying. Manny confronted Gloria about it when Jay was gone and she was horrified she broke his bunny. She quickly glued it back together and thanked Jay when he got home with the bracelet. She then gave him his gift: a bookmark made out of all the ticket stubs to the movies they saw together in their first year as a couple. Which Jay loved about as much as Gloria loved the bunny (when she thought there was jewelry in it). Both of them agreed to return the more expensive gifts...well, sort of. Manny told them to just keep the watch and bracelet.
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