Modern Family Family Member of the Week: 'Chirp'

Only one of the storylines on last night's Modern Family amounted to hilarity, and thus our rankings this week skew toward a particular third of the episode. Did we love Phil's smoke-detector detective work? Lily's commercial debut? Manny and Jay's sensitive badinage? Let's bank 'em and rank 'em after the jump.

Modern Family Family Member of the Week: Haley

Put your hands in the air, children all over the world: This is the first time a youngin' has walked off with FMotW. The Dunphy kiddies are about four times less memorable than their parents, but Haley secured the win by snuggling with Claire and misinterpreting her soap opera metaphors as dire confessionals about Phil, not advice about ditching her troglodyte boyfriend. But doesn't Claire see that Haley's adventures in Kevin-and-Winnie torridness are a little bit hilarious? This is a girl who tells her steady BF, "OK, we've really got to hang up this time. On the count of three: 1, 2, 3. Hello? I can't believe he hung up. I'm calling him back," and manages to sound self-righteous about it.

2nd Place: Phil

Phil spent last episode playing Whack-A-Mole with faulty smoke detectors, and when he whipped out the deadliest weapon in the Dunphy household to help squash the beeping bastards (his old college cheerleading baton), he earned the biggest laugh of the night by announcing he was on "the business end" of that glittery spirit stick. They all think they are.

3rd Place: Claire

A nasty head cold couldn't stop Claire from eagerly describing a soap opera character as "a bitter ghost of a woman filled with resentment." You'll notice her face tensed and stare narrowed too at just that moment, helping Haley to believe her mother was projecting her own bitterly ghostly womanly resentment. Julie Bowen remains the most versatile cast member on Modern Family, and here she played Claire's neurosis with a tense deliberateness. Fabulous as always, but this week she earns the bronze.

4th Place: Cameron

Of course Lily's commercial debut would be dogged with set drama, but I didn't expect it to conclude on an unfunny caricature of a racist joke. "SaveZilla" might be a funny name on its own, but it doesn't work as the climactic joke in a tepid episode. Still, Cameron tried eating prop grapes, and that's worth a hasty chucklefit. His explanation of SaveZilla's cultural sensitivity was also a treat: "It's called 'ironic.'" Even Alanis Morissette knows he's off base there.

5th Place: Manny

Confession: I don't love Manny. But I do love that he texted Mitchell to come over and "take the case" of a wrongfully terminated man who Jay fired. That's inventively precocious, as opposed to predictably precocious, which he is usually is. But, hooray! Two kids on the leaderboard! Yayyyy. Also: If Gloria or Mitchell or Jay aren't back on here next week, I'll turn into my own version of a bitter soap star.