(S01E04) You know, I never even thought about the fact that Jay's ex-wife might still be out there. I don't know why, but I guess I figured she was dead or something, since nobody's even mentioned her prior to tonight. Now I know why that's the case. There's a lot of history to this family, and it looks like we're going to be able to piece it together.

I loved the flashbacks we did get this week, and Shelley Long as the ex-wife is just brilliant casting. And may I say she's been aging very well. She hasn't lost even a bit of her comic shops, either. I'm hoping she agreed to come back and play this role over and over again. Since she's also Claire and Mitchell's mother, there's reason for her to come back over and over again.

Every week, I'm blown away at all the little moments of humor the writers find in these three families. They pack so much in a short half-hour that I come out of it exhausted. Tonight's episode stuck to one main plot, but man was it good.

I suspect that every family has something in their collective past they refer to as "The Incident." For the Pritchards, it's Dede's (Long) behavior at Jay and Gloria's wedding. It was an absolute hoot watching DeDe going crazy, flailing around and getting physically dragged out by her children. Even better was the cut to an interview with Gloria and Jay where he says he drives the ladies crazy, and a "Too soon" admission at her glare.

DeDe first showed up at Mitchell and Cameron's house where she couldn't help but judge Cameron for his size. I guess it could be worse; at least she's open enough to accept their relationship. She just doesn't appreciate Cam's scone choice. She apparently was incredibly harsh to Claire in her childhood.

The scene where her bitch son Mitchell went over to Jay's house to try and convince him to allow DeDe to attend a family dinner that night was brilliant. Jay knew Gloria would never go for it, so he declared that Mitchell had never come over there and that if it was going to happen, it was going to be a horrible idea that Jay would be horrified about going along with Gloria. And that's exactly what he did that night when they showed up and saw DeDe there.

And how perfect was it that after Gloria accepted her forgiveness, it was DeDe who lost control and attacked her. In one episode, I found myself wanting to know so much more about DeDe than what we got. Why has the entire family seemingly disowned her? Is it because of "The Incident" for her children, or is it because of her judgmental ways ... or something else entirely?

It was beautiful that it was Haley's boyfriend, Dylan, who brought a sense of wisdom to the proceedings. All that was happening was coming to a place of love, and it is the love of this family that touched him. And then he proceeded to announce, in song, that he wanted to do Hayley in front of the entire family.

Apparently, the tune was pretty catchy, too, because everyone was humming it in the closing moments. Brilliantly filmed sequence shifting from character to character to wrap the episode.

[You can check out clips and full episodes of Modern Family at SlashControl.]