(S01E23) They finally made it to Hawaii after all that trouble last week at the airport. Now they have a whole island to get into trouble on. Even more impressively, neither of the teenage girls fell in love with an island local, nor did anyone lose their luggage or get lost on the way to somewhere.

In fact, virtually the entire episode took place in the resort they were staying at, which was so nice my wife now wants to go there for our ten-year wedding anniversary. Sure, I've got four years to figure it out, but thanks a lot 'Modern Family' for showing us such a beautiful looking and relaxing family vacation.

Relaxing isn't exactly something Claire and Mitchell are good at. As we've discussed prior, they're both a little uptight. But they weren't the only ones struggling to relax, after one fateful phone call.

I give my older brother crap every year about how old he is. Even if Gloria doesn't understand it, it's what guys do. Unfortunately, what Jay's brother did was give him a serious reality check. Jay is now the exact age that their father was when he died due to his unhealthy lifestyle. That one phone call sent Jay on such a crazed fitness spree that he nearly ruined the entire vacation.

He did ruin his birthday dinner, as it doesn't look as if he ever made it to it. In fact, that the big gathering around the table didn't happen is another sign that 'Modern Family' doesn't follow the traditional rules of a sitcom. At no point, other than the beginning and the ending, was the entire family together. That feels about right.

The funniest sequence of the entire episode was the one with Lily in the elevator. While Mitchell and Cameron were screaming and running up and down the stairs, Phil and Claire stood right there while the doors opened and closed, with Claire saying she wasn't going to miss a thing anymore when it came to her kids. Then, as if an anticlimax, Gloria saw her in the elevator and thought nothing of it.

These sitcom kids make mistakes, and Hayley proved that this week. Her first real opportunity at freedom from Claire's ever watchful eye, and what does she do? She completely blows it by getting drunk. Kids are stupid, and I love that these sitcom kids are just as stupid as the ones in the real world. I also dug Claire telling Hayley that drinking always feels awful. I'm going to have to remember that one.

I knew we were in trouble with Luke and Manny the moment it was announced they were rooming together. Even though there was no way Luke should share with his sisters, considering their ages, it still would have probably been less awkward than sharing with Manny the man-child. Luke is such the "boy" boy, there was no way he would appreciate the finer things in life that Manny did.

I was a little disappointed that we didn't get to see more of Manny taking in the island. He opened the episode by saying that he felt at home there, but we didn't really get to see that. He talked of trying to have guests in the room, and I think it would have been funny to watch him try to put together a party in their room. Even funnier would have been watching the two of them try and "entertain" their guests.

That's kind of on example of the only real problem I had with the episode. I felt that it needed to be longer. By the time they got around to putting this episode together, ABC knew that 'Hank' had flopped and they had that extra half-hour burning off reruns at the top of the night. Why not expand 'Modern Family' to an hour for their special Hawaiian vacation, so we can have twice the time to explore the islands with them.

I would have loved to go on just one of those adventures with Mitchell and Cameron, so we could see first-hand how much fun Cameron wasn't having. We could have seen more of Gloria's frustrations with Jay's sudden desire to exercise all the time. We could have seen Alex do something in the episode. The poor girl was little more than window dressing throughout the episode. Her most significant contribution was telling her parents that Hayley was drunk in the room.

One thing that was perfect, though, was the ending. For all his creepy awkwardness, Phil is a romantic at heart. Giving Claire a true wedding after all these years has to go down as one of the sweetest and most thoughtful things of all. Having a local sing 'Eye of the Tiger' in the background afterward was a little strange, but fit the night as that's how he tried to get her to ignore the kids and focus on the honeymoon he was trying to give her.


[Relive your favorite moments in anticipation of next week's season finale with clips and full episodes of 'Modern Family' at SlashControl.]

Follow @ultraversion21 on Twitter.