Leap Day (Modern Family)

"Leap Day" is the 17th episode of the third season of the American sitcom Modern Family, and the series' 65th episode overall. It aired on February 29, 2012. The episode was written by Danny Zuker and directed by Gail Mancuso.

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Transcription

A calendar year is made of three hundred and sixty five days -- a number that refuses to be divide nicely, which is why we end up with uneven months of either 30 or 31 days. Except for February -- the runt of the litter -- which only gets 28... except when it gets 29 and then the year is 366 days long. Why does that happen? What kind of crazy universe do we live in where some years are longer than others? To answer this we need to know: just what is a year? Way oversimplifying it: a year is the time it takes Earth to make one trip around the sun. This happens to line up with the cycle of the seasons. Now, drawing a little diagram like this showing the Earth jauntily going around the sun is easy to do, but accurately tracking a year is tricky when you're on Earth because the universe doesn't provide an overhead map. On Earth you only get to see the seasons change and the obvious way to keep track of their comings and goings is to count the days passing which gives you a 365 day calendar. But as soon as you start to use that calendar, it slowly gets out of sync with the seasons. And with each passing year the gap gets bigger and bigger and bigger. In three decades the calendar will be off by a week and in a few hundred years the seasons would be flipped -- meaning Christmas celebrations taking place in summer -- which would be crazy. Why does this happen? Did we count the days wrong? Well the calendar predicts that the time it takes for the Earth to go around the sun is 8,760 hours. But, if you actually timed it with a stopwatch you'd see that a year is really longer than the calendar predicts by almost six hours. So our calendar is moving ever-so-slightly faster than the seasons actually change. And thus we come to the fundamental problem of all calendars: the day/night cycle, while easy to count, has nothing to do with the yearly cycle. Day and night are caused by Earth rotating about its axis. When you're on the side faceing the sun, it's daytime and when you're on the other side it's night. But this rotation is no more connected to the orbital motion around the sun than a ballerina spinning on the back of a truck is connected to the truck's crusing speed. Counting the number of ballerina turns to predict how long the truck takes to dive in a circle might give you a rough idea, but it's crazy to expect it to be precise. Counting the days to track the orbit is pretty much the same thing and so it shouldn't be a surprise when the Earth dosen't happen to make exactly 365 complete spins in a year. Irritatingly, while 365 days are too few 366 days are too many and still cause the seasons to drift out of sync, just in the opposite way. The solution to all this is the leap year: where February gets an extra day, but only every four years. This works pretty well, as each year the calendar is about a quarter day short, so after four years you add an extra day to get back in alignment. Huzzah! The problem has been solved. Except, it hasn't. Lengthening the calendar by one day every four years is slightly too much, and the calendar still falls behind the seasons at the rate of one day per hundred years. Which is fine for the apathetic, but not for calendar designers who want everything to line up perfectly. To fix the irregularity, every century the leap year is skipped. So 1896 and 1904 were leap years but 1900 wasn't. This is better, but still leaves the calendar ever-so-slightly too fast with an error of 1 day in 400 years. So an additional clause is added to the skip the centuries rule that if the century is divisible by 400, then it will be a leap year. So 1900 and 2100 aren't leap years, but 2000 is. With these three rules, the error is now just one day off in almost eight thousand years which the current calendar declares 'mission accomplished' and so calls it a day. Which is probably quite reasonable because eight thousand years ago humans were just figuring out that farming might be a good idea and eight thousand years from now we'll be hopefully be using a calendar with a better date tracking system. But perhaps you're a mathematician and a 0.0001 percent error is an abomination in your eyes and must be removed. "Tough luck" says The Universe because the length of a day isn't even constant. It randomly varies by a few milliseconds and on average and very slowly decreases by about 1 millisecond per hundred years. Which means it's literally impossible to build a perfect calendar that lasts forever. In theory the length of a day will expand to be as long as a curent month -- but don't worry in practice it will take tens of billions of years, and our own expanding sun will destroy the earth long before that happens. Sorry, not quite sure how we got from counting the days of the months to the fiery unavoidable end of all human civilization -- unless of course we have an adequately funded space program (hint, hint) -- but there you have it. For the next eight millennia Leap years will keep the calendar in sync with the seasons but in a surprisingly complicated way. You can learn a lot more about orbits, different kinds of years and supermassive black holes and over at Minute Physics. As always, Henry does a great job of explaining it all in his new video. Check it out.�

Plot

It is February 29, a.k.a. Leap Day, and it is also Cameron's (Eric Stonestreet) birthday. He is turning 40, but as his birth date, being Leap Day, only occurs once every four years, he likes to think he is turning 10. Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) is extremely pressured to arrange the perfect party for him and has planned a Wizard of Oz-themed party and sets everything up while Cameron is away. However, when Cameron comes back home, he tells Mitchell that he will be busy for most of the day talking to his family in the aftermath of the deadliest tornado that hit his hometown. Realizing the Wizard of Oz is famous for a tornado, Mitchell abruptly cancels the Wizard of Oz-themed party and is forced to come up with a different party idea within a couple of hours.

Meanwhile, Phil (Ty Burrell) is especially excited about Leap Day that he takes the day off from work to do something fun with his family. Claire (Julie Bowen) decides to sign the family up for a trapeze class at a local amusement park. However, Claire gets on her menstrual cycle and Phil gets horrified when Haley (Sarah Hyland) and Alex (Ariel Winter) get on their cycles as well. Thinking their moody behavior will ruin his day, Phil conspires with Luke (Nolan Gould) and Manny (Rico Rodriguez) to go to the trapeze class without the girls, telling the boys not to mention the cycle. Phil has Luke pretend that he is similarly feeling under the weather like the girls, but this backfires as Claire - knowing what Phil is doing, and fed up with his lack of empathy and unwillingness to have an open conversation with her about menstruation - insists Luke stay home, prompting Manny to go home. Phil decides to have Luke feign a cut on his finger using fake blood so they can have an excuse to leave the house to go to the doctor. Luke accidentally spills most of the container on himself. When Claire finds the container of fake blood, Luke is forced to admit that Phil wanted to leave the girls home due to their menstrual cycles (which he mispronounces). All three women are disgusted and Claire berates Phil.

Jay (Ed O'Neill) and Gloria (Sofía Vergara) go to a bar to cheer on a soccer game. When one of the patrons gets competitive with Gloria, Jay takes her away to another table to avoid confrontation. Gloria wishes that Jay fought the patron and his manliness comes into question, even more so when he puts on a pink robe, which was originally white before his white clothes got mixed with red ones in the laundry. However, when Javier disappoints Manny by once again cancelling an arranged trip with him, Gloria decides she prefers Jay being reasonable.

Mitchell decides to throw a last minute birthday cruise for Cameron, with Jay's family, the Dunphy family, and others in attendance. However, the captain (John DiMaggio) says that six of them will not be able to get onto the boat as the group is too big and that it was the biggest boat they could get within two hours. Cameron now believes Mitchell waited to arrange his party at the last second, while Gloria tries to reason with the captain, but the Captain gets confrontational with her, prompting Jay to get confrontational with him. Gloria tells him to calm down, saying she prefers that he's calm and reasonable. When the captain makes a remark about Jay's age, an angry Gloria responds by punching him in the face. As a result, the captain refuses to let any of them onto the boat and threatens to call the police, while Cameron walks away upset. When Phil mentions Cameron's sadness to Claire, she berates him over his understanding of emotions. Phil responds that it has been an emotional day for him as well because he could not do what he wanted, prompting the girls to give him a hug.

When Mitchell tries to explain what happened to Cameron, Cameron berates him for being unable to throw a decent 10th birthday, to which Mitchell reminds him that he is actually 40. Cameron breaks down, and Mitchell sees that his sadness is over the fact that he is 40 and wanted to be 10 for his birthday. When Phil mentions to them all he wanted was to go to the amusement park, Mitchell decides to take Cameron there where the two have a great time. The Dunphy family also goes, where the girls use their menstrual anger to pressure the trapeze attendant to allow Phil on. The girls let their anger out playing Whac-A-Mole.

Reception

Ratings

In its original American broadcast, "Leap Day" was watched by 11.68 million; up 0.14 million from the previous episode.^[1]

Reviews

"Leap Day" received positive reviews.

Leigh Raines from TV Fanatic gave the episode 4/5 saying that "The episode was like a ball of tension, under a weight of pressure, occurring during the time of the month for three feisty women. Or Satan's trifecta, according to Phil. Since the combined levels of screaming between Claire, Haley and Alex have left me with residual anxiety, I would say that Phil was pretty accurate."^[2]

Christine N. Ziemba of Paste Magazine gave the episode 9/10 saying that Leap Day should be turned into a national holiday, thanks to Phil Dunphy and Cam Tucker. "With “Leap Day,” this show made us do something that we haven't done many times throughout the season—laugh out loud—a lot. It's too bad that every day can't be Leap Day for Modern Family."^[3]

Cory Worrell of Ape Donkey gave a good review to the episode saying that "Leap Day" may be the best one of the season's episodes yet. "So many great moments in “Leap Day” including a candidate for line of the year courtesy of one Phil Dunphy, “Like when Wolfman, Dracula and Frankenstein showed up in the same movie....except this wasn't awesome!!” “Leap Day” was just pure, unadulterated hilarity."^[4]

Shayelizatrotter of The Comedy Critic gave an A− rate to the episode stating that "Modern Family” took advantage of the opportunity [of a holiday day] to produce a more than amusing episode. "Overall, “Leap Day” was an episode that made a rather bizarre holiday into something quite funny!"^[5]

Despite the general positive reviews, Phil Dyess-Nugent from The A.V. Club gave a C+ rate to the episode saying: "Tonight's episode wasn't the show at its best, and it demonstrated just how pointless this skillfully polished comedy projectile can feel when it really loses its direction in the course of an episode and spends the bulk of half an hour aimlessly wandering the parking lot. It also demonstrated just how second-hand it can feel when it fails to put its stamp on the ideas it's borrowed from feistier shows."^[6]

Accolades

Jesse Tyler Ferguson submitted this episode for consideration due to his nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series at the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards.

References

^ Gorman, Bill (March 1, 2012). "TV Ratings Wednesday: 'American Idol' Down Slightly, Leads Fox Win; 'Law & Order: SVU,' 'Chelsea,' 'Revenge' At Lows, 'Top Model' Premiere Crashes - Ratings | TVbytheNumbers". TV by the Numbers. Archived from the original on March 2, 2012.
^ Raines, Leigh (March 1, 2012). "Modern Family Review: Cam's 10th Birthday". TV Fanatic.
^ Ziemba, Christine (March 1, 2012). "Modern Family Review: "Leap Day" (Episode 3.17)". Paste Magazine.
^ Worrell, Cory (March 4, 2012). "Modern Family "Leap Day" Review". Ape Donkey. Archived from the original on November 3, 2013. Retrieved November 1, 2013.
^ Shayelizatrotter (February 29, 2012). ""Modern Family" Episode Review: Leap Day". The Comedy Critic.
^ Dyess-Nugent, Phil (February 29, 2012). "Leap Day". The A.V. Club.

External links

Afterbuzz's discussion about "Leap Day" on YouTube
"Leap Day" at IMDb
"Leap Day" at ABC.com

v t e Modern Family
Awards and nominations Characters Episodes Season 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Season 3	"Dude Ranch" "When Good Kids Go Bad" "Phil on Wire" "Door to Door" "Hit and Run" "Go Bullfrogs!" "Treehouse" "After the Fire" "Punkin Chunkin" "Express Christmas" "Lifetime Supply" "Egg Drop" "Little Bo Bleep" "Me? Jealous?" "Aunt Mommy" "Virgin Territory" "Leap Day" "Send Out the Clowns" "Election Day" "The Last Walt" "Planes, Trains and Cars" "Disneyland" "Tableau Vivant" "Baby on Board"
Adaptations	Familia moderna (Chile) Haft Sang (Iran)
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This page was last edited on 2 April 2024, at 00:24

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