'Modern Family': Phil Dunphy Spreads A Virus And Makes Everyone Sick

Episode 3 of "Modern Family" is aptly entitled "The Cold" as it deals with a nasty virus that has plagued the members of the clan for several weeks. Phil Dunphy discovered that he had inadvertently spread the virus around and he tries to hide the evidence from his family.

Mitchell Pritchett had arrived from his honeymoon in Mexico with Cam Tucker a few weeks ago and he had been sick upon his return. Soon after, his sister Claire started feeling ill as well, and she assumed that she picked up the virus from her brother. Meanwhile, Cam had also fallen ill during their trip and had clogged ears. At the Delgado-Pritchett household, Jay was struck with bronchitis for two weeks, which he blamed on Cam. Jay's wife Gloria had gotten sick and suffered from vertigo due to her weakness. Even Gloria's son Manny caught the virus and missed a few days of culinary class. Claire's daughter, Haley, also went through a bout with the sickness and had been throwing up for several days.

While the members of the family were complaining about their respective ailments, the video from Mitch and Cam's wedding had arrived and is in Phil Dunphy's possession. Jay and Gloria had invited everyone over for dinner and a viewing party and Phil is supposed to bring the video. Upon his review he was horrified to see that he had sneezed on the wedding cake during the wedding. Not only that, he also sneezed on a wine glass that Mitch drank from during Jay's toast. Mitch also wiped his eyes with the napkin that Phil used to cover his mouth for yet another sneeze.

After viewing all the evidence, Phil concluded that he is patient zero, the one from which the epidemic started. He decided that he needed to hide all the evidence to save face from his family since he would never live it down if they discovered the truth. He enlisted the help of his son Luke and they shot some extra scenes that they could use to fill in the cuts they intend to make to hide the evidence.

After some creative editing, both of them agreed that it didn't work. The new editing just didn't look sufficiently believable. Luke then convinced Phil to just man up and let everyone just see the video as it is. Phil agreed and they all headed over to Gloria and Jay's house.

Despite several attempts to either delay or cancel the viewing, the family finally sat down in front to the screen. It turns out, everyone was paying more attention to what each of them were doing. Mitchell was extremely embarrassed by his horrendous dance moves and hit fast forward. Meanwhile, Cam was appalled by his ugly crying face and skipped over that part as well. Gloria was the exception because she liked how she looked in her dress that day but Claire stopped her from rewinding the video so that she could skip over footage of herself looking drunk and dancing wildly.

When it came to the part of Jay's speech where Phil could be seen in the background sneezing into the cake, Jay noticed how sweaty his armpits were in the video. He had a very violent reaction and was so disgusted by the way he looked that he stopped the video entirely. The move effectively saved Phil and prevented anyone from seeing the evidence pointing to him as patient zero. To save the day, Phil volunteered to re-edit the video to take out the embarrassing parts. Everyone agreed and Phil came out like a hero but not before Lily bursts his bubble. She pulled him aside and let him know that she knew about him sneezing into the cake. Phil countered by saying that nobody like a know-it-all and this silenced Lily. Her dad Mitch had just had some recent issues with a know-it-all-friend of hers and she knew exactly what he was talking about. In the end, Phil saved himself and everyone else from embarrassment.