After a Facebook group began calling for Modern Family’s Cam and Mitchell to kiss, the show’s creators promised that an episode exploring Mitchell’s anxiety about PDA was already in the works for season two. Last night, that episode arrived, culminating in a sweet kiss between Cam and Mitchell, that, when it happened, wasn’t even the focus of the frame. The kiss was brought about by the revelation that Jay had not kissed Mitchell since he was 12 years old, bequeathing to his son a serious smooching anxiety. Gloria insisted that Jay kiss Mitchell to make up for it, which he adorably and awkwardly did, prompting Cam and Mitchell to share a kiss in response to the sweetness of it all. Was it everything you’d been waiting for?
The kiss was both frustratingly and admirably understated. On the one hand, seriously, that’s what you call a kiss?! On the other, Modern Family’s creators didn’t bow to the pressure to make Cam and Mitchell’s kiss a huge deal, sacrificing character and story line in the process. (As evidenced by Tuesday night’s music-video-heavy, narrative-arc-light Britney episode, Glee could stand to take a few notes here.) If short, and almost showily downplayed, the kiss did seem to be exactly how Cam and Mitchell, a couple in a long-term, committed relationship who have worked out, at least privately, their kissing lives, would lock lips. And, besides, this doesn’t seem like the kind of kiss that would make Eric Stonestreet’s “lips sore,” so maybe there’s more aggressive spit-swapping in Cam and Mitchell’s not-so-distant future.
