"Modern Family" gave thanks this holiday with some fierce interfamily competition. The “dreamers” and the Pritchett’s go head to head after Manny, Gloria, Cam, Luke, Phil, Alex and Haley become fed up with Claire, Jay and Mitchell’s realistic approach to life. 

It all began when an old neighbor, Kenneth, returned to visit the Dunphy’s a huge success, and thanked Phil for being his inspiration. Honored, yet upset that his dreams were always squashed by Claire’s realism, Phil rebelled with napkin folding and table arrangements. 

Meanwhile, Cam and Mitchell get into an argument over a childhood story about one thanksgiving where Cam and his friends “chunked a punkin” the length of a football field. The debate sparks the “dreamers” to compete against the Pritchett’s in a Punkin Chunkin contest to see if the story is a lie. 

When the pumpkin only flies a few yards, Claire, Jay and Mitchell do not feel triumphant, and yet help the dreamers steal pumpkins from the neighbors and continue to slingshot pumpkins down the football field as far as they will go. 

The episode really highlights the difference between the Pritchett family and how they were raised compared to the other members of the group. It also sheds a new light on the loving relationships between Haley and Alex and Jay and Manny as well as the hilarious relationship between Luke and Phil. 

In the final interviews, Cam makes the observation that one would think that in life the dreamers would find the dreamers and the realists would find the realists, but more often than not, the opposite is true.

“The dreamers need the realists to keep them from soaring too close to the sun, and the realists, well without the dreamers, they might not ever get off the ground,” he said.  

Reach writer Sam Katzman here

Read Sam Katzman's last "Modern Family" recap here.