Gloria (Sofia Vergara) and Manny (Rico Rodriguez) go to pick up Jay (Ed O’Neill) from his workplace to take him to a restaurant for lunch. While there one of Jay’s employees, Jack, lets Manny drive the forklift, and Manny drives into the wall. Because of the incident, Jay fires Jack, much to Manny’s anger and dismay. Meanwhile, Jay tries to figure out what anniversary Gloria is celebrating today, because she celebrates everything. Jay thinks he has figured what they’re celebrating, and therefore where he is to meet Gloria. He tells Manny that he will not hire Jack back because Jack almost “hurt my kid.” Manny, touched by Jay calling him his kid, tells Jay the real location of the date.

At the Dunphy house, Claire (Julie Bowen) and Haley (Sarah Hyland) get sick and have to stay home. The two initially bond, but soon Dylan (Reid Ewing) calls Haley, making Claire angry. After Dylan hangs up, Claire tries to convince Haley to break up with Dylan, using one of the useless male characters on All My Children as an example. Unfortunately, Haley thinks Claire is talking about herself and Phil. With Claire sick, Phil (Ty Burrell) takes care of her jobs while trying to find an annoying smoke detector. Seeing this as a sign he’s not man, Phil tries his best to find the smoke detector, to do all of Claire’s jobs, and to get his clients back, failing at everything. Soon after replacing the batteries in all the new smoke detectors, Phil uses his old marching band baton to destroy a couple of the smoke detectors. He soon realizes that Luke (Nolan Gould) had left the old smoke detectors in the attic last year, and they were the ones that were chirping.

Meanwhile, Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) takes Lily to act in a commercial for a children’s furniture store, against Mitchell’s (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) decision. Adult actors perform voiceover for Lily and another Asian child, using stereotypical dubbed-Japanese accents. Mitchell arrives at the studio and confronts Cameron, pointing out that the commercial is racist because it exploits Lily’s Asianness and not her acting ability. Cameron initially denies the charge, but then the director brings in the SaveZilla Godzilla monster. Cameron asks the director (who is African-American) to tone down the stereotypical accents, but the director refuses, saying that it is a satire. Cameron takes Lily away.

“Chirp” is the seventh episode of the second season of Modern Family and the 31st episode overall. It originally aired on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) in the United States on November 3, 2010. The episode was written by Dan O’Shannon and directed by season two’s main director, Michael Spiller.

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