The Dunphy kids prepare a nice anniversary breakfast for their parents, but end up walking in on them while Phil and Claire are having sex. Luke isn’t quite sure what happened (“it looked like Dad was winning”) while Haley and Alex are reeling with shock and horror because they know EXACTLY what happened. Claire is much more upset about the kids seeing them than Phil is, largely due to her memory of walking in on Jay and her mom making love when she was a child.

While Claire and Phil hide out in their bedroom, the kids leave the house and talk about what happened over ice cream, with Luke noting that he’d rather have parents who do THAT then parents who are divorced like many of his friends; they make a deal to sit stone-faced through Claire’s subsequent address to them, which makes Claire happy–along with Phil stating that every anniversary with her makes him happy. In the end, the kids come up with an ideal anniversary present: a nice, solid metal lock for the bedroom door. However, the lock makes a loud ricochet sound when Phil and Claire use it, thus horrifying the Dunphy brood anew as an indicator of unseen parental sexing.

Jay and Gloria’s vacation to Las Vegas (and a three-tower restaurant wine room) is ruined when a brutally honest email is accidentally sent out by Gloria; Gloria is mad at Claire for being officious regarding an upcoming school bake sale and has Jay type out a very acerbic post which she never intended to forward. When they show up at the Dunphy’s to try and retrieve the e-mail, Claire thinks Gloria’s references to the letter are actually references to the kids seeing the sex show. Gloria and Jay lie that the e-mail was a naked picture of Gloria, which nearly causes Phil to pass out. Claire then confronts Jay for burying her own accidental sight of him making love to his wife, and Phil figures out what Gloria was really looking for. In the end, the e-mail is deleted without further Claire-Gloria acrimony.

Mitch and Cam have been unhappy with dinner lately, as Cam explains that Mitchell’s long hours, the work involved in getting ready to go out with Lily, and their geographic location limits them to walking and that limits them to a nearby kabob joint. But good news beckons when they learn that the eponymous owner of the hot new eatery, Amelia’s, is the mom of a little boy in Lily’s preschool, and they set up a playdate with the ulterior motive of getting Amelia to make them “in” at the restaurant. All goes well, and Amelia tells them they can get in if…they say something that she doesn’t specify because she has to take a phone call. Mitch and Cam accidentally hear the speaker phone feed and realize Amelia is an incredibly angry woman, and when they agree to watch her son Christopher while she goes to talk to/kill the contractor who enraged her, they see that one of Lily’s juice boxes was pierced and spilled red liquid all over a carpet that Cam recognizes–and costs $50,000.

The guys ponder whether to move the entire carpet around to hide the stain, then agree to blame Christopher when Amelia gets back by lying that he took one of the strawberry juice packs and drank some before spilling the rest. When Amelia hears this, Cam and Mitch learn that Christopher is allergic to strawberries and needs an immediate injection to prevent catastrophe, so they hold the poor kid down as Amelia prepares to inject him before finally admitting their ruse. With Amelia’s forever lost to them, they end up glumly returning for more kabobs and indifferent customer service.

“Caught in the Act” is the thirteenth episode of Modern Family’s second season. It first broadcast January 19, 2011 on ABC Network.

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License