3. "Moon Landing" - Season 1, Episode 14
... in which he takes on the role of mom after Claire leaves, embarrassed by her family This is an episode where I really feel for Claire. She meets an old friend of hers for coffee who describes what her life is like. While listening to the story, Claire realizes that if she hadn't married Phil and had children, it could be her life. In an attempt to one-up her friend, Claire talks about how wonderful her life is and insists they go back to the Dunphy house so that she can introduce her old colleague to her family. As if it were written (duh), the house is in complete disarray, two of the children reek of alcohol chasing a rat, Haley and her boyfriend are fighting publicly in the front yard, and Phil is locked in a port-o-potty sporting a ridiculous mustache. Much to Claire's dismay, her friend leaves as quickly as she can, and Claire is left to put the house back together. However, she promptly has a meltdown spawning from her personal disgrace for her life, and leaves the house and her family members as they are. We follow Claire to a fast food restaurant where she indulges in a greasy burger, listening to her interior monologue explain that, although she loves her family and that it should be enough, she wanted someone outside of her family to see how wonderful they are. She goes home and finds the house back in order, the children calmed and smiling, and Phil sitting at the head of the table with a pizza. He had single handedly put life back together for her. Without questioning her, without talking about the ordeal that had occurred hours earlier, Claire joins her family and the episode ends, no apologies necessary. Phil is an excellent father in this episode because of his ability to step up and take over when Claire cannot. He doesn't punish the children or make them feel bad for having embarrassed Claire (that we can see), but helps them clean up the mess and shows them that sometimes there are bad days, but it's nothing a pizza at the dinner table can't fix.