Human remains are found inside a suburban neighborhood BBQ pit set up for a block party, leading to the neighborhood's dark secrets being exposed. Meanwhile, Iranian intern Arastoo confesses to everyone that he has been faking his accent and his reasons for doing so.
Tropes
- All Psychology Is Freudian: Sweets analyzes Parker as passing through the phases of psychosexual development, a deprecated Freudian model in which everything is sexual.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Done in-character. Arastoo (the Muslim squintern-of-the-episode) slips his around Cam, then decides to not even bother with the accent any more when it's revealed that he was faking it all along — he thought his religion would not be accepted if he did not have a heavy accent like he was a recent immigrant.Arastoo: [resuming accent] I apologize for my outburst.
Cam: Oh, you aren't even gonna try and unring that bell, are you? - No Celebrities Were Harmed: What if murder happened in Modern Family?
- Rage Breaking Point: Arastoo finally gets fed up with everyone walking on eggshells around his religion and snaps at Cam that he's a scientist like the rest of them and would like to just work.
- The murder was also the result of this. The Victim of the Week had done several things to anger his neighbors, including poison the dog of one of them with laxatives, with the noisy, ugly windmill he built being the last straw, causing them to attack him.
- Take That!: "What are you supposed to do, preach abstinence? It doesn't work in Alaska, why would it work in Verbena Court?"
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: Bones points out she found it incredibly odd that Arastoo had been faking a Jordan accent when he said he was from Iran.
- This is Artistic Liscence-Linguistics. Arastoo’s faked accent is clearly based on that of a Persian (Farsi) L2 English speaker; for example, his /a/ vowels are clearly Persian influenced, and one of the most notable features of a Persian accent. The accent sounds nothing like an Arabic accent of any kind (i.e. a common confusion for a Jordanian would be switching /p/ for /b/ and /v/ for /f/, neither of which Arastoo does, since Persian has all of these sounds); the accent is probably based on Pej Vahdat’s Persian speaking relatives.
