"Good Cop Bad Dog" received positive reviews from critics with many praising Ty Burrell's performance.

In the Dunphy household, Alex (Ariel Winter) and Haley (Sarah Hyland) are furious at Manny (Rico Rodriguez) and Luke (Nolan Gould) for barging into their room while they were changing.

The go-karting goes horribly as Claire, whilst trying to be fun, crashes her kart into the boys, and pushes them into ordering large quantities of food.

Meanwhile, Gloria (Sofía Vergara) wants to help a grocery-store worker, Guillermo (Lin-Manuel Miranda), so she convinces Jay (Ed O'Neill) to let Guillermo pitch him a business idea: a dog-training system labeled "The Good-doggy / Bad-doggy Training System", which consists of two sets of dog treats, one of them being bland and the other a tastier one with bacon.

The pitch goes wrong when Guillermo's dog, Stella (Brigitte), chews on Jay's pillow and seems to prefer the bad doggy treat.

Seeing that Gloria's blind encouragement is doing him no favours, Jay adopts a firm, frank tone with Guillermo and tells him that, while he has obvious presentation skills, enthusiasm and charisma, his idea has no legs.

Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) has bought tickets to a Lady Gaga concert, but his plans go south when Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) gets sick.

Mitchell tries to sneak away after noticing that Cameron has drunk most of a cough syrup that would "put down a Grizzly", but he is caught when Cam wakes up.

[6] In its original American broadcast on May 11, 2011, "Good Cop Bad Dog" was viewed by an estimated 10.113 million households and received a 4.2 rating/11% share among adults between the ages of 18 and 49.

[7][8] In its timeslot, "Good Cop Bad Dog" was outperformed by Fox reality television series, American Idol which received a 6.9 rating/20 share in the 18–49 demographic.

Club's Donna Bowman wrote that the episode showed "flashes of brilliance in this half hour that were equally due to the situations set up by the writers and to the talents of the cast".

[14] TV Squad writer Joel Keller praised Phil and Claire's plot for recycling a standard television trope while still having "the biggest laughs".

[16] Sam Morgan of Hollywood.com complimented the writers for attempting to write a "classic MF episode" but concluded, "It had some very funny bits, but that heart it searched far and wide for just wasn’t there".