In the episode, Mitchell and Cameron are looking to assign legal guardians for Lily in case anything were to happen to them, and are secretly assessing their family members.
But no one is impressive, as they witness Jay giving Manny a dose of tough love, Claire secretly taking Luke to a child psychologist to assess his development, and Haley and Alex getting into some delinquent activities at school.
Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) are looking for a legal guardian for Lily in case the two were to die, and are secretly assessing their family members.
After turning down the option of Claire (Julie Bowen) and Phil (Ty Burrell) to be the ones, Mitchell is trying to convince Cameron that Jay (Ed O'Neill) and Gloria (Sofía Vergara) can be the best guardians while Cameron says that his family could be Lily's guardians, something that Mitchell rejects saying that Cam's family is in Missouri, far away from everything Lily knows.
While they are discussing about who can be Lily's guardian, they witness Jay making Manny ascend a rock climbing wall in a sports store.
Claire asks Haley (Sarah Hyland) to take her sister Alex (Ariel Winter) to her cello lesson while she was picking up her friend Gabby (Rachael Marie).
Alex comes back in saying her cello instructor wasn't home so Haley and Gabby take her with them to break into their school and spray shaving foam into the classmate's locker, for which a security guard arrests them.
[5] In its original American broadcast, "Someone to Watch Over Lily" was viewed by an estimated 9.83 million households and received a 3.8 rating/10% share among adults between the ages of 18 and 49.
Club's Donna Bowman wrote positively of the episode, praising the use of "conventional plots" and adding "professionalism, a keen eye, good timing, and an approach that rediscovers the delight in this standard situation."
"[13] Lesley Savage of Entertainment Weekly praised the Dunphy family plot, commenting, "Their craziness [...] had me dying throughout the entire episode.