See You Next Fall

Last night’s episode of “Modern Family” may be slightly misleading. The title “See You Next Fall” is not referring to the fact that it is the season finale, which many of my friends thought it meant, but instead was alluding to the fact that Cam is going to produce several laugh-worthy moments as he slips and stumbles his way through the episode. (He falls into Lily’s kiddy pool and gets upset when Mitch laughs at him.) Aside from some hilarious physical comedy, the episode provided many great lines and carefully threaded stories, hopefully pointing to the fact that next week’s season finale will be one you won’t want to miss.

Starting with the Dunphy’s, Alex is graduating from Middle School and gets to deliver the address, since she is valedictorian. We see her rehearsing a brutally honest speech where she will bash her classmates for ignoring her, and Haley takes it upon herself to try to stop this from happening. Meanwhile, Phil can see that Claire is going to have an emotional meltdown. He tries to make it happen immediately instead of the next day, so that he can go to Las Vegas with his cheerleading buddies.

Jay arrives home and the left side of his face is drooping. He tries to avoid any attention, but it’s obvious that he got a bad Botox job. Gloria and Manny both think that something bigger is wrong, though, so eventually Jay must admit what he has done. (By the way, they still have the cute dog from last week; glad to see the writers didn’t just get rid of her, like most other sitcoms would have.) This story ends up being another case of Jay feeling old, and Gloria is there to once again remind Jay that his age is all in his head.

There wasn’t much to the Mitch/Cam story, but it was still funny. At Jay’s house, Cam runs into the glass door, and then the screen door. Mitchell laughs again, and this time Jay and Claire join in, allowing Cameron to realize that “cruelty is genetic.” Upon trying to leave Jay’s house for Alex’s ceremony, everyone is stuck because the fence won’t open. Gloria finds a two-seater bike, so they throw the bike, Claire, and Phil over the fence so that they can make it on time.

At the ceremony, Haley tries to show Alex that “everyone has their stuff.” She admits to her sister that she’s flunking biology and might not get into college. She gives some harsh advice, while calling Alex “smart, pretty, and funny.” Alex is clearly touched, as the speech she gives is not the slap in the face to her class that she had prepared. Instead, she takes the words right out of Haley’s mouth. “Don’t stop believing, get this party started!” She gets a standing ovation as her entire family looks at her from the audience with pride.

Overall, I thought this episode was fairly strong. The best Modern Family episodes are the ones that center around one family moment, weaving together independent stories from each of the families. I’m also impressed with how the writers are handling Alex & Haley’s relationship, and I would just like to say that Sarah Hyland is hilarious. (This is evidenced by the fact that half of the lines I picked below come from Haley.)

As usual join us below the jump for Memorable quotes from the show:

Read More »Modern Family: Season 2, Episode 23 – See You Next Fall