Welcome to a new Sitcom Tuesday! This week, I’m concluding my look at Modern Family (2009-2020, ABC), which is currently available on DVD/Blu-Ray and streaming!
ED O’NEILL is Jay, SOFIA VERGARA is Gloria, JULIE BOWEN is Claire, TY BURRELL is Phil, JESSE TYLER FERGUSON is Mitch, ERIC STONESTREET is Cam, SARAH HYLAND is Haley, ARIEL WINTER is Alex, NOLAN GOULD is Luke, RICO RODRIGUEZ is Manny, AUBREY ANDERSON-EMMONS is Lily, REID EWING is Dylan.
Season Eleven is Modern Family‘s most unnecessary collection. Not only had the show fallen below its own average quality way back around Six, but the previous year, Ten, had already done a decent-enough job preparing itself to be the series’ last. It offered narrative arcs and developments that helped bring the show full circle, and even though this eleventh year was negotiated before Ten’s finale was produced, that ending still served as an effective point of closure, evolving this “Modern Family” by adding to it via Haley’s twins. This acknowledged the premise and felt satisfyingly final — with many prior episodes also elevated by an enhanced situation-backed gravitas, especially compared to the dull and aimless Season Nine. What’s left for Eleven to do? Well, aside from actually seeing Haley be a mom — which, frankly, doesn’t yield as much as it should have — there’s a definitively final Halloween, a definitively final Thanksgiving, and a definitively final Christmas, along with one more outrageous farce and one more on-location vacation. All those are recurring episodic templates that have become staples of the series, so they naturally arrive with implied value. And yes, even more than in Ten, there’s extra weight because of the explicit finality. Oh, and of course, there’s a final finale here as well — a two-parter that, unlike Ten’s closer, doesn’t just evolve the status quo but actively destroys it, thus justifying the end of the series literally, conclusively. It’s not great, but after a story-heavy first half, the second half is character and relationship-focused in a manner that’s properly climactic. So, though I prefer Ten’s finale narratively, there is some value in Eleven’s.
In fact, all together, these episodes below make for an okay list. They’re all certainly much more interesting than everything in Nine. However, outside of these self-conscious big-ticket entries, the rest are… more forgettable, tired, and clichéd than anything the series has ever seen before, proving that without Ten and Eleven’s uplift of self-aware finality, the series’ quality has continued to erode as a result of stagnating characters who’ve run out of ways to inspire or even meaningfully tweak episodic ideas… most of which are now just utterly formulaic tripe. And it’s not merely the kind of stuff we’ve seen elsewhere, it’s also stuff we’ve seen before here. Heck, this season’s parade of all its past guests and gags for one last victory lap only reiterates just how creatively limp Modern Family has become with regard to story, as nothing is unique or individualized in a new fashion. In that regard, this list may seem like a credit to the series — as if it was able to stick the landing — but the overall tenor of this season, just as with Ten, Nine, Eight, etc., has further reduced the series’ average quality. This speaks to the simultaneous risk-reward nature of series television, for the longer a show runs, the worse its average quality and thus reputation becomes… while its presence within the genre only grows, for it’s literally occupying more space over time, thereby asserting itself as a more dominant representation of its era, regardless of actual merit. As such, Modern Family is a lot like The Big Bang Theory — another popular network sitcom that ran throughout the 2010s and helps define that decade’s sitcommery, even though it spent a huge chunk of that time being generally subpar.
Ultimately, the good years matter most of all. They prove that Modern Family was a reliable, consistently pro-sitcom sitcom (on principle) during a period where the medium was progressively becoming anti-sitcom overall. So, I appreciate it — and I have come to appreciate it even more during this study — as another torch-carrying envoy for an art form that, even when challenged, can still display its unique charms. Indeed, the early seasons — and that long stretch of above-average reliability — can never be taken away from Modern Family. And altogether, they more than justify its legacy as one of the best comedies of the early 2010s, rendering it the flagship entry in ABC’s era-defining spate of family-forward single-cams. It’s been a pleasure to cover it here; no look at this decade would be complete without it.
01) Episode 237: “The Last Halloween” (Aired: 10/30/19)
Phil makes it his mission to scare Claire on Halloween this year.
Written by Danny Zuker | Directed by Fred Savage
The three main holiday episodes this season — there’s no Valentine’s Day, interestingly — are all expressly labeled “The Last,” and that self-consciously gives them more narrative weight and encourages the audience to appreciate them more. Generally, it works because this year’s Thanksgiving and Christmas are the best we’ve seen in their respective subcategories since probably Season Seven. As for Halloween, I prefer the thematically well-connected selection from Ten that revolves around DeDe’s death, but this is a happier, more joyful showing, with a Phil/Claire “attempted scare” story that deliberately throws back to the early Halloweens that the series so enjoyed as a recurring part of its identity. Accordingly, the sheer topic makes this ideal fodder for Modern Family, simply as a reflection of the expectations it long ago set.
02) Episode 239: “The Last Thanksgiving” (Aired: 11/20/19)
The kids try to handle Thanksgiving dinner, while Jay and Phil revisit a decade-old incident.
Written by Jeffrey Richman | Directed by Eric Dean Seaton
As noted, I think this is the best Thanksgiving-themed entry that the show has offered since Season Seven, and what I like is that it not only plays into the new status quo of this particular collection — the evolved state of the characters — it also calls back to Season One and thus brings us full circle. Specifically, I appreciate the kids’ attempt to handle the Thanksgiving meal this year — it’s a sign of them growing up, primarily Haley, who’s now a mom herself. Also, Phil’s treatment of son-in-law Dylan is framed in relation to Jay’s feelings for Phil — a notion that’s emphasized in a direct callback to Season One’s “Come Fly With Me,” an early sample that’s really come to define the Jay/Phil relationship. It’s therefore a terrific reference point to now explore Phil as a father-in-law, comedically tying together the old and the new.
03) Episode 241: “The Last Christmas” (Aired: 12/11/19)
Christmas at Mitch and Cam’s is complicated by a variety of family conflicts.
Written by Abraham Higginbotham & Jon Pollack | Directed by Jeffrey Walker
Of Eleven’s three main holidays, I think “The Last Christmas” may be my favorite — largely because it’s the simplest, essentially functioning as a bottle show that keeps the characters all together under a unity of time, place, and action that always makes for ideal sitcommery — especially on ensemble shows like this, where multiple stories per week is the expected narrative template. Now, okay, there’s nothing exceptional about the ideas here — lots of familiar familial conflicts that aren’t terribly well-personalized to the leads and their depictions — but it’s nevertheless true that when everyone congregates, their personalities are delineated because they get to bounce off each other. And that’s certainly the case this week. What’s more, the novelty of this being the last shared holiday is explicitly felt as major forthcoming changes are posited.
04) Episode 242: “The Prescott” (Aired: 01/08/20)
The family takes advantage of Alex’s access to an elite residential complex.
Written by Elaine Ko | Directed by Elaine Ko
Among Season Eleven’s aforementioned roster of marquee “one last time” offerings is its now-annual farce — a tradition that began back with Five’s well-regarded “Las Vegas” and has never been topped… until… Well, no, it’s not topped here either. However, this entry comes the closest to “Las Vegas” because it deliberately calls back to that classic via the shared inclusion of Stephen Merchant as Higgins the butler. And the luxury-building rooftop most replicates the bedroom-hopping locale of the Vegas hotel — a classic arena for this kind of deceit-laden parade of mistaken identities and misunderstandings. Oh, it’s all a little sillier and more narratively strained than the best in this subcategory would be (with gimmicks like stunt casting — e.g., David Beckham and Courteney Cox), but the commitment is what makes it work, for it’s the kind of comedic audaciousness that acquits Modern Family as a genuinely funny show and a worthy addition to a genre that’s always counted the pursuit of laugh-out-loud humor as a core metric of success. To wit, the funniest sample from Modern Family’s final season is in many ways the best sample from Modern Family’s final season, primarily because it’s the one that is most flattering with regard to the series’ vitality, making the most persuasive case for its reputational favorability. So, for that reason, this is my MVE (Most Valuable Episode).
05) Episode 243: “Legacy” (Aired: 01/15/20)
Phil visits his father who’s suffering from dementia.
Written by Jack Burditt & Christopher Lloyd | Directed by Jason Z. Kemp
Fred Willard makes his farewell in this tonally uneven installment that nevertheless satisfies as a unique reflection of the series, engaging several things that have become routinized as key recurring attributes. Beyond just the final guest turn of Phil’s dad (whose dementia hangs over the half hour, culminating in his unsurprising passing — another situation-destroying piece of closure), “Legacy” also boasts a subplot that deliberately pairs Cam and Gloria — two of the ensemble’s funniest, whose chemistry has become a peripheral highlight of the series. Meanwhile, another story emphasizes the shared history between Mitch and Claire, the two siblings who (with Jay) uphold this entire extended family situation and are therefore among its most seminal figures, with some of this structure’s most narratively important relationships.
06) Episode 245: “Paris” (Aired: 02/12/20)
The family goes to Paris when Jay is expected to receive an award.
Written by Paul Corrigan & Brad Walsh | Directed by James Bagdonas
As my coverage has indicated, I’ve not always been fond of the series’ gimmicky on-location outings. Some were funnier and/or more affiliated with the characters and/or the premise than others, and my ability to highlight them has generally depended on the baseline quality of each season. With regard to “Paris,” it’s not one of the best, but its finality again adds extra character weight, and in particular, I think this entry’s utilization of Fizbo — first introduced in one of the series’ ultimate first-season classics — is the best since his aforementioned debut. For that alone, I consider this a worthwhile reflection of the series’ identity, although the other subplots are certainly decent in their own rights (by the standards of Season Eleven).
07) Episode 250: “Finale (II)” (Aired: 04/08/20)
The family’s official goodbye keeps getting delayed.
Written by Christopher Lloyd & Paul Corrigan & Brad Walsh & Danny Zuker & Elaine Ko & Vali Chandrasekaran & Jack Burditt | Directed by Gail Mancuso
Narratively, I’d prefer a version of Modern Family that ends with Haley becoming a mom — it’s an expansion of the status quo that creates another family dynamic that could be considered “Modern” for its sheer newness, with natural premise implications and thematic ties back to the strong pilot, to which it’d be a nice bookend. Yet with that having already happened, Eleven gets to offer a whole year with Haley as a new mom, and then has no choice but to go bigger with its actual series closer — opting to fully end the status quo. Meaning, it makes the situation impossible to continue by destroying it: physically separating this extended family so they’re no longer as regularly in one another’s lives. This is the kind of finale I generally dislike, because it requires major story maneuvers and therefore has less time for character. Indeed, I’m deliberately not spotlighting Part I because it’s all about plot… Fortunately, Part II is more focused on the final interactions between every pairing or cluster that has special emotional resonance. And I mean everybody — from the obvious, like Claire/Mitch, Jay/Phil, and the Dunphy kids, to the less obvious, like Cam/Gloria and Luke/Manny. It’s all about the leads and their relationships. Is it emotionally self-indulgent? Absolutely! It’s a double-length touchy-feely finale to a family sitcom. But while I’ve seen better, I’ve also seen worse.
Other episodes that merit mention include: “Perfect Pairs,” which boasts the best narrative use of Haley’s new babies, and “Spuds,” which is partially a clip show and is thus reflective.
*** The MVE Award for the Best Episode from Season Eleven of Modern Family goes to…
“The Prescott”
Come back next week for more sitcom fun! And stay tuned tomorrow for a new Wildcard!