Modern Family: Yes-Woman (10x19)

Sometimes when I watch this show I just have to ask myself... what are we doing here?

Cons:

I can't muster up even a smidge of enthusiasm for Jay, Gloria, and Manny's plot. The whole thing, along with Claire and Luke getting roped in, is supposed to be a big comedy of errors, where everyone misunderstands what everyone else is talking about. This show has pulled off that conceit successfully before, but it fell seriously flat for me here. I'm sorry, but it's 100% cringe, 0% funny to me that Claire is accidentally attracted to Luke's abs. There's really nothing redeemable about that moment for me. And all the double meanings didn't go anywhere satisfying. Jay was upset about his spot at the golf club being taken, but we didn't really see enough of that to understand it. Gloria is upset that Jay is letting himself go, but there was no resolution to that story beat either.

I really wanted to feel connected to Phil and Alex's plot thread, and I think ultimately on its own it was perfectly fine. But every time they actually address the fact that Alex is in school, I get so angry at how badly they flubbed her character development. For the last several seasons, she's been a college student, and they've only addressed it a handful of times. A casual viewer of this show, or even a not-so-casual viewer like me, who writes a review of it every week, might be forgiven for forgetting that Alex was still in school. It's insulting and annoying, especially when they did such a good job with Haley's pregnancy story all season.

Pros:

So, with the Phil and Alex story, I did really like the idea of it. Basically, Phil wants to surprise Alex on campus and take her to lunch, and his motivation for this is that he's always felt the least connected to Alex out of his three kids, and he wants to make sure they have a bond as Alex continues into adulthood. That's actually really sweet, and it shows what an amazing father Phil is. Sometimes he crosses lines, but he's always well-meaning and wants to foster deep relationships with his children.

The trivia thing at the end with Phil and Alex was pretty funny, although I did cringe when Alex said they were speaking with Scottish accents... I thought they were doing bad Irish accents, not Scottish ones. Was that part of the joke, or were their fake accents so terrible that I literally couldn't tell which accent they were aping? Yikes. Despite that, I loved seeing Alex and Phil having fun together in an uncomplicated and silly way. I actually really related to what Alex said about the pressure of making college the best years of your life. I had fun in college, but there's kind of this weird onus on college students to have this magical adventure, and that's not always the reality of the situation. It's important to get out of your shell every so often!

The most successful plot of the night was Cam and Mitchell's. It was simple and fun, which these two usually are, and it acted as a nice counterweight to the terribly un-funny stuff going on with Jay et. al. Basically, it's just a story about Cam wanting to embrace his remembered youth, while Mitchell is trying to settle in to being a little older. There's nothing much to talk about here. It was just harmless fun. I liked Cam getting really worked up, and the two of them trying to relate to the younger crowd, and Mitchell going to a boring lecture.

That's all I've got. This episode was ultimately disappointing, and yet another example of why it's time for this show to take a bow.

6/10