Modern Family: Commencement (10x21)

This show is really running on fumes, isn't it?

Cons:

This episode was about two different graduation ceremonies. One is at the high school, with none of our core characters actually graduating, and one is Alex's graduation from Cal Tech. Instead of focusing on stories about graduating and moving on to a new stage of life, the story was cluttered with a bunch of humorless little subplots that all centered around people lying to their family members and being ashamed of one another. How... fun.

Apparently Gloria bribes people in order to help her family achieve their goals. This is... not funny, for so many reasons. You've got the racist Columbian stereotypes coming out again, and you've got Manny and Joe questioning their accomplishments, which leads to absolutely no emotional catharsis or funny punchline.

Jay apparently killed owls once by accident, and some students at the graduation are protesting that. You'd think this might be just crazy enough to be interesting, but no. It doesn't really go anywhere. Cam stepping in to be the Principal was fine, but it still didn't seem to mean anything or go anywhere. Mitchell lying about learning to play the trumpet? Total waste of a joke.

The biggest problem with this episode is with Alex. I don't think I've ever seen a show so thoroughly mess up a character or plot arc before. Alex has been in college for seasons on this show, and it's never really explored! Here, in an episode about her graduation, we still barely get to see her! Towards the end of the episode, we see that Alex is freaking out because of a theorem that proves that 0 = 1. It has shaken her confidence in math, and now she doesn't want to go to graduation. Luke and Haley encourage her, and point out that the real issue is that she's scared of the unknown, what comes after the structure of school. Confidence restored, Alex goes to graduation.

That scene with Luke and Haley being there for their sister should have been really great. In some ways, it was. I like seeing that support between siblings. But the buildup doesn't earn the payoff, here. How much more satisfying would that moment have been if we'd actually seen Alex at school, seen how she thrived there and how thoughts of her future made her nervous? Even if we'd just seen hints of it in this episode, that would have been better.

Also, the joke about someone's daughter joining ISIS was incredibly uncomfortable and not even a little bit funny.

Pros:

There were a few individual things that I still enjoyed here. I liked Cam's recurring bit where he compares his role of Vice Principal to that of Vice President of the United States, taking the responsibility of taking over for the Principal very seriously. It made the joke land all the better when Cam talks about balloons representing his hopes for each student, and then only two or three balloons appear, due to Phil's earlier mistake.

As I said, I did think it was sweet that Luke and Haley were the ones to help Alex get her confidence back. I wish the moment would have been more satisfying, but for what it was, I was pleased with it. There was an aspect of this moment that was good payoff, because Claire and Phil spent the whole episode being openly disappointed with how Luke and Haley turned out, in comparison to their smart daughter Alex. So it was nice that Luke and Haley's surprisingly mature emotional intelligence was what saved the day here, because it reminds Phil and Claire that academic achievement isn't the only reason to be proud of your kids.

I wish I had more to say in the "Pros" section, but that's all, you guys. I think next week is the season finale, so I'll see you there!

6/10