This eleventh and final season of Modern Family has contained a lot of apparent “lasts.” From the Last Thanksgiving to the Last Christmas, the show has continually reminded us that this is the end of its run. This week’s episode is billed as the family’s final trip to Paris. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but watching this season means allowing Modern Family a bit of creative license when it comes to being overly saccharine about its farewell.
There’s nothing all that different about “Paris” despite the location change. This is yet another episode where nothing truly meaningful happens, leaving the final season still devoid of direction. Every single bit of marketing material insists that Modern Family is headed towards a massive, emotional, tearjerker of a finale, and yet the actual episodes continually fail to provide any sort of narrative momentum.
If I asked you to pinpoint this season’s major narrative arcs, you’d probably struggle to come up with anything. For awhile it was all about Haley, Dylan, and their twins, and what that meant for the changing dynamic of the family, but they’ve largely been exiled to the corner of the sitcom world where they’re more a punchline than anything else. Without any central plot, the show is left to meander into its final hours.
Maybe I’m being too hard here. “Paris” isn’t a bad episode. It takes the idea of new possibilities, the ones inherent in a trip abroad, and upends them with the intrusion of capital “L” Life. Cam is excited to take Fizbo to the streets of Paris, only to run into the real Fizbo, the unconscious inspiration for his own act; Phil plans a romantic surprise, but is confronted with a fling from Claire’s past; the whole family is there because Jay is accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in the closet business, but it’s later revealed that this is all a misunderstanding, and that his rival Earl Chambers is the one getting the award.
There are a smattering of good moments throughout the episode. Claire’s unintended Before Sunset-like rendezvous with a past fling takes a delightful turn when both him and Phil realize they share a love of magic, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson does some good work with Mitchell as a solo tourist, attempting to fit in before finally giving up and embracing his American-ness. The way the show flips the script allows for some funny moments in the name of thwarted expectations.
But that doesn’t change the fact that this entire season feels so listless. We’re getting seriously close to the final stretch of episodes, and it still feels like Modern Family hasn’t committed to any sort of endgame. We’re still languishing in middling storylines and mediocre episodes. There’s no momentum, no sense that any of this matters.
What’s frustrating is that Modern Family keeps suggesting that all of this is important. It keeps hinting at moments of personal reckoning, like when Jay considers that his life’s work might not be so meaningful after all. But there’s never any real conflict or resolution. The show is taking the easy way out, choosing complacency when there’s other, more complex options. The big message from this week’s episode is that family is more important than anything else, and that Jay’s work is only meaningful because it’s allowed him to have this sprawling family unit. But that’s nothing new or fresh or exciting. It’s the same old, same old, and it’s only contributing to an increasingly disappointing final season.
Stray observations
- “I’m going to have a lot of bread while we’re here, and I need it to be okay.”
- “Claire, you know this Guy?”
- “I’m a workaholic; I must be in the office 10, 12 hours a week.”
- “All I had to do was look good and have a lot of attitude. Paris is a giant gay bar.”
16 Comments
This was the rare episode where Mitchell was the MVP for me. His grunting Parisian act was funny, as was his instant abandonment of it, and it was sweet that he fought against his own hatred of Fizbo to reassure Cam.
The worst thing they did to Haley’s character was saddle her with that dullard Dylan and twins. Now we seem to be getting more Manny at the expense of less Haley and that’s NEVER good thing.
I did laugh once, when Cam said he took auction calling for his language requirement.
While it was nice to see a photo of Jon Polito, it just made me sad to think of his no longer being around. RIP.Also, I hope got their money’s worth on product placement. That was an SNL level of corporate whoring.
While it was nice to see a photo of Jon Polito, it just made me sad to think of his no longer being around. RIP.
Ha! They went all the way to Paris to make a C+ episode!OK, since this is almost over, I guess this is the last time I’ll exclaim:This shit is still on but Happy Endings got cancelled?
“This shit is still on but Happy Endings got cancelled?”
Name a show on TV you couldn’t apply this phrase to.
Well, I’m pretty certain no sentient being ever uttered the words:This The Good Place shit is still on but 2 Broke Girls got cancelled, after a mere 6 Seasons!
Oops, too late to edit my comment.(Thanks Kinja!)On reflection I guess there probably *could exist* some people out there who stumbled across The Good Place on TV and actually uttered those words! Stranger things have happened! I mean, there are people out there brimming with pride as they call Trump the best President in their lifetime (and these people weren’t born yesterday!)
I think my comment was misunderstood. I can’t think of a show currently on TV which is better than Happy Endings.
Yeah, sorry I was being dumb, somehow I convolutedly misunderstood your comment to mean “show x is still on but show y got cancelled?” can be applied to any x or y. (Whereas you meant “show x is still on but Happy Endings got cancelled?” can be applied to any show x).
I know it’s just a show and I should really just relax, but a line of dialog from Mitch or Cam about who was caring for their preteen daughter would not have gone amiss.This was a good example of the best possible mediocre Modern Family episode. There were no stakes, but the character work was good and worth a few laughs.
Lily staying with Pepper would make a great episode.
This is all be covered in the spin-off series, Lilly!, where every episode has an adult Lilly reminiscing to her therapist about all the times Cam and Mitch abandoned her.
I really want the series to end with Phil’s last blood-soaked rampage. No one gets out alive.Especially Manny.
I thought the turn of the Phil / Claire story of the French guy being just a French Phil was hilarious.