Modern Family

Modern Family

Episode 20: The Last Wait

By: Carlos Uribe

Modern Family is a show about a family that is supposedly modern.

Spoilers Ahoy!

Walt Kleezak dies off-screen and his death is only a part of tonight's proceedings. I understand that Mr. Kleezak probably only had met the Dunphy side of the extended family but it still felt like this episode could have built itself around Mr. Kleezak. We get an episode that is instead unfocused and it suffers because of that. The best Modern Family episodes are the ones that bring the family together, while this episode doesn't even pretend to have a uniting theme. This episode still made me laugh and I had a good time, but it wasn't a great episode due to the fact that so many plots were going on at the same time. Modern Family was simply too busy. For example, one of the numerous plots is Claire trying to get Luke to express his feelings about Mr. Kleezak's passing. Walt was very close to Luke and it should stand to reason that he would be upset about it. He doesn't really express his grief except for one moment in the episode and Claire is panicking that her son is so cold. It complicates her mission to get him to treat death seriously when she can't even state that Walt died without being able to stop herself from grinning.

Walt's death at least does influence one other story this episode. Phil is talking about how Walt was estranged from his own daughter which leads him to realize that he hasn't had as many bonding moments with Alex as with Haley and Luke. He decides to try and spend the entire day to try and come up with some special and amazing memory that the two are going to be able to share. The thing about amazing memories is that they can't be forced to come. They have to come naturally. All of Phil's plans to get that special day end up falling short. He does get his wish to bond with Alex when she reveals that she will always remember the day her father kept trying to have some amazing memory with her. He also takes the time to write her initials on a fake moon, which is sweet but the show didn't handle it very well. That's largely because I didn't realize what Phil was doing until the effect was shown since I didn't really notice the fake moon. This is sweet because Phil had recounted to Alex the story of an astronaut who left his daughter's initials on the moon. Initials that would be there forever and that his daughter would be able to look up at the moon and forever know there's a message for her. Phil wanted the same kind of message to Alex.

It's true that there was a lot going on, but this episode managed to bring together Jay, Gloria, Mitchell, and Cam into one story. Gloria didn't really do a lot, since this was largely about Cam's father. Cam's dad, Merle, comes to visit in this episode and it's quickly established that Jay doesn't like him. Merle doesn't like Jay even though he likes everyone else. Merle doesn't like Jay because Jay tends to give him a face every single time they are together. Jay doesn't like Merle because Merle tends to treat Mitchell as the wife in the relationship. The two fathers eventually manage to bond over how they are still trying to wrap their heads around their homosexual sons. I thought that this was the strongest of the story-lines, delivering a lot of laughs but in the end it felt like it was in a completely different episode than the other stories. It's this feeling that this episode is simply disjointed that really brought this episode down.

There was yet another plot, this time involving Haley and Manny. Haley decides that she wants to throw an unsupervised pool party at Jay's house. She manages to do this by tricking Gloria and her mom. Gloria agrees that Haley can use the house if Claire agrees that Haley has found a suitable supervisor and if she agrees to let Manny come to the party. Claire agrees that Haley can throw the party because Haley has an uncle supervising that party. What uncle is that? She uses Mannie's status to trick the adults. She gets to throw the party but isn't delighted to learn that Mannie takes his jobs as supervisor seriously. While she and her friends are trying to have fun, Mannie is trying to get the party to follow rules. The episode ends with Gloria discovering the ruse and punishing Haley by forcing Mannie to have fun.

This was an episode that could have been good if it had been split into two different stories. None of the stories shared even similar themes, and that made the events of the episode feel disconnected with each other. Modern Family is at it's very best when the episode is as connected as possible, which doomed this episode from the start. The good news is that it still made me laugh throughout the episode, but it wasn't as funny as Modern Family should be. What a disappointing episode for Modern Family.