Emmy Episodes: Modern Family

It’s always my policy to watch every Emmy-nominated episode each year, which leads me to sample a handful of shows that I don’t tune in to on a regular basis. For the fifth year in a row, I’m making a special effort to spotlight each of those installments to offer my perspective on shows that I don’t review each week.

Modern Family: Season 11, Episode 11 “Legacy” (C+)

It’s been three years since I last watched this show, when it was nominated for Best Comedy Series the same season that I finally decided not to watch it. That didn’t happen for its final season, but it did score two nominations. The first – for this episode – is for guest actor Fred Willard, who was last nominated for this role a decade ago. Willard died at the age of eighty-six back in May, and he also guest-starred in a few episodes of “Space Force.” He’s certainly endearing, and the fact that Frank was fully cognizant of what he was doing at the supermarket and proud of his son for taking up the family profession – keeping things light and fun – only helped with that. Their car ejector device was a bit much, as was the rest of this episode, which felt more clunky and much less original than I remember this show being in its initial years (which makes sense). Mitchell and Claire being desperate to prove their father wrong about his making them leave their family trip early was revealed to be the ultimate act of self-sacrifice, while his latest “successful project” turned out to be his son Joe. Cam and Gloria have fun together and enjoyed helping the other get rid of problematic competition by wearing them down, and Manny even managed to get a phone number from a girl we first saw in the pilot episode of this show back in 2009 (played by the same actress). I did enjoy recognizing the Westfield Century City food court in Los Angeles as the setting of most of their antics.