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, Episodes 17 and 18 “Finale, Parts 1 and 2” (B)

Technically, only the second half of this hourlong episode is nominated for its direction, but I wasn’t about to skip the first part of it, especially since I did used to watch this show regularly. Much of what happened in this episode was expected, but there’s still an element of nostalgia that works in its favor. The Dunphy house was impossibly crowded, and living in an RV in the driveway wasn’t going to be a permanent soluton for Claire and Phil. It also tracked that all three of them ended up deciding to move out at the same time, though it’s not entirely clear that Haley and Dylan will be able to subsist on their own if they miscalculated and thought that his human experiment participation had netted them a million dollars. I would have also recommended that someone else confirm that Luke did in fact get into college before just letting him fly off to a university that may or may not be in Oregon. Alex seems to be most well-prepared for independent life, even if that means embarking on a new relationship in Switzerland. The casting of Chris Geere from “You’re the Worst” as her coworker slash new boyfriend was humorous since he was never once appropriate in that role, the complete opposite of what he was playing here. Joe has become the precocious child that Lily and Manny before here were, obsessed with teaching his older brother a lesson about the dangers of the world. Cam and Mitch moving to Missouri will surely present challenges, but I’m hope that’s not the setting for a spin-off series since I think it might get old fast. The sweetest part of the episode was actually Jay secretly learning Spanish so that he could understand Gloria’s family members when he went to visit Colombia. Sampling this finale didn’t make me feel like I needed to have kept watching since I gave up back in the middle of season eight, but I didn’t mind revisiting it for this moderately emotional farewell.