Alex Dunphy, the designated brain and now happenstance microcosm of Modern Family, was allowed to break her one-week silence in the most recent episode, “Weathering Heights.”
What a concept. After the worst phase of mononucleosis had kept her quiet for the preceding installment, her excuse for staying home from college served a purpose for the program once again.
But how much can, let alone will, the middle child be utilized going forward?
Therein sits the topmost signal that this young century’s quintessential sitcom is finally reeking of mortality. Unlike her less responsible older sister, Haley, Alex cannot stay away from school. The Dunphys are going to have to learn to let her go by the start of the next term.
Just the same, the cast, creators, crew and supporters will need to learn to let go by the start of next summer. They found a way to put off splitting its ensemble into four residences instead of the long-running three a little longer, yet have not made the most of it.
Modern Family can still quit while it is more or less ahead. But as if this notion had not been lurking already, the conclusion of Season 8 projects to be the now-or-never marker.
If a half-hour series is primetime television’s answer to a big-league athlete, then eight sitcom years equals roughly 20 athletic years. By then, even for the all-time greats, the accolade well tends to go dry and the product’s proficiency starts to visibly ebb.
For the winner of five straight Outstanding Comedy Series Emmys — but zero Emmys in the last two editions — it is not too late to exit with a respectable measure of grace. But the nonrenewable material is evaporating and taking the show’s hardware-caliber traits with it.
The apparent offseason departure of supporting star Adam DeVine, or Andy, may have been the heaviest blow of late. And while executive producer Christopher Lloyd told Entertainment Weekly prior to this season that Andy’s return “is left an open question,” that has yet to occur four episodes in.
With Andy potentially out after two seasons, and so soon after kindling a much-anticipated relationship with Haley, one can see why the show’s brain-parents are losing their self-assurance. The plot lines have quickly become greater in number, briefer in lifespan and, most crucially, lacking in creative connectivity.
“Weathering Heights” darted between an overloading, but hardly overlapping, five storylines. In what used to be a rarity for the series, no one member of one household visited or contacted another.
As long as Andy (left, played by Andy DeVine) is out of the equation, Haley (right, played by Sarah Hyland) and the show in general are each missing a reliable storyline source. (Photo by Tony Rivetti/Getty Images)
That was not the first occurrence of its kind in the show’s run, but it stands out all the more given the greater number of missed opportunities for the family to cross paths.
At least the preceding installment, “Blindsided,” gave us the finest form of family politics with Luke and Manny’s bids for student council president. But that could not duplicate the golden years, when controlled chaos on the writers’ part spun webs of incidental, all-encompassing plotline collisions.
In one definitive case, it was a near-literal collision. Odds are we will not see another “Manny Get Your Gun,” the Season 2 chapter that saw four perturbed drivers miss wrecking one another after they all ran late for Manny’s birthday dinner.
The only reason it was four cars, rather than three, was because the most populous household, the Dunphys, temporarily took two directions that time. The same device continued to yield top-shelf results as late as Season 5’s “Farm Strong,” where the end-of-episode full-family assembly saw Phil incessantly tormented with terminology reminding him of his accidental destruction of a bird’s nest.
There could still be moments like that yet to come. But today’s outlook points to an ever-present danger of seeing a great show go bad instead of the second coming of “When Good Kids Go Bad.” That gem from the start of Season 3 epitomized Modern Family’s clever structure when the title clan converged on the Tucker-Pritchett living room.
In that climactic scene — from Cam and Mitch’s struggles to warm Lily to the idea of a sibling, to Jay opportunistically cracking Manny’s soft veil of guilt and inadvertently explaining Claire’s “I was right!” adamancy in the process — everything relayed the torch in a smooth transition.
Fast forward five years, and that torch has fizzled, but not before cooking a storyline hot potato to take its place. With that, the laughable one-liners, though still extant, have grown harder to savor.
The habitual scene-hopping means the script has no means of building on (i.e. prolonging) a good joke. Only a timely commercial break allows us to exhaust a chortle and recuperate before checking in on another subplot.
That, or pining for a throwback to what defined the peak of the program’s run. Even if it cannot match the most radiant highlights of former seasons, it must return to that strategy to salvage a stately curtain call.
Toward the conclusion of last season, co-creator Steve Levitan admitted to Deadline.com, “We’re really trying hard not to let this series finish weak.”
At this juncture, their best bet may be to stop trying.
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