Would history have been changed if Gandhi had been able to find someone to eat with him in the school cafeteria?

It's a tricky business building an episode around an event focused on one of the three households that make up this "modern family" -- last night it was Alex's middle-school graduation -- since the show depends on having all three households in (barely) controlled chaos. Fortunately, the creative team was up to the challenge in the "See You Next Fall" episode; there were repercussions from everything that happened in this compressed version of the opening sequences.

by Ken

I want to say that I was blown away by Modern Family's season finale last night, "See You Next Fall." The only problem is that, while I see that a number of bloggers also thought the show had the look and feel of a season-ender, according to ABC the season finale is next week -- though the episode listed on the website is clearly a repeat. A wonderful episode, easily worth another look, but still a repeat.

It's no great surprise that brainy Alex, Claire and Phil Dunphy's middle offspring, turned out to be her class valedictorian, even if it took an unlucky twist of fate for her lead rival. And so the ongoing clash between Alex and older sister Haley took this form.

ALEX [alone in her room, rehearsing her graduation speech off 3-by-5 cards]: It's ironic that I stand up here representing my classmates when for the past three years most of them have treated me like I'm invisible. It's my own fault. I was obsessed with good grades instead of looks, popularity, and skinny jeans.
HALEY [walking in toward the end, horrified by what she's hearing]: What? Is that your speech?
ALEX: Get out of here!
HALEY: You cannot say that!
ALEX: Yes I can. And you want to know why? 'Cause it's the truth!
HALEY: No one wants to hear the truth! It's very simple, Alex. In order to give a good speech, all you have to do is take a song and say it, like "Don't stop believin'," or "Get this party started."
ALEX: That means nothing!
HALEY: Who cares? Nobody wants to think! It's a graduation, a celebration of being done with thinking.
ALEX: People want to be challenged. They're going to respect me for it.
HALEY: No one's ever going to talk to you again.
ALEX: Mahatma Gandhi went on a hunger strike for what he believed in.
HALEY [as ALEX leaves the room]: That's 'cause no one would eat with him in the cafeteria.
ALEX looks back in her room at HALEY, gesticulates and makes a sound of wonder and dismissal, then rushes off.

Can Haley (Sarah Hyland) save Alex (Ariel Winter) from becoming, as she puts it, "a social piranha"? In this later scene, Alex finds out some things that shock her -- most importantly, apparently, that Haley think's she's pretty.

It's an alarming enough insight that high school, which we some of us like to think of as at worst a rite of passage, which is to say something we get through, is in reality the prototype for an uncomfortable lot of Real Life As We Know It. But consider that young Alex Dunphy hasn't even gotten to high school and already feels stranded on the Nerd side of the Nerds vs. Cool Kids divide.

Now it could be that Haley doesn't have the absolutely full weight of history behind her with her unexpected insight into the motivating force behind Gandhi's social activism. But I ask you, do we have any record of just who he ate lunch with in the school cafeteria?

In the end, the episode had the satisfying feel of a season-summer-upper, with almost everyone emerging from the crisis of the day, as often happens in real life, with some wholly unexpected new bit of understanding of their loved ones and themselves.


This is a preview of the Modern Family episode listed for next week, "Slow Down Your Neighbors." (Remember Claire and the speed bump?) It's a wonderful episode, and I'll probably watch it again, but it can't really be the season finale, can it?

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