Modern Family - "New Year' Eve" - Review

Modern Family was once a series that might have deserved all those excessive Emmy noms it’s received. Its first season provided a sitcom that appeared to nicely balance traditional sitcom situations and heart with a less traditional style and format. But recently (and particularly during its 3^rd season – which had me doubting the series enough that I considered not watching any longer), the series has failed to earn its emotional moments and tried too hard and too broadly to achieve its laughs. As tv critic Donna Bowman so accurately put it “it’s all business, no heart.”

But Modern Family, although much less frequently than its earliest episodes, continues to hint at what the series could be excelling at if it had used its massive fan base and great ratings to experiment more with its format and tell stories that are grounded but not done with a paper-thin lack of enthusiasm, as if it’s merely going through the motions. It can be seen in the well-earned emotional resolutions of early season four episodes such as “Bringing up Baby” and “Schooled”. It can be seen in how effectively it tells the many, many (almost too many stories) of “When a Tree Falls”. Just last season the series had too many episodes that were so clearly overstuffed, and yet that lacked conviction to tell those stories or let them breathe (“The Last Walt” and “Planes, Trains, and Cars”). Yet the fourth season has proven itself much more confident in telling its stories. It’s not nearly as ambitious or completely satisfying as its first two seasons, but it feels like a much needed course correction.  

Take tonight’s episode “New Year’s Eve”. It’s not the funniest of episodes that the series has done, but for the most part it’s an amusing and interesting examination of growing old (the endings for the various stories don’t necessarily stack up with just how good it was up until that point – But Haleigh’s voiceover noting how you don’t always end up where you expect on New Years seems fitting for some of the stranger turns, including a nudist New Years group crashing Phil and Claire’s outing). 

Jay takes all the adults to a hotel he used go to a lot when he was younger. The place is in a bit of disarray; it’s seen better years, and appears to be incredibly dirty (Mitchell steps in something and yells out, “There’s something sticky here”. A staff member states in horror, “That wasn’t supposed to come back”). The hotel is symbol for aging. Some time passes, and then you re-examine yourself, and you don’t recognize who you are anymore. This can be scary or worrisome or troublesome, and it can be hard to deal with. 

Claire and Phil haven’t had sex in a month. Claire is freaking out, not just because she wants to get laid, but she fears that lack of intimacy means that she and Phil are growing apart as they grow older. As she mad dashes to the hot spring their weird hotel footman suggested, Phil asks her why she’s in such a rush to get there. Claire type-A babbles about all her fears, how she thinks life is just going to pass them by, and tear them apart. Phil (Tyler Burrell is having a great season) simply ignores this and kisses her. Sometimes life happens. And sometimes that means getting older. And that means that every day concerns can get in the way of things like having sex frequently. 

Mitchell and Cam had a nice, quiet dinner planned, but Mitchell worries that they’re becoming old fogies. Last year they didn’t even manage to stay up until midnight. He begs Cam to go club hopping with him like they did when they were younger. However, they’re quickly turned off, as club after club is too sweaty and noisy to be enjoyable. Finally, they stumble upon a club for older gays. It’s classy, and quiet; people are paying them compliments and buying them free drinks. Mitch and Cam realize that may be, sometimes getting old isn’t such a bad thing. Most people are jealous of the married couple with the kid, especially once you reach a certain age; people who lack a partner can feel totally rudderless. Yea, when you’re younger going to the club, and having a lot of sex seem like a lot of fun. But as we get older, we often realize that getting old isn’t always such a dreadful thing. Even though occasionally we doubt it and become wistful for youth.

The most pleasantly surprising exploration of growing old takes place back at the Dunphys where Haleigh (but in reality Alex, as everyone keeps joking) is in charge of watching Luke, Manny, and Lily on New Years. When Luke invites over girls, and goes up to his room to make out with one, Haleigh and Alex’s motherly instincts kick in. They fret over whether it’s appropriate for their baby brother to be allowed to do this. They fight against letting him grow up. In the process, they realize that not only is Luke getting older, but they are too. They’re, to their own surprise, unexpectedly starting to mature. Life can do that to you. “I think I owe mom a huge apology,” Haleigh says with wonderful self-awareness after scolding her brother. 

There are a couple other more minor, less interesting subplots that get lost in the shuffle involving Manny trying to win over the other girl Luke invited over, and Jay playing poker with a wasted cameo of Billy Dee Williams. However, at its heart, the three above stories paralleled eachother in such nice ways and told such honest stories about what it means to grow old that the rest didn’t matter. 

Stray Observations:

-Lily had some great lines: “Who’s watching me?” “Haleigh” “No, really? “Alex”, “I’m cold and saw a cyote”

“We should call her a ranch house. She doesn’t have a second story”

-“He’s gay” “Good I didn’t want to be the one to tell you”

-“Well, you wanted to feel young” “And I do…”

-“If you didn’t drive a car like this you couldn’t call yourself a drug lord”

Grade: B

The grade should have been a grade higher, but the Manny and Jay/Gloria stories are so totally disconnected from everything else and go nowhere. Plus, the way the Phil/Claire story ended completely undermined the sentiment of it.