“Just A Small Town Girl Livin' In A Lonely World” (3rd Favorite Episode Retro Recap)

OK, so a Los Angeles suburb isn't exactly a small town, but since the above lyric starts a song which figures prominently in my third most favorite episode...


”See You Next Fall” (Season 2, Episode 23)

The best part of this episode is that it's a rare episode centered around Alex, in this case on one of her biggest days of her life – her middle school graduation. And she gets her own interesting story in it, although she's separated from the wacky events that befall the rest of her family.

Thanks to a tragic incident involving a robot and her biggest rival, Sanjay, Alex ends up becoming valedictorian for her middle school graduation and gets to make a speech at the ceremony. So Alex should be totally happy, right?

Uh, no. It seems Alex has a few grievances with her classmates that she couldn't air at Festivus, so, she's going to release her feelings, today, on this very stage.

(Memo to the Dunphys: If sometime in her senior year Alex goes nuclear and lays waste to all of you, this day was your warning.)

Of course, like anything involving Alex, things don't go quite as planned. Haley happens to overhear her practicing her speech, and tries to convince her that it would be not such a good idea to say those things in public, since she'll be dealing with most of those kids again in high school. But Alex already has her napalm in hand and the bridges in sight, so no deal. Either that or she likes sitting alone in the school cafeteria.

So Haley tries another tactic when they get to the school – she steals Alex's index cards of her speech. But, not surprisingly, Alex is still a step ahead of her, as she has a duplicate set of cards hidden away. Interestingly, the cards are yellow and not her preferred blue (the store must have run out of the blue ones when she needed them). Another attempt by Haley to reason with Alex by telling her she would be a “social piranha” if she didn't change her speech fails. It's not until later when Haley tries a bit of flattery (with a touch of laying on guilt) does Alex at least starts to think about reversing course.

Speech time finally comes, and when Alex is about to reach the scathing part of it she hesitates (that's also about the same time Phil and Claire finally make it to the ceremony after their ordeal), then decides that discretion might be the better part of valor and ad-libs a more uplifting finish, including borrowing Haley's idea of adding a couple of positive song lines. At least when she said “don't stop believing” the screen didn't immediately fade to black. And at least she did get a bit of a reward for backing off, as she got an invitation to an after-ceremony party.

My one nitpick about this episode had more to do with its aftermath: in the end, was it worth it for Alex to cave in? It's debatable – she did get invited to that party, but after that her social life didn't improve that much. She still has no BFFs or even SOGFFOIAWs (sort of good friends for once in a while), after almost four years and she's hardly had anyone resembling a steady boyfriend (Michael from her late freshman and early sophomore years is probably the closest). It would be an interesting episode to have them play “what if” and find out how her high school life would have turned out had she followed through with her original classmate-unfriendly speech. (It's A Teen Angst Filled Life?)

One odd thing about this episode: This was actually the 24th and final episode produced for Season 2, and had the look and feel of a season finale, but ABC chose to bump it up to second last and finish with “The One That Got Away” instead (the most noteworthy thing about that episode was when they showed Luke's film for Jay's birthday – take a wild guess which family member was not seen in that film).

Alex's Line Of The Episode: (after Haley's “social piranha” comment) ”Yes, I'll be an Amazonian carnivorous fish.”

Anyway, as of a year ago today this was my #1 favorite episode – which obviously tells you that the new top two both come from last season. #2 comes up next.