“At The Edge Of The Ocean, We Can Start Over Again”

Well, in spite of its potential with Emmy nominations being announced on Thursday and a new movie coming out this past Friday, this didn't turn out to be a game-changing week for Ariel Winter.  And, depending on how a seemingly unrelated Modern Family casting change plays out, it may not end up being a good week for Alex's fans either.


I'm not surprised that on Thursday Ariel missed out on an Emmy nomination again - if her performance in “Under Pressure” didn't get her more serious consideration last year I'm not sure what she could have done to change that this year (and she did plenty), even with the added attention Modern Family gave to Alex this past season (which may have come with a price, which I'll get to in a moment). That the show as a whole is getting less critical acclaim and fewer nominations (e.g. only one supporting actor and actress nomination each) as it gets older doesn't help either.

And then there was “Safelight”, a small independent movie in which she appears that finally somewhat saw the light of day on Friday after a year or two in mothballs (it was released to about ten theatres nationwide, but nowhere near me – fortunately it was also released to cable/satellite services on demand so I was able to see it the same day via DirecTV – in other words, virtually straight to video).

The movie itself was decent (although I could have done without that final confrontation) but Ariel was only in two scenes (yes that sounds like what usually happens when she's Alex, except the movie was about four times as long as a Modern Family episode). I was hoping she'd get to have a breakout performance but she never got the chance (I won't spoil it but they cut short an emotional confrontation which her character was about to have with her estranged sister – that was the one scene I really wish they had expanded).

Ariel's time to really shine and get her well deserved recognition will come (if she wants it), but we'll just have to wait for it.

But will she (still) be playing Alex when that happens? The chances of that may have been become less likely with news that Modern Family is looking for a new actor to play Joe as a four-year-old (he's only supposed to turn three mid-season).

Now you're probably wondering what this has to do with Alex. Well, once Joe becomes a more regular character with speaking parts (and suddenly making him a year older may just accelerate this into this upcoming season) the show will then have twelve regular characters, and it already feels overcrowded with eleven (heck, even before Lily became a regular in Season 3 it was a bit overcrowded with ten). Therefore, there is every chance that they may decide (or possibly have already decided?) to take one of the family members out of a regular role, if not (eventually) written out entirely.

Now before everyone starts panicking, as of now this is only absolutely total speculation on my part, since nothing even marginally official (or unofficial, for that matter) has been said, but if this were to happen then, sadly, Alex would seem to be the most likely character to fall into this scenario, since she'll no longer be living at home (CalTech requires its freshmen to live on campus), and it's at best a half-hour drive from CalTech to the Dunphy house (if she gets a car – if not it's a long combination of bus and train rides away) which I'd imagine she'd only do on weekends – unless she gets terribly homesick she's not going to use up an hour or more of her study time every day just to drop in on her family. Since the show is not set exclusively on weekends that potentially means few opportunities for Alex to even be on the show most of the time, save for maybe an episode or two on campus (there's no way they'd do an on-campus story every week or even most weeks) and maybe during school breaks (i.e. Christmas or spring break). And I just don't see them going the Skype route on a regular basis like they did with Haley's brief time in college.

In other words, if the powers that be on the show wanted to phase out Alex as a regular character over the course of this season, her being away from home most of the time gives them an opportunity to do so. This may also be a reason why Alex got so much attention at the end of last season – maybe the plan was to give her as much screen time last season knowing they'd be giving her less and less time as this coming season progresses (i.e. this is the price that might have to be paid for all those Alex stories in the last quarter of the season).

[Not to mention it's possible that Ariel's real-life ambitions could drive this as well – she'll have her own set of senior year distractions (e.g. getting into a good college, if not quite at the CalTech level) as Alex had last year and she may want/need time on her own. And, after that, in what direction will her life take her next year and beyond (she has a desire to study law)? Ariel has said in the past she plans on continuing to portray Alex beyond this season without lessening her role, but only time will tell if she'll still feel she wants to do otherwise.]

I wish I had better news.  And I so hope I'm proven wrong.