"I Don't Care If Monday's Blue"

A quick scheduling note to start: "The Cover-Up" is back on the schedule as episode #16, and SpoilerTV lists it as airing on March 16th (as of now).

The bad news is this means no new episode on March 9th.  The worse news is barring a preemption it's almost certain that the Alex-less "She Crazy" will repeat that night.

And, speaking of Alex-less episodes:

I'm not sure where last week's "Thunk In The Trunk" ranks among the 15 Alex-less episodes.

It was pretty dull, but it was not the worst.  That (dis)honor probably goes to last season's "Valentine's Day 4: Twisted Sister", featuring the latest Clive/Julianna rehashing, the lackluster return of Gloria's sister (save for the inevitable Al Bundy Memorial Catfight), and a total "why the face" was up with a Mitch and Cam story that had zero to do with Valentine's day.  The aforementioned  "She Crazy" is probably the second worst.

And it certainly was not the best - oddly enough, that also happened last season with "Closet? You'll Love It!" which featured a very emotional chapter in Haley and Andy's story and a funny story about a drone and Gloria.  "Las Vegas" would be second best on the list.

So, I guess it probably gets lumped in with most of the first four seasons' worth of Alex-less episodes, most of which are simply totally forgettable for precisely that reason.

In terms of how disappointing that it turned out to be Alex-less, it probably ranks right below "Three Dinners".   Whereas "Trunk" was disappointing because I was hoping that the presence of a college dean on the guest character list would at least mean a small Alex story (it turned out to be totally unimportant), "Dinners" was disappointing because I was looking for some follow-up to Alex's therapy in the previous week's "Under Pressure", and they gave us nothing (of course as it turns out her therapy wasn't even mentioned again until as a small afterthought in "Strangers In The Night" in the following season).

Anyway, hopefully we won't be adding to that total with this coming week's "The Storm" (it's even less likely than last week, but the chance is not zero - more on that possibility on Wednesday).