"So Tell Me, Do You See Me?" (End Of Season First Thoughts)

ABC issued their press release outlining their programming highlights for May sweeps today.  Barring an unlikely last minute switch, Modern Family will have their season finale on May 18th after all.  I know I was hoping it would happen the following week to give us a better chance of seeing 24 episodes, but, of course, I should have known as soon as I said something that wouldn't happen.  I'll get back to the scheduling possibilities shortly.

Only the final two episodes are mentioned in the release.  The penultimate episode (May 11th) is titled "Crazy Train", but they didn't go into much detail about that one (no word about Alex), except for the main plot of the family going by train to attend Jay's ex-wife's (DeDe's) next wedding.  I'm sure nothing will go wrong with either (riiiiight...).

The early details of the final episode, "Double Click" do have one interesting (if potentially troubling) tidbit:


"(A)nd no one seems to notice that Alex has moved back home for the summer."

Obviously the troubling aspect is Alex is being ignored by her family again (remember her "I don't matter" line from the last episode?).  The question is will she do something crazy about it?

Also, I guess this means she didn't actually move back in already and (for now) she's still living on campus.  Whether or not her situation next season gets addressed remains to be seen.

So we can now account for  21 of this season's episodes and 4 of the remaining 7 Wednesdays within the season - what does say for the three unmentioned Wednesdays (April 20, 27 and May 4)?   The best-case scenario would be for new episodes on all three weeks, giving us a full 24. 

But the most likely scenario is probably going to be repeats (or possibly pre-emptions) on the two remaining April Wednesdays and a new episode on 5/4 - which would only give us one more chance for a big Alex story.  This is particularly likely since if there is going to be a new episode on the 20th the press release should be coming out today or tomorrow, and I've heard nothing yet. 

Unless they are going to do something weird (a double-up on one week or a pre-emption on May 4th) those are the two most likely scenarios.