"They Gathered For The Feast" (First Impressions - "Thanksgiving Jamboree" - Season 8, Episode 7)

ABC confirmed in this holiday programming press release something about which I had heard rumblings for a while - there will be a Thanksgiving episode on November 16th.  The actual press release will probably be out early next week but it probably won't be more detailed, though any photos might be.

As for Alex, there is this one sort of intriguing tidbit:

"Finally, Alex and Dwight get to know each other a little better than her Uncle Cam would like..."

Oddly, I don't think that sounds as interesting as it looks.  I know it looks like Alex is going to make a play for the hunky high school football player living with Mitch and Cam, or vice versa, but my gut feeling is this will turn out to be one of those classic comedy misunderstanding stories where Cam sees something that is the total opposite of reality.

Of course, if I'm wrong this could be very interesting, on several levels, but on one level, we'd be back to Alex getting involved with someone close to Reuben's age, and you know how I feel about that "relationship".  OTOH, Dwight hasn't done something to creep Alex out in the past (i.e. like Reuben's sneak attack kiss from "Larry's Wife") so it wouldn't be quite as bad (among other things the pool of potential dates at CalTech is probably closed off for her until at least January when hopefully she goes back - and as time goes on a two year or so age difference is less unusual).

And naturally one has to wonder about Alex and Sanjay...

One thing show-oriented to file away: in the past Modern Family has done Thanksgiving episodes every third year ("Pumpkin Chunkin" in Season 3, "Three Turkeys" in Season 6), so they are a year early in doing one again.  Could they be foreshadowing that they may have to plan to wrap things up at the end of the season (i.e. there may not be a Season 9 to have such an episode)?  OK, that theory may be a bit tin-foil hat-ish, but...

And note that in the release there is no new episode listed for the night (December 14th) the other Wednesday comedies are planning their Christmas episodes. No big surprise there - since they did "White Christmas" last year presumably they'll repeat that episode that night.  But it will probably put the show an episode behind the others, possibly setting the stage again for a shorter season like last year (but I've also heard there might be a New Year's Eve themed episode in the works [though nothing about that is mentioned in the release either] that would balance out things).