“Not Enough Love And Understanding” (First Trimester Recap)

When I last posted to this blog, I said I was already close to writing this season as a lost cause for Alex. So why am I already so pessimistic about a season that still has 14 episodes left?

The first and simplest answer is this: it looks like her biggest story of the season has already been played out, that being her now ended relationship with Ben. And I have little hope that another even close to big story will happen.

And even that story wasn't all that good. The big problem was I wasn't happy with the way the story played out.

Yes Ben had some faults, but he was no Reuben – I felt like Alex didn't treat him as kindly as she should have.

She invited him to join her and her family on their lake vacation (“Lake Life"), then proceeded to criticize those aforementioned faults. Then, after Ben rescued Alex (and the other kids) from being stranded on that island in the lake, when they found out the raft he used couldn't hold everybody, Alex chose not to stay with Ben, instead leaving him all alone. Not only was that somewhat selfish, but why would she give up a chance for some serious alone time with Ben if she loved him so much?

A few weeks later (“Sex, Lies & Kickball”), things seemed to be better between the two, as they made a painting (from a passion painting kit Claire received for herself and Phil) using their bodies as brushes, as a bit of revenge for how Claire was treating their relationship. But it turned out Ben got cold feet from using his whole body and they faked it.

The one unfortunate note about this was Alex decided to rat him out in front of her parents at dinner the next night.

And then all of a sudden Alex decided to break up with Ben the following week (“It's The Great Pumpkin, Phil Dunphy”). But she didn't even get much satisfaction from that, as he revealed he was back to seeing his ex-girlfriend because of the friction between Alex and Claire about him.

And it's not as though I didn't predict that Alex and Ben's relationship probably wouldn't survive the entire season. It turns out it didn't even survive the first quarter of the season. And I'm not all that surprised by that.

Which gets me to the second reason for my pessimism: Those weren't the only times they made Alex less likable than she usually is. I still don't understand why she would want to expose Gloria's cheating on trying to achieve walking 100,000 steps (“Winner Winner Turkey Dinner”) - Gloria has always been the family member nicest to Alex, not to mention exposing her lie had nothing to do with Alex's positive/negative reinforcement project (which, apparently, she was doing wrong anyway).

As you know normally I have no problem with Alex doing something which is not nice, usually because whomever treated her that way usually was at fault first (e.g. trying to get a picture of Haley looking bad doing community service because Haley took an unflattering picture of Alex and posted it to Facebook). But usually there is only about one episode a season where she does something even I can't defend, and we've had three (four depending how one feels about Alex deciding to breakup so suddenly) in just one third of a season. I'm fearful we might see (much?) more of that the rest of the season.

Alex had one other meaningful moment in the second episode (“The Long Goodbye”), but the story itself made no sense, based on the first eight seasons. Phil and Claire feel like Alex is not very self-sufficient, and in their words, “scatterbrained” (with the totally absurd example of Alex leaving the house without wearing pants – as if that would ever happen), only to discover she is more than capable of living by herself (again, as if there was any doubt) when they visit her at her dorm. I just have no idea what they were thinking when they came up with that story – that was about as un-Alex-like a scenario as they could have contrived.

And, yet, that was still the best episode of the season to date, including a nice scene where Alex asks a fellow student for help on a robot project, downplaying her own abilities.

Alex had nothing to barely anything to do in the remaining three episodes (no scenes in “Catch Of The Day”, the 20th Alex-less episode of the series, two scenes and just one barely audible line in “Ten Years Later”, and only a scene right at the beginning of last week's “Brushes With Celebrity”).

And that is my third reason for being pessimistic – I'm not sure if we'll see many more episodes where Alex does unlikable things, but I am very confident we will see a lot more Alex-less episodes (starting this week?) and episodes where she is only there briefly – I still think Ariel being at college herself (again, a decision she made which I 100% support) will mean less time for her to focus on the show.

I guess maybe the story about Alex and Luke starting an online business next week might lead to something interesting, but I wouldn't hold my breath.