“It's The (Third) Most Wonderful Time Of The Year”

Yep, Halloween is the third most wonderful time of the year.  Christmas is the second most wonderful time of the year.  Every other time of the year is tied for first.


OK, that's mostly my retail cynicism rearing its ugly head (as far as Christmas is concerned, anyway), but I really stopped enjoying Halloween many years ago, between not being allowed to trick or treat after I turned 10, and more than one bus ride at night coming home from work where said bus got egged.  I'm not quite at Cam's earlier level of hating/fearing the holiday (he does seem to have gotten over that over the years), but I do hate it.

So, now that that rant is over, let's get on with a more topical rant – what do I think about tonight's “On The Same Paige”?  Will Alex even be in the same library?

Anticipation Level: Very Low.
Emotional Moment Potential: Very Low.
Game Changing Potential: Very Low.

Tonight is one of those “not paticularly appealing fillings inside two tasty slices of bread” episodes.  Last week we had DeDe's death and how it surprisingly affected Alex, and next week we have Alex gunning for a post-Cal Tech job.  This week, meh. At most, it looks like she might pop up in a random scene or two. At least...

Chance Of An Alex-less Episode: Medium To High.  I'm about half as pessimistic than I was two weeks ago (“Torn Between Two Lovers”) that tonight will be Alex-less.  But the possibility is still definitely in play - as of now I'd say it's about a 25-30 percent chance.

Actually, while I'm on the subject, I'm going to change the scaling I've used for this category.  Through the first eight seasons, Alex had missed about 10 percent of the episodes¹, and if I thought the chance of Alex going missing was about 10 percent then I'd call that a “medium” chance and scale the level accordingly.


But with Alex missing five episodes last season (23 percent of the 22 episodes), and with me feeling like that's a trend and not an aberration, I think about 25 percent is the new “medium”.  Therefore tonight's rating is only slightly higher than that.

There is one thing about which I'm not sure – about two seconds into this promo commercial Phil walks into his kitchen and sees a girl who has dark hair and looks about Alex's age:

People lie all the time, but we're not lying when we say that #ModernFamily is all-new tomorrow! pic.twitter.com/xc5YsYHH1F

— Modern Family (@ModernFam) October 30, 2018

Now if I thought that was likely to be Alex (we only see the back of the girl's head) I would go much lower with this level.  But my best guess is that the girl is Paige, the girl in the episode's title who is in the story about Phil and Luke.  So I'm sticking with my original feeling unless I see something else later today.

In Which Story Do I Want To See Alex Be A Part?  I guess that Phil and Luke story, but I really doubt she'll be in any story if she's even there.

Are There Any Other Questions?  At least we don't have to worry about a last-minute switch due to a (now not necessary) World Series Game 7, right?  That's more of a relief for next week, actually.  Had this week's episode been pushed aside to next week (it's uncertain whether or not that would have happened – last year ABC did not change things), we probably wouldn't have seen next week's episode until probably the end of November (the 28th).  The annual awards show pre-emption happens on the 14th, and the 21st is Thanksgiving Eve, so we're probably looking at a repeat that night.

Thankfully I do have today/tonight off, so I don't have to deal with the Halloween hijinks (and I'm staying far, far away from the Red Sox' victory parade today) and I'll be back at the normal time tonight.
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¹ 19 out of 188, or just under 10 percent, to be exact.