[S11E17] The Grand Finale VERIFIED
"Finale" is the series finale of the American sitcom Modern Family. It aired in two parts, both on April 8, 2020 on ABC. The first part was written by Steven Levitan, Abraham Higginbotham, Jon Pollack, Ryan Walls, Jeffrey Richman, Morgan Murphy, and Stephen Lloyd, and directed by Steven Levitan. The second part was written by Christopher Lloyd, Jack Burditt, Elaine Ko, Danny Zuker, Vali Chandrasekaran, Brad Walsh, and Paul Corrigan, and directed by Gail Mancuso.[1]
[S11E17] The Grand Finale
In the ending credits, emotional music is heard as the camera pans through various photos of the 3 different families over the years. In the final shot, the camera focuses on the family portrait from the season one finale of all three families laughing together.
The second decade of SNL begins, and by god does it begin with a doozy! Of all of the infamous years of SNL, Season 11 is one of the more intimidating ones to me. While it has the same hypothetical freshness as Season 6, attempting to introduce skeptical audiences to the next iteration of the show, that season at least offers the potential exhilaration of an entire staff flying by the seat of their pants, week by week. Season 11, on the other hand, marks the grand return of Lorne Michaels to his show, which quashes that sense that we're gonna be learning as we go along. Lorne, by and large, is too stubborn a producer for there to be much of a sense of recalibration or finetuning; that, by next season premiere, he'd posit all of these episodes were "all a dream, a horrible, horrible dream" doesn't give me too much hope that this season will have any interesting arc, either, beyond seeing who swims and who sinks. (Knowing who stays on after this season, though... I could guess.) Realistically, I think this season will mostly amount to an annoying hurdle before I'm able to get into what will likely be the best era of the entire show's run.
Usually in reviews, I can't hit every sketch in a given episode because there's just too much to talk about, and a lot of pieces don't really deserve to be mentioned in the grand scheme of things... but in this episode, practically nothing deserves to be mentioned, so I might as well go all out. There's a sketch about sunbathers on a yacht who are dangerously close to Gaddafi's Line of Death, and it's so dull that another SNL reviewer said that he was pretty much just staring at Jerry's legs the entire time. We also have Sam Kinison to bask us in more of his misogynistic, hacky misery, a perpetual and painful reminder that the cutting edge doesn't stay cutting for long! The audience doesn't bite that much, which is appreciably cathartic perhaps, though it could also be that they're so exhausted from the episode they've been watching that even his desperate screams can't phase them. Lastly, I'll at least give credit to one sketch in this episode for bordering on decent: I liked Jack Handey's 10-to-1 about Randy being unaware of the perpetual danger surrounding his exposed, sore toe. The hour preceding it left me so weary that I couldn't laugh at it all that much, but in retrospect, the visual of Robert maniacally slamming the floor near Randy's foot with a hammer and the preposterous cartoon logic that keeps tempting his fate are pretty fun; it's just the sort of fun that, as with a lot of other "smart" sketches this season, would hit far harder with better performers.
The rest of the episode isn't all that exciting, but it's stuff that I can generally let slide; I can't let the continued awfulness of Weekend Update and the worst Sam Kinison routine yet hold back my grades for episodes, even if they hold back my enjoyment of the episode as a whole in key places, because it's simply not fair to everyone else. And everyone does pretty well here! Even if this is a far from perfect week, we're at a point in the season where I was surprised to see a show that felt particularly energetic and involved, and for Jimmy Breslin of all people! (And hell, we also get E. G. Daily, the future voice actor for Tommy Pickles form Rugrats, performing a music number as a sex doll come to life and dancing with Jon as Biff! That's some fun craziness that deserves mention!) It's a strange penultimate episode, and it doesn't feel like it's fighting particularly hard ahead of the finale so much as casually existing, but I'll happily accept its laid-back, playful charms in the moment. Only one more to go, everybody. Let's make it count! (Penned 12/27/22)
Leonardo: É aquela máxima né. O Jasper nem deveria nem está nesta final, ele foi um candidato mediano e nunca teve grandes destaques em toda a temporada. E outra coisa, porque toda a vez escolher músicas com títulos gigantescos. Meu Deus do Céu. Não gostei, achei muito parado, o tempo todo.
In short, while the show and comics have had similarities and differences in the past, all these changes have created a butterfly effect that here in the finale, the show really cannot look remotely like the end of the comics. 041b061a72