Not to mention her siblings (after all it was Haley who basically flat out said that Alex was ruining their perfect summer).

It wasn't an overwhelmingly good episode, but it was OK for what it was: a typical go-for-laughs holiday episode. In other words, liked but not loved. It wasn't quite as funny as last week (B).

If Jay were to be willing to legitimately offer more than the bad neighbors how would that violate the code (i.e. as long as Phil gets an offer that gets Jerry the maximum value for his house why is it wrong for Jay to be the buyer - is there an ethical issue to sell to a relative even for a fair price)?

In real life, no. Storyline-wise, yes - the way it turned out will hopefully produce some interesting stories later this season, whereas last week would probably have been the last we saw of the first couple even if they had been the new neighbors (unless they were hiding something, such as being moles or sleepers…

As good a job as this week's writers did, I still hope Elaine Ko gets to write Alex's stories when they heat up again later this season.

This was the best episode of the season so far (A-), and the funniest. They did such a great job coming up with outside people I absolutely could not stand – all of them. No, that is not damning with faint praise – I liked how evil the Dunphys' new neighbors, Lily's teacher and Jay's ex-partner were. I want to see…

It occurred to me this evening that Alex's story from "Under Pressure" is starting to look more and more like Modern Family's version of "An Imperial Affliction" (i.e. the sad story that just ends abruptly when everybody wants to know what happens next).

Sometimes I wonder if originally the Dunphys were only supposed to be a "married, 2 kids" family with just Luke & Haley, only they decided at the last minute, "hey let's add a genius middle child - we'll figure out what to do with him/her later" (either way they could use Alex for the name). There are times when I…

So which book do you want Alex to stay with? I thought her only friends were books.

Another fair, if meh-ish episode with a couple of chuckles and nice scenes (somewhere between a B- and C+) - it's looking a lot like last year when early on they were mostly treading water until they got to the nitty gritty of the wedding. The only problem is, what's this year's endgame? Haley and Andy (or Dylan)? …

We don't know how much control she gets as to what her character says/does (probably less than the adults, more than the other child actors) - it's possible she could have balked and was persuaded (nicely or otherwise, probably the former) to go along.

Oh the irony (is it?) of getting sick hours before an episode titled “The Cold” airs…

I don't think it is so much she is going to choose Cal Tech because of Jason as she simply is now considering going there whereas before she only went on the tour in the first place to placate Claire. Unless the writers totally drop the ball on this (sadly since it *is* Alex we're talking about that's still in the…

That's only going to get worse - Joe's starting to grow up and soon he'll start getting more and more speaking parts, and there's the possibility that Andy and Haley grow into a relationship that makes him a more regular character. Unless they plan on dropping a character or two (e.g. Alex does go away to college…

B+ - this was better than last week, but there's still room to do better. The first two segments of the episode were considerably better than the last segment, in which each story save the Dunphy's lab experiment (the best story of the four) seemed to peter out.

She did ramp up the irritable in her voice a notch or two last night, but between her trip gone horribly wrong and her family trying to drag her back to that miserable trip (just to get her out of the house so they could go back to living their "perfect" life) I don't blame Alex for all but boiling over one bit. At…

I'm definitely in the minority on this, but I'd love to see them try a more serious tone more often, especially with Alex.

Because of what's happened to them off-camera, I'm now totally torn whether to feel more sorry for Ariel Winter or Sarah Hyland. At least Ariel's family drama has settled for now, but who knows when that will flare up again? And as for poor Sarah and her recent issues, it's scary to think that jackal who groped her…

It was a decent if somewhat flawed opener - I'd give it about a B-.

This was easily the most heartbreaking movie I've ever seen (admittedly I've never seen Love Story although I am almost old enough to have seen it when it came out).