Finale Roundup - Part 3

In the final installment of looking at this year's finale's I finish out with Modern Family and Cougar Town.

Modern Family - "The One That Got Away"
This week's episode and last week's episodes were actually supposed to be switch.  I can see why the network would decide to make the switch with the callbacks to many of this year's episodes, but last week's episode really worked better as a finale, even the title was "See You Next Fall."  It certainly was a good episode, though.  I really enjoyed the callbacks in the Dunphy children's video. It was a nice way to remind the audience of the better parts of this season.  Everyone systematically ruining Jay's idea of the perfect birthday was clever way to unite the stories.  This season has tried too hard to come up with stories for all of the three family units each episode, with bad results sometimes, but when they do it well, things really click on this show.

Cougar Town - "Something Good Coming"
This show has really become something else this year.  In the beginning it was not very good, but showed promise.  I stuck around due to good will of Bill Lawrence from Scrubs, and I have been rewarded.  This show isn't normally the funniest show on TV, but it may very well be the funnest.  Even if I'm not actually laughing I normally have a big smile because it's just so fun to hang out with these characters for a half hour every week.  This year's finale actually ratcheted up the stakes with real world kind of problems.  Travis is having an existential "what do I do with my life" crisis after his proposal was rejected, which leads him to Hawaii, which leads the rest of the Cul de Sac Crew (plus Tom) to Hawaii.  On top of that, Jules and Grayson have very differing opinions on whether they want to eventually have kids.  Neither problems have trite resolutions, but actual well thought out conclusions.  And along the way to those heartfelt conclusions, the gang has a lot of fun, and by extension so do we.  Also, Ted from Scrubs as his lovable sad sack self, and if an extended guest spot from Ted wasn't enough, Abed from Community also makes a brief background appearance discussed earlier this year on that show.  That kind of cross-network continuity so rarely happens it is a wonder to behold.