**** Cougar Town airs on the local ABC affiliate which is 6 WSYX ABC and can be found on channel 6. For HD channel versions, check your local cable or satellite provider for more information. ****
If you follow me on twitter, no doubt you know how much of a fan I am of CougarTown. And that alone is based on the fact that I am a fan of one of the co-creators, Bill Lawrence, who seems to always mix his comedy with something sometimes a lot of shows fail to have, which is heart, like he did in Scrubs.
A lot of shows on television on primte time (such as Community, Raising Hope, NewGirl, Happy Endings, Modern Family, etc) are good to me because they feature heart. The shows that really strive to stand out though are the shows that not only feature heart, but also a soul. And CougarTown , at the guidance of co-creators Kevin Biegel and Bill Lawrence do just that.
But then there is that title. That ever-annoying title that screams to people that CougarTown is about Courteney Cox boinking younger dudes. News-flash; it isn’t. It’s about a bunch of people who hang out, drink wine and are there for each other through thick and thin. This group is called ‘The Cul-De-Sac-Crew’, consisting of Jules Cobb (Courtney Cox), her best friend Ellie (Christa Miller) and her husband Andy(Ian Gomez), Jules ex-husband Bobby (Brian Van Holt) , their son Travis (Dan Byrd), co-worker slash friend Laurie (Busy Philipps) and the neighbor across the street Grayson (Josh Hopkins).
In Season Two, Grayson and Jules began dating each other, which wasn’t really a surprise, but things escalated on a trip to Hawaii in the Season two finale. In the Finale, ‘Something Good Coming’ Grayson and Jules had a mild tiff over whether or not to have kids. For Grayson, it was a deal-breaker; For Jules, she was trying to avoid it. The reason Jules was trying to side-step it was because Travis, who during Season Two, began dating a girl who metaphorically ripped his heart out and not knowing what to do, he fled to Hawaii after dropping out of college. So the Cul-De-Sac Crew went to Hawaii to bring him back to Sarasota. As viewers we knew that Jules was using the whole ‘my son is in trouble’ thing as an excuse to avoid the conversation with Grayson about having kids. We also know, as viewers, that Laurie and Travis have a weird romantic tension between them, so it was no surprise that by the end that Laurie was able to convince Travis to come home. Soon following this, Grayson and Jules worked things out and all was well. So it left us with the question what would happen in the Season Three premiere?
In the Season Three Premiere ‘Ain’t Love Strange’, Grayson points out Jules is very predictable, carrying over a song that he began working on via ukulele in the Season Two Finale, which I call the ‘Jules’ Morning Routine Song’. The fact that Grayson’s observations are met with agreement and acclaim from the rest of the Cul-De-Sac crew really hurts Jules. One of her predictable behaviors, for example, is her telling off these long-haired skater kids, who she tells them to skate somewhere else and cut their hair. Meanwhile, Ellie and Andy’s kid Stan apparently is a devil-child, and Bobby is trying to give his dog away to Travis who is back in college in a house with 9 other dudes (and two who are named Steve.)
When the skater kids escalate their battle with Jules by ‘sharking her car’, it leads Jules to respond in kind. But we learn that it was all a clever ruse from Grayson to get Jules what she really wanted; a fairy-tale setting where she would be proposed to in front of everyone she cared about; her early predictable behavior is what Grayson loves about her, and he loves everything about her.
All in all it was a fantastic episode, and a beyond wonderful way to open up the season. In a way, it also defies basic television tropes. Every time you read an interview with Lawrence, it’s very evident the man is a fan of television, and so he knows his tropes well. One of the tropes he doesn’t care for is the will-they-won’t-they. As a writer in general, it’s also easy to surmise that no writer likes to do something the way everyone else does it. So normally, a proposal like this would come at the season finale, NOT the season premiere. Biegel and Lawrence quickly made a point to side-step the will-they-won’t-they early on between Grayson and Jules and the proposal in the premiere was beyond refreshing. And even though I knew it was going to happen (thanks to a ten minute video released by Lawrence to help spoil misconceptions about the show) it still packed quite a punch. I went from chuckling one moment to getting choked up.
I said in my CougarTown Season Two review (found here) that the MVP’s of the show were Christa Miller and Brian Van Holt, and while Miller’s plot line was humorous during ‘Aint Love Strange;, Van Holt’s new emerging depth for the character Bobby is really starting to get to me and completely in a good way.
Van Holt’s Bobby, at a closer look, is only now beginning to realize what kind of husband he was to Jules. And while they are still good friends, and hang out all the time, I think the lack of companionship is beginning to wear on the man. And despite Bobby’s… what seems like a severe lack of intelligence, that doesn’t mean the man doesn’t have a heart, which again, goes into what I’m saying about the show having a heart AND Soul. It’s little touches like that, where Bobby, while congratulating Jules and Grayson, gives a quiet little nod of heartbreak himself, speaks so much to the character that has flourished underneath our noses. Both the Season One and Two Finales really spoke to Bobby as a human who is lonely; there is a sense of regret there. You can also say justifiably that perhaps the reason why Bobby almost missed getting Andy, Travis and Ellie to the proposal was due to the fact that Bobby himself, despite wanting Jules to be happy, is mourning what he could have had if he didn’t cheat and do some of the things he did. I know as per the ten minute reel released that Bobby will continue the search for love, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t tear up over Bobby a bit too.
With all this praise, there were a few things that irked me, and again all minor quibbles; Laurie and the ankle bracelet. Laurie’s whole thing explaining how she got it was pure exposition, but it felt weird and out of place that no one would have noticed, let alone, considering Laurie as a character is outspoken as it is, that she wouldn’t have mentioned it sooner. I also had a mild problem with the Stan storyline, who was running amok. While the pay-off seemed nice; a heart to heart between Laurie and Ellie, (again, one of the reasons why I said Miller is one of the show’s MVP’s) the leading up to it felt askew from the rest of the episode until that moment. Maybe it’s because we see so little of Stan* that it felt jarring to see him be actively in the show this episode? I’m not sure.
(*) I understand the concept of working with children in film or tv but it still bothered me a bit
And I want to add, I seem to give a lot of credit to Van Holt and Miller, but really, it’s not fair to the rest of the cast. I mean, my god, Bob Clendenin as Tom? Phillips as Laurie? Byrd as Travis? Every single actor are all wonderful in their roles.
Overall, CougarTown returned with what was a great example of what the show is and what the show definitely isn’t. Despite a few minor issues with the episode, the overall episode reminded me that yes, it’s nice to be back in CougarTown. (Yes, crappy title and all.)
But what do YOU think, examiners?
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