Follow Up – Cougar Town

Cougar Town – ABC – 1 Season – USA

Since its debut Cougar Town has gotten a fairly harsh rap, especially in Australia, for seemingly no good reason. The biggest issue seems to stem from THAT title, which is the most misleadingly stupid title for any show on television since my little seen series that paid tribute to our fallen ANZACs, titled ‘Diggers Get Dirty’. The other problem seems to be is that Cougar Town has been marketed as a shrill Sex & The City/Friends knock-off when it’s much more like creator Bill Lawrence’s other series Scrubs: off the wall, delightfully weird and occasionally sentimental.

Channel 7 CEO David Leckie famously derided Cougar Town as being a “shit show”, and patted himself on the back for still being able to get nearly 1.4 million viewers for its debut. I think it’s an interesting comment from a guy whose flagship series include Today Tonight, Deal Or No Deal, Packed To The Rafters, Border Security, Airways, Australia’s Got Talent, Dancing With The Stars, etc, etc. In all honestly Cougar Town was one of the rare instances when Channel 7 was not airing ‘shit’. This is the major problem with perception. Cougar Town is loud, flashy, American and everywhere, so it has to be bad.

While others have decided to keep their distance from Cougar Town the series has been growing into a consistently hilarious ensemble laughfest. Complaints that Cougar Town is ‘unrealistic’ or ‘over the top’ are as ridiculous as complaining that Terminator contains ‘too many robots’. Cougar Town is supposed to be unrealistic and over the top. The biggest laughs come from playing up the absurdity in Cougar Town’s heightened version of reality.

Throughout the season the cast proved themselves to be at the absolute top of their game and work off each other with natural ease. Cougar Town’s ensemble is one of the best on TV alongside the fantastic work every week from the folk’s over on Community and Parks & Recreation. Courtney Cox cops a lot of flak from certain circles (namely me before I watched Cougar Town) but her comic chops shine while portraying weirdo mum and morning alcoholic Jules. Even Christa Miller, whom I hated as Jordan on Scrubs, is note perfect as selfish but loveable bitch Ellie.

Modern Family scored rave reviews after its near perfect debut but while Family has remained fairly consistent, while occasionally dipping into mediocrity, it is outshined on a weekly basis by sister show Cougar Town. There are bigger laughs to be found in Cougar Town, and there are weirder laughs. Ellie’s husband Andy wanting to recreate Andy Dufresne’s escape from Shawshank Redeption using a slip & slide tunnel and a hose in the backyard was one of the biggest laughs of the year for me.

For a lot of people it’s going to take a lot of convincing that Cougar Town is worthy of their time. While it does lean too heavily on creator Bill Lawrence’s sentimental sensibilities that were the downfall of Scrubs; the weird, wacky and absurd laughs to be had throughout the first season rivalled the best Scrubs had to offer. Now if only there was some way to change that stupid, stupid title.