Cougar Town 1.01: Pilot

Cougar Town: Three and a half times better than I expected, and three HUNDRED times better than the first two minutes of Accidentally on Purpose, as those two minutes culminated in Ashley Jensen's character teaching Jenna Elfman's character to "perk her nipples" and not in a good way. A couple of years ago, when the Sex and the City movie first came out, one of Entertainment Weekly's columnists (I don't remember which, but I salute him) asked, "You know what they call men over 40 who are still interested in sex? Men." And I laughed and laughed, and then I hated society for the rest of the week. I HATE THE TERM COUGAR, is what I'm saying. It's a derogatory term used by people who think LOL non-cheerleaders and non-sorority sisters like sex! HILARIOUS. Clearly these women are losing their humanity by giving into their baser instincts; let us label them something that is animalistic and also threatening to people who live in Colorado! But. Cougar Town is a decent show so far. Courtney Cox still does that thing where her voice gets too high-pitched when she's supposed to be upset, but she portrays a good balance of goofiness, longing, and self-deprecation. She's a good mom, blessed with one of those awesome, wry television teenagers as a son, and she's a professional with responsibilities. She's torn between married friends and single friends, a kid of an ex-husband, and a frat-boy of a newly-divorced neighbor (who will, I expect, be a love interest by mid-season). She experiences wacky hijinks--and MAN, my friends never drop off surprise presents like the ones she gets--but it's tempered with a lot of awareness, which lowers the audience's cringe factor by a lot. She says ridiculous things, she has ridiculous friends, but she feels she has to do something, and sometimes that means being ridiculous. I love the cast. In addition to Courtney Cox, we've got Busy Philipps, Christa Miller, Ian Gomez, and Josh Hopkins. Aside from Hopkins, these are all actors who tend to veer into caricature, but I think it makes for an interesting contrast. Instead of situating the show in the heightened reality of a sitcom, we have the heightened-reality characters (and hijink situations) in what feels like, to me, is supposed to be a plausible reality. (I have no idea how to explain that. I'll get back to you.) We veer between crazy sitcom antics and realistic reactions to crazy sitcom antics. Even though it seems ridiculous, you see where most of the characters are coming from, and it's real. "You know how scary it is to be a single forty-year-old woman? Whatever you do, you feel judged by the world. You feel judged by yourself! And if you ever think, deep down, you might get married again, you're not going to, not when you're fifty, and you can't make babies anymore and your looks have faded! So you put on a brave face and you try really hard not to think about the fact that maybe, maybe this is all your life is ever going to be!" This show could go horribly wrong, but it could be really interesting, too. So far, it's funny without being horrible, and that's a good start for a sitcom nowadays. We'll see.