Guilty Pleasure Watching in Cougar Town

The last TV series I watched before I had to go back to work was ABC/TBS's Cougar Town.  It was a show never really on my radar to watch when it was on, though I remember one night I caught an episode when I still had TBS and it wasn't bad.  So when I really had nothing else going on near the end of the lockdown and I saw this on Amazon Prime, I said what the hell?!

The show was co-created by Bill Lawrence, who created Scrubs, a show that I liked--at least the first few seasons.  It starred Courtney Cox, who was my favorite of the female Friends as a recently-divorced woman in Florida.  She's over 40 and looking for a younger guy to go out with, hence a cougar.  Get it!?

The thing is, that premise is really only the pilot episode and a few after that.  It reminded me of Parks & Recreation where if you watch the first six-episode season Leslie Knope is a real dope.  After that they changed the show so she was a naive goody-goody instead of a blundering idiot.  In the same way the first few episode Jules Cobb is looking for casual encounters with dopey young guys.  Then a few episodes into the first season she starts dating her neighbor Grayson, who's only a couple of years younger than her.

After that the show mutates to focus more on Jules and her friends in the neighborhood.  Most of the episodes are driven by their relationship hurdles and drinking a hell of a lot of red wine and hanging out at Grayson's bar.  A lot of it focuses on Jules's good-natured attempts to meddle in the lives of her son and friends while also managing her relationship to Grayson.

A good thing is that unlike Scrubs or Friends there's really not much will they-won't they crap with Jules and Grayson.  They date for a couple of seasons and then get married in season 3 and stay married until the end of the series.  That made it easier to watch than those NBC shows because you didn't get that awkward shit where they break up but still have to hang around each other until they get back together.

The showrunners made a running joke of the fact their original title no longer really fit the premise of their show.  In the second and third seasons especially when the title card came up the text that originally said "Welcome To...Cougar Town" like a postcard (see above) would have some smart-ass message about changing the title.  The funniest one though was when the text read, "This is not The Simpsons chalkboard gag" a few times--like the chalkboard gag.

The first 3 seasons were on ABC but then they cancelled it and TBS picked it up off waivers for three more seasons that were 13 episodes instead of the 22-ish on ABC.  So it wound up with like 102 episodes overall.

Spoiler alert:  the last episode was actually one of the best final episodes I've seen.  It takes the old last episode staple and turns it on its head when it seems like everyone except Jules and Grayson are leaving the neighborhood.  She's getting freaked out by this but then Grayson reveals that really no one is moving; it was just a way to give her the birthday gift she wanted of hearing what everyone would say at her funeral through their goodbyes to her.  So they get together at the end to...drink wine like they always do.  Life goes on.  Huzzah.

Overall it's a good show if you just want some light-hearted comedy without tons of slapstick and laugh tracks.  Since Scrubs took place in a hospital there were often serious life-and-death issues but there's not much of that in Cougar Town.  There's an occasional "very special episode" like when Jules's father is diagnosed with Alzheimer's but there aren't many of those.  The light-heartedness made it a fun, easy watch during this stressful time.  So while I wouldn't put it as one of the greatest shows ever, it's a decent watch.  For someone like me who wasn't really the intended audience, I consider it guilty pleasure watching.

A couple of Fun Facts:  besides Courtney Cox, Friends alums Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, and Jennifer Aniston all had guest appearances in episodes of the series.  Also, it was co-created by the guy who created Scrubs and also featured quite a few cast members of that show including Courtney Cox (who was in the last season of that show on ABC), Christa Miller, and the guy who played the evil Dr. Kelso played Jules's father.  The wacky neighbor Tom also had a small recurring role in Scrubs, I'm pretty sure.  In one episode the assistant hospital administrator Ted appears along with his a capella group and during the credits they have a bunch of other people show up from that show including Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke, and the guy who played "the Todd."  An Easter Egg in one episode is there's a medical plaza sign that lists a Dr. Dorian, which was Zach Braff's character name on Scrubs.