The fourth season of the Courteney Cox comedy Cougar Town switches networks, premiering on Time Warner’s TBS on January 8, 2013. I don’t remember which network it was originally on but I did check it out in the first season. I recall thinking the show was OK.
It’s still OK, at least in the several new episodes I recently sampled in advance of the new season, and I found myself laughing more than a few times. Overactive Cox, whose Jules Cobb character is like a less civilized, more exaggerated version of her Monica character on NBC’s Friends, frankly looks too altered in her rubbery appearance, and I found her distracting in certain scenes, but I remember when she was a cute tomboy in a Springsteen video and I watched her on Friends. As an aging mother whose son, beer-slugging ex-husband and former neighbor – now bartender husband – Grayson all hang out together on the same Florida cul-de-sac with her gal pals and others, she’s the leader of a trashy, boozy pack. The show’s about her family of friends and neighbors, a less blood-related, more vulgar version of Modern Family, and for lowbrow TV it’s not bad. Some of the writing is spot on and the slices of life ring true with humor and good writing on occasion. Mostly everyone talks, trades barbs and drinks red wine or beer to deal with life’s problems.
But characters each have good qualities, too. The dumb blonde has a knack for nailing personality traits, which she calls superpowers, the jaded next-door neighbor has a tender side, the hunky husband has depth, the put-upon husband has a backbone and the good-for-nothing ex turns out to be good in his own way, all of which is predictable, and Jules has a way of bringing everyone together even if it’s just for the sake of another glass of wine, which, with news from Washington enough to make you want to do an endless round of shots, is just fine sometimes. The 21-year-old son, stuck among this neighborhood’s hyper-arrested development adults, is of course the most mature adult. I don’t remember why it’s called Cougar Town, though the Courteney Cox character may have chased young men in past seasons before she married Grayson (and did she get the better end of that deal) but in any case there’s more pack-bonding than prowling in this lightly raunchy series.