A Confession That I Feel Should Not Have To Be Labeled A “Confession”
So you know the show “Cougar Town”? Created by Bill Lawrence, a.k.a. one of the Three Major Deities of television (the others, of course, being Josh Schwartz and Rob Thomas)? I have something to say about it.
There was a rumor, during the summer hiatus, that the show’s name was going to be changed. The name was a thinly-veiled reference to the premise of the show at its start: Courteney Cox plays a divorced woman in her forties who starts going out with younger dudes. Pretty quickly, the show dropped this theme completely and turned into an ensemble comedy about a group of friends who live in some suburban cul-de-sac. Critics (and Bill Lawrence) universally agreed that this made the show much better.
My confession, which I resent having to label as a confession because I see this as an eminently reasonable point of view but society apparently disagrees, is this: the show was totally better when it was about a divorced woman in her forties who starts going out with younger dudes.
That is a show I would watch all the time. That is an awesome topic. There haven’t been any TV shows based around it. It can give rise to tons of funny stuff. It is also an awesome topic. And I would have expected Bill Lawrence to have the balls to make that show, and to know how to get it right.
But the show as it is now is not a whole lot more interesting than if “Friends” were done in modern sitcom style. A heterogeneous group of people sit around in living rooms, say wacky things, and have heartwarming moments. Yay.
They’re not changing the name, as it turns out. The name will just sit around and taunt me, and remind me that if I want to watch the show that’s actually interesting, I have to stick with the first, like, three episodes.
