Why Cougar Town is Awesome and You Should Watch it

Ignore the title.  The creator of Cougar Town Bill Lawrence sure wishes he could (but we'll talk about that later).  And ignore Scrubs:  Med School (Although I still stand by my opinion that it was a pretty decent show, and more people would have recognized that with different marketing and less character familiarity.)

Like most people, I shrugged Cougar Town off at the start, mostly because if its title and premise.  I don't really know how it started, I guess I just found myself needing another TV show to watch (which should be a laughable concept, but happens more than you'd think), but I watched the pilot.  And I didn't exactly like it.  But for some reason, I couldn't stop watching it.  I guess it had a certain charm.  The concept was terrible, but the characters were awesome.  And then somewhere in the middle of Season One Cougar Town figured out what its problem was and fixed it.

You see, Cougar Town isn't about cougars anymore.  Sure, it started out as a fed up recently-divorced Jules (played by Courtney Cox) trying to have a little fun by dating hot, young men.  But it kind of diverged into a show about cool winos who don't ever go to work.

Yeah, that's right.  They pretty much sit around all day drinking wine (and boy do they love their wine), making fun of people, and making up their own crazy rules of existence.  And yet, they're very real.  These people clearly love each other, and in doing so they compel us to care about them.  They also have awesome banter.

Bill Lawrence has managed to create a brand new show with the same feel and humor as Scrubs, and yet the characters and jokes are completely different.  Cougar Town is hilarious, endearing, and completely original.  It's what everyone wishes their life was like.

And yeah, the title's terrible.  But they acknowledge that.  It's actually one of the best things about the show.  They wanted to change the title, but they couldn't.  So instead they've started to make fun of it.

The first episode of Season Two when the title came up in the opening credits a small word appeared above the big Cougar Town logo where it used to say "Welcome to".  That word was "Still".

I wasn't quite sure if this was a joke or not, until the next week when it read, "Badly Titled Cougar Town".  Since then it has had something every week.  Some particular gems include:


"100% Cougar Free Cougar Town"

"It's Okay to Watch a Show Called Cougar Town"

"Regretfully, We Give You Cougar Town"

and my personal favorite...


"Titles are Hard: Cougar Town"

And that's why Cougar Town is awesome, and you should watch it.  QED.