Cougar Town - 40 Is The New 20

Written by Pierre Lipperheide

Sunday, 25 July 2010 00:00

Cougar Town premiered on the American television network abc on September 23rd 2009 and is now coming to Germany. Tonight, 25th of July, 10:15pm on SAT1.

The 30 minute sitcom starring Courtney Cox, Christa Miller, Busy Phillips, Brian Van Holt and many more focuses on the life of recently divorced Jules Cobbs (Cox) and her neighbors, friends and affairs.

Cougar Town is a relatively recent television series, which has already received approval for a second season to air this Spetember, and it's headed to Germany. As we all know, German networks like to wait, postpone and cancel American shows an awful lot, and I am amazed by the fact that Cougar Town will air on German TV just two months after the first season's finale in the US.The network to air the show is not PRO7 this time, as we're used to with many abc comedies; it's SAT1 instead.

"Cougar Town" is a fitting name for the first few episodes of the series. But I believe that it should be renamed as the focus shifts from the protagonist Jules (Courtney Cox) and her young boyfriends to the problems of the clique. This group consists of Jules' neighbors Ellie and Andy Torres (Christa Miller, probably most famous for her role as Dr. Cox's wife on Scrubs, and Ian Gomez), Grayson Ellis (Josh Hopkins), also neighbor and love interest, her coworker and friend Laurie (Busy Philipps) and ex-husband Bobby (Brian Van Holt). "Cougar" refers to a woman in her forties looking out for younger men. The series is set in a small town in Western Florida where main character Jules owns a real estate business.

In the first episodes, Jules sets about finding new dates and affairs with aplomb. They are all young and they are all hot but this is not what being forty and divorced is about for her, she discovers. The series' point of view shifts from her character to the whole group as the search continues. We see them sitting in Jules' kitchen drinking red wine in comfortable blankets most of the time but there are more important aspects, too. There is her ex-husband who is living on a boat (in a parking lot) tyring to get along with golf lessons and her son Travis (Dan Byrd), 18 , with his first girlfriend.

Courtney Cox's character the most noticeable one, because she just can't keep her mouth shut and says whatever comes to mind. Also very entertaining is her employee, Laurie, a very...lively (for want of a better word) and open-minded character (essentially a Jessica Simpson and Britney Spears prototype). Her fights with the amazing Ellie Torres are a very entertaining partof the concept. Christa Miller, playing Ellie Torres, has proven her star ability on Scrubs and Courtney Cox is of course best known for her role as Monica on Friends. Fortunately, this series does not suffer from a protagonist-centered concept, as with Cox's previous project dirt.

And please take note of Barb (Carolyn Hennesy). I almost started to cry because I had to laugh so hard whenever she appeared. (Which is generally once per episode and thanks to one rather bitchy remark.)

Guest stars were, among others: Lisa Kudrow, Scott Foley and Sheryl Crow.

Although critics in Germany and the US have torn the series apart, the critical response grew more and more favorable as Cougar Town continued. A full season was soon commissioned (24 episodes for the first season) and renewed for season two. The Sueddeutsche recently wrote that they are disappointed that the series deals with the same themes that a thousand others have dealt with before, that the sitcom format is a quite flat one, as are the jokes and that the focus is just on Courtney Cox's character, Jules. But they only watched one episode. The pilot. And the pilot was probably the worst episode of the entire show. Here you still feel like Jules is very desperate for well-built, hot men in their twenties, but thankfully this changes as the series goes on.

The original network abc is known for its world famous series including "Desperate Housewives", "Grey's Anatomy" and "Lost" (which, by the way, all originally ran on PRO7). But now here comes another sitcom, with a format that hasn't been particularly successful in the past (with "Samantha Who?" as a recent example). And why broadcast it on a network that is not really known for its strong American television programs? I think it's a fresh start. A fresh start for the network and a fresh start for the concept of bringing American television to Germany.

Written by Pierre Lipperheide