Anti-Climacus

An appreciation of Cougar Town, the great show with a terrible name:

I admit I came late to the “Cougar Town” party for the same reason everyone else did (and the same reason any non-fans reading this still haven’t checked out the show): the title and initial concept of the show just didn’t seem like something I’d enjoy. I watched the pilot when it aired in the fall of 2009, and I might have even seen another episode or two after that, but despite liking some of the jokes, I wasn’t initially won over by a show about a newly divorced woman in her 40s getting into wacky sexcapades with men half her age. The title’s something that Biegel addressed when talking to the crowd, saying that he and others had generated it in the writing room when he worked on “Scrubs” and they all tried to think of the lamest idea possible for a sitcom. (They’d joked that episode transitions would feature cougar growls and animated claw slashes to cut to new scenes.) And yes, at first, the show was largely about the way Jules Cobb (Courteney Cox), freshly single and with a son entering his final year of high school, decided to get back into the dating scene. Yet the show grew that first year into a romantic ensemble comedy that placed a greater emphasis on the recurring characters than their weekly conquests, and by the end of the first season it had become a strong sitcom that built itself around a real emotional core. The gang on the show became a family to each other, the one place they could always turn when the world got out of hand, and the show’s focus changed accordingly.