Cougar Town/Tuesdays at 10:00 EST on TBS
What’s that? You didn’t even know this was still on the air? Well, then, you must not watch Everybody Loves Raymond reruns. Yep, Courtney Cox and her post-Friends friends are still whooping it up in prime time, just not on one of the “Big 3” and evidently only for those who think being a middle-aged wino is funny, even if the actors playing them aren’t at all.
Speaking of these post-Friends friends, there’s not a one of ’em who stands out. Scratch that – Josh Hopkins as bar-owner Grayson Ellis does, thanks in large part to the awful, awful songs we are forced to endure in the endless promos for the show’s “triumphant” returns, and sometimes even during the show itself. I’d rather see Joey Tribianni in Macbeth. Actually, that’d be downright hysterical.
ABC, the original home for the series, gave Cox a shot at the sitcom hat-trick (beginning with her stint on Family Ties; interestingly, like Friends, an NBC series) by renewing Cougar, not once but, like, half another season, too, before wising up and dumping the subpar sitcom that seems to think over-the-top equals laughs. It doesn’t. Cougar Town wants to be It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia meets New Girl so badly you can smell it during the promos. Or maybe that’s just the wine soaked into their t-shirts on the latest one, where the gang is playing “Wine Pong,” and that’s another area where the show’s over-reach smacks of irresponsible.
Cougar Town extols the virtues of adults and parents whiling away the hours killing bottles of wine as if the nation isn’t boasting its biggest numbers in alcoholism ever. That might be something one could overlook if there was even a whiff of an Otis on the cast, or the town was remotely the Mayberry they think it is.
It was magnanimous of TBS to step in and pick the show up, if not shrewd. But, Cougar is just lewd, ludicrous and, worst of all, desperate. TBS has done better before (My Boys, for one). So, TBS, unless you’ve got someone better than Matthew Perry up your sleeve for a reunion this new season, why’d you even bother? Even Showtime’s Episodes, the Matt LeBlanc triumph, scored Gunther.
READ ALSO: A Show That Has To Go: 2 Broke Girls | A Show That Has To Go: Dads |A Show That Has To Go: The X Factor | A Show That Has To Go: Mom | A Show That Has To Go: Keeping Up with the Kardashians
Vinnie Penn (@VinniePenn) first hit the airwaves as co-host to Glenn Beck. By 2001 he was a regular on Howard Stern, and his work has appeared in national magazines such as Maxim, Hit Parader, and Cracked. He currently writes for MSN. Visit his website VinniePenn.net.