A quick review of tonight’s “Cougar Town” coming up just as soon as I watch a kitty play the piano like Bruce Hornsby…
“Cougar Town” is in a good little groove right now, finding various running gags to string through each episode and then use them to break the tension in dramatic moments, like Travis and Jules interrupting their argument to give Grayson the sushi house greeting, or Ellie punishing Andy by bestowing her all-powerful eye contact on Grayson. (Or maybe it’s just that Grayson is a good tension reliever.) And the writers keep coming up with amusing new combinations of the cast. Bobby and Laurie are such a natural pairing with their various bits of homespun idiocy (here with Bobby using a laptop to swat flies and Laurie having thoughts on homemade birth control) that I’m amazed we didn’t see the two of them together constantly last season.
My one question for y’all is about the dead Stan subplot with the weird neighbor. On the one hand, the phrase “dead baby lasagna” is marvelous, and we’ve kind of established that with people outside of their own clique(*), the cul de sac crew isn’t always very nice. On the other, it seems a bit extreme, even by the standards of a show that has one character living in a parking lot boat and all the rest. So did you laugh at that or were you skeeved out?
(*) Oh, and speaking of which, why is Barb still on the show, even for her brief appearances? Hasn’t “Cougar Town” evolved beyond her by now? Or do they just keep her around to remind people that this is what the show once upon a time was about?
Oh, and bonus points for use of The Swell Season’s “Feeling the Pull” as this week’s montage song. UPDATE: Or not. At least one reader says they switched the song between when my screener was made and when the episode aired.
What did everybody else think?