After six seasons and two networks, Cougar Town drifted quietly into rerun land last night, airing its series finale on TBS. Like a lot of once-great sitcoms, I hung with it, even as it lost a step or five, mostly out of loyalty to the characters, and to showrunners Bill Lawrence and Kevin Biegel (Scrubs), who left the show when it moved from ABC to TBS. I’ll miss it a little, but I’m not sad to see it go. Cougar Town had run its course, and then some, but even as it broadened its humor for basic cable, it always remained pleasant enough to watch.
Cougar Town also provides an excellent example of what great writing can do for a sitcom. Lawrence created these fantastic characters (they were basically the Happy Endings crew, a decade older and living in the suburbs of Florida), filled the world with a lot of details (Penny can, Chuck the wine glass, Ellie’s insults) and handed it off to TBS and different showrunners. The characters remained, but instead of expanding the details or evolving the characters, everything on that cul de sac remained static for the next three years. Every episode had the same formula. Every episode told variations of the same six jokes.
Not that I minded that much. It was sweet and watchable, and I somehow never managed to get tired of Christa Miller’s character, even though it was virtually the same character she had for several seasons on Scrubs. In fact, the entire show essentially recycled the Scrubs template, only it was centered around Jules (Courteney Cox) instead of Elliot (Sarah Chalke). Bobby Cobb (who left this season) and Andy were Turk and J.D., Grayson was Carla, Tom was Ted, Chick was Dr. Kelso (played by the same actor, Ken Jenkins), and Jordan and Ellie were counterparts (also played by the same person).
That was okay, and after Cougar Town moved to TBS, we didn’t have high expectations, which was good because it never would’ve lived up to them. But it was watchable, occasionally funny, and often very sweet, as was the case with the low-key series finale, which saw Grayson pull a birthday prank on Jules that provided us with an incredibly sentimental ending in which nothing changed. But that was okay, too! Nothing really changed that much in six seasons, and it would’ve felt unnatural to force it.
So, let us raise a giant wine glass and toast Cougar Town one last time: You were pretty good, most of the time! May you live long and prosper in syndication!
