Review: Cougar Town ‘I Need To Know’ – We All Love Refractive Light

Cougar Town isn’t a show afraid of challenging the likability of its main characters – especially Jules and Ellie, who were the focus of last night’s ‘I Need To Know’, a terrific episode about motherhood, being a wife, and the rest of the cul de sac doing what they do best: finding the good in people’s biggest flaws.

Jules’s obsession with Travis has been part of this show since the pilot (one of the few things never to change from the initial batch of episodes) and now that Travis is in college, it’s only logical for him to start slowly pulling away from the mother who likes to take her son on dates and call them “friends with benefits”. He’s becoming embarrassed enough that a public laundry exchange has to be disguised as  drug deal on campus. But as she struggles with Travis’s impending adult hood, she reveals a fear I think every mother has at some point in their life: what happens when my child doesn’t need me anymore? What if he doesn’t call or try to see me? And when Jules goes nine days without hearing from him (only to find him hanging out with Bobby on the boat), she becomes afraid her son is leaving her behind.

Of course he isn’t though – he still can’t do his own laundry, and still spends way too much time blowing bubbles to be considered a ‘real’ adult just yet. And when him and Jules sit in the wine bar and talk about where they are, Jules finally realizes why Travis doesn’t need her 24/7 anymore: because she did a good job as a mother, and though it’s difficult to let her child blossom on his own, he wouldn’t be out there trying if it wasn’t for her. It’s a touching moment, and one that takes some of her less desirable character traits, and gives them some meaningful perspective.

The same thing happens in the episode with Ellie, who takes Bobby’s lessons on training Dog Travis and applies them to Andy. Most of the time, Ellie’s character is less likable than Jules (her never-ending list of Things That Annoy Ellie), especially when it comes to the way she badgers Andy in front of their friends. But their relationship has been held up as the gold standard on the show for a good reason: they really love each other, and unlike many other couples, they can have moments of weakness and be honest with each other – plus it shows us again how confident and awesome Andy is, not using the moral high ground to humiliate Ellie.

Of course, the episode wasn’t without its normal share of running gags – mustaches (inspired by 3 Men and a Baby), Dog Travis delivering club soda to the designated driver, and Laurie’s GLARMY that invades Grayson’s bar. But ‘I Need to Know’ works best in its final third, when it pulls away from Grayson’s homophobia and Jules’s overreactions with Travis to resolve the episode’s conflicts with meaningful exchanges between characters.

Grade: B+

Other thoughts/observations:

– when the bar gets over run with gay people, Andy tells everyone that Bobby’s taken. Aren’t they the cutest?

– the non-Tom Selleck, non-Ted Danson man from the movie is Steve Guttenberg, last seen on an episode of Party Down.

– Jules gets a ‘stache rash from Grayson… gross.

– same goes for talk about Jules’s nipples (although Grayson and Bobby’s opposite answers were pretty funny).

– Grayson: “I like my manis, and pedis, and waxies.”

– “Zooey Descha-hell no!” Laurie wins best line of the evening, with Jules in a close second for “I washed your little undies with lavender  because I know you like it, you little bitch.”