Without a Cougar Town episode on the schedule last week, I took the opportunity to revisit the bumpy first eight episodes of the show, which are a major contrast with the show that Cougar Town eventually turned into. What I love about those episodes is that rather than try and get everyone to forget they happened, they’ve embraced their tumultuous beginning throughout their three-season run on ABC, and both ‘My Life’ and ‘Your World’ feel like a culmination of this growth. For the most part, it was a fantastic farewell for the show’s run on the network, and gives it an entirely new direction to take itself when it moves to TBS in the fall.
In reality, the fourth season premiere will be able to act as a series premiere for a new audience: Now that Grayson and Jules are married and living under the same roof, Cougar Town‘s going to shift ever so slightly away from just hanging out all the time, and integrating more Jules/Grayson as husband and wife story lines as their relationship is bound to have some changes, now that they have rings on their fingers (doesn’t it always?) . And there’s nothing wrong with that: again, Cougar Town can handle change just fine.
But I don’t want to pontificate on a season that doesn’t begin until 2013. As episodes standing on their own, I’d have to say I enjoyed ‘My Life’ more than ‘Your World’. There were so many great emotional notes in the first episode, it presented an unfair obstacle to the second half to compete with the stakes. Grayson’s struggle to accept other people in his life (a series-long development) and the true meaning behind Penny Can outweigh a fake-eloping, some more non-movement on Travis/Laurie, and a really bad Ellie plot line in my book.
Let me rephrase that: Ellie’s scenes in ‘Your World’ are so painful to watch, it nearly destroys what small shred of likability there is to Ellie’s character. The one thing that kept her endearing was her loyalty to Andy underneath all the bad mouthing and insulting, and her appalling behavior throughout the second episode left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Andy’s a great guy, and there’s only so much abuse he should have to take at her hands – and it feels all throughout their Napa visit and afterward that her continued infatuation with Daniel should’ve been given more serious tones. This is something that Andy deals with all the time, and it can’t always end with Ellie giving him the sexual equivalent of a pat on the head… it was hinted in his continuous responses that it’s not ok, but it’s never really addressed as anything but a joke. Needless to say, it was Ellie at the worst we’ve ever seen her, and combined with her offhand comment about divorcing Andy, suggests something I’m hoping the writers aren’t serious about.
Touching on Laurie/Travis, the cycle of Travis embarrassing himself in front of Laurie with nothing in return is also starting to get a little frustrating. Even though he’s a dork and has no idea how to handle a relationship (remember the season 2 finale?), Travis has allowed himself to be stomped all over emotionally time and time by Laurie… and can still only say anything to her about it when he’s completely wasted (and naked… again with the nudity exposing truth). It’s a delaying tactic to evolve things next season (to what degree, who knows) but does anybody really buy into Wade and Laurie, or all we all just getting to the point where they either need to date and break up in one episode, date for the rest of the series, or decide they wouldn’t work together and move on. It’s getting a little over deprecating to Travis’s already lame-ish personality with women (look at the control his mom still has over his 21-year old life), and I could do without it.
There’s a lot more I could talk about, but I think the episodes speak for themselves. ‘My Life’ is Cougar Town at its best, parodying Groundhog Day as a window into the current emotions of our characters. Unfortunately, ‘Your World’ suffers from its obvious conception of being a possible series finale… and if it had been, I would’ve been a little let down with the events in it, outside of the actual wedding scene. Either way, we get something we didn’t expect back in September, when the order was cut and the season premiere delayed indefinitely: a fourth season. I can raise my glass to that.
‘My Life’: A
‘Your World’: B
Other thoughts/observations:
– “By the Wayans Brothers….” Laurie is both the worst and the best.
– If baseball is a game about home, and golf is a game about finding onself, it makes perfect sense that Penny Can (a game invented by Bobby, the character on his path to redemption) is a game about family? Also love the Bobby/Travis and Andy/Stan parallels. Obvious, but very touching.
– Dog Travis!
– Grayson wanting Tampa Jill at his wedding is a big step for him as a father, but an even bigger step for Jules by giving up her elopement to recognize it. Growth like this is what makes the non wine-drinking parts of Cougar Town great.
What did you think of ‘My Life/Your World’? I’ll have more to say next week in my Final Thoughts on the season, but feel free to leave your comments/reactions to the episode and the season as a whole below!