A review of last night's "Cougar Town" coming up just as soon as I call Portia... The show had been on such a good streak for so long (again, dating back to the re-conception of the series as an ensemble comedy about an unlikely family, rather than a story about Courteney Cox dating hot young dudes) that they were bound to roll snake eyes sooner or later.
I've been in the tank for Beverly D'Angelo going back at least to "National Lampoon's Vacation," but Laurie's mom was such a broad and obvious cartoon villain that that story didn't work. Which is surprising, given that both Laurie and, especially, Bobby are written with a lot of nuance and heart even as they're shown to be dumb and trashy.
Bobby's usual hillbilly logic, in fact, was the one part of the episode I really liked. Brian Van Holt and the writers have so nailed the unapologetic stupidity and weirdness of the character that he never fails to make me laugh, most notably here when describing his goal of making himself sick in every country in the globe. ("Mexico was easy!")
The Barb story was also way over-the-top and off-tone. This isn't a show that usually messes around with pop culture parodies, so turning Barb into Norma Desmond from "Sunset Boulevard" didn't work.
I like the actors, and I like the small bits of interaction among them (Grayson happily yanking Jules' waxing strip, Andy being so excited that Bobby and Ellie's feud is over), but they've definitely had better weeks than this one.
What did everybody else think?
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