Fall Preview Impressions: Cougar Town

Coming this fall on ABCs is Cougar Town the latest show from Bill Lawrence (Spin City, Scrubs). The show premiers September 23rd and will fill the Wednesdays at 9:30 timeslot. Note that that is Lost's slot, so this will probably be a fall-only run or move somewhere else.

As a fan of Bill Lawrence's entire repertoire, it was pretty much a guarantee that I would at least give this show a look-see, though neither the premise nor the star really excited me that much. But I have to say that after watching the preview, I was pleasantly surprised, though I suppose I shouldn't have been given the source.

Essentially you can figure out the idea from the title of the show. It's about a woman who's getting on in years sleeping with younger men. The woman in question is Courtney Cox, who television viewers will best remember from Dirt and from that episode of Seinfeld where she pretends to be Jerry's wife to get his dry cleaning discount (I'm not forgetting anything, right?). I'm pretty much ambivalent about Cox. She's an alright actress, she's decent looking, she can be funny in a pinch. The jury is out on whether she can make this a successful vehicle.

As for the rest of the cast, you have Busy Phillips best known for whatever show it was you saw her as a recurring character in - for me that was the television classic Freaks and Geeks. Also appearing are the excellent Christa Miller (wife of Bill Lawrence) best known for her roles on The Drew Carey Show and Scrubs. I'm a fan of both actresses, so put them in the plus column. Most of the men in the show are unknowns to me with the exception of Dan Byrd who played Sylar's annoying sidekick for a few episodes of Heroes this season. That's a minus.

In the end, this is a show that will probably function mostly on the strength of Bill Lawrence's genius (which is immense). The key will be how much of an audience Cox can pull in, I'm really not sure how big of a star she is at this point, though I suppose time will tell. I will slap it with the official bambat seal of "worth a look".

No one in the show is really hot enough to get the bambat photojournalism treatment, so here's a cougar: