Good Ol' Predictable Cougar Town

Cougar Town, S03E01

 After much waiting (not for me because I watch enough shows that I don't really notice), Cougar Town returns to ABC.  I think it's relatively funny show, but not as funny as the creator's former show, Scrubs.  That show was great, and had such wonderful chemistry between the cast.  I get the same kind of vibe from Cougar Town, but it doesn't quite strike my funny bone as hard as its elder.  Anyway, I was mildly interested to see it back.

They start off the episode with the aspect that I love the most on the show: the gang's intense need to drink wine all the time.  Jules comes up with idea to make a wine glass neck strap so they don't have to hold wine glasses anymore.  But they decided that they enjoying holding the glasses, so instead of abandoning the straps, they just have two glasses: one for decoration and one for drinking.  Good God, these people are drunks!  But you have to respect how they keep taking "pounding grape" to a new crazy level.  I would only like to join them if it was time to sit around and drink wine like it was going out of style.

The main issue in the episode was that Jules was thought to be predictable by her friends.  I knew that once this was made clear, she would try to show her spontaneous side, but fool no one.  She tells Grayson that she wants them to be a couple that always surprises each other, but with a man who can compose a song about your daily routine to the point that he is singing about you throwing away a mouth piece, there will be few on Jules' end.  Unsurprisingly, she tells off some skater kids who are making noise while she and Grayson chat.  Later, her car is toilet paper "sharked," and she schemes to get back at them.

I thought that Jules would be wrong about the kids that attacked her (since it was a rather large group), and she would end up making an new enemy.  However, after she goes to the house of the "culprit," the police shows up, and she and the reduced gang have to scatter.  Just as Jules is about to get caught, it is revealed that the policeman is in fact Grayson.  How did Grayson get a cop car?  Laurie and Tom were in on it.  Grayson was the one who had sharked her car!  I was confused about why he had done so at first.  Was he just trying to give her a surprise?  Jules is pretty dumb, though.  She didn't notice that the fake address Grayson had given her was an empty house of her own listing.  Wow.  She must be one hell of a realtor.  I finally understood what Grayson's plan was when he proposed!  Whoa!  On a season prieimere?? I didn't see that coming at all!  I mean, I knew that one day he might, but to propose underneath a tp-ed tree?  I've never seen that before.  Besides that this was one of the most original proposals that I've seen on TV, Jules was unusually lip-locked at that time.  She found some words, but it was sweet that they had a moment without her talking so much that she kind of ruined it.

That was the sweet part of the episode, but let me talk about the funny parts.  The best of all was the now toddler Stan, aka the Devil Baby.  Ellie, the toughest character on there, tells him that he should apologize and Stan just casually says, "Doubt it."  I did not have high expectations for this kid, but he instantly got my adoration.  Ellie and Andy are pretty terrified of him and with good reason when he is known to be walking around with a hammer, destroying things in neighbors' yards.  We later see him with hammer in hand, up to no good.  Love it.  Stan also shows that he isn't playing around when Laurie dares to take off his mutant, killer rabbit picture off the fridge.  Upon seeing this he stops in his tracks and turns to stare at his parents with his demonic eyes without a word.  Wow!  Can we just have a whole episode about him??  So creepily cute!

I also enjoyed how the gang kept saying "This should be the gang," when one or more of the other members weren't present.  My favorite version of the gang was Ellie and her wine glass.  She reminds me of myself.  Haha.

The last funny part I want to mention is the green screen at Travis' college house.  I thought it was an insignificant little side story, but it turned out to be a more humorous device than it first appeared.  I loved when Andy and Bobby were using the green screen to pretend they were flying through the clouds.  The only thing was that they couldn't even see what they were doing.  Still, their child-like friendship has always been a point of hilarity for me.  I'm not surprised that Jules later uses it to fashion an overly dramatic re-proposal scene for she and Grayson.  It's nice that he's so whipped that he doesn't even question having to do that for her.

Grayson tells Jules that she's not boring because she's crazy.  I think what he meant to say is that she was predictably crazy.  You may not know what brand of crazy she will be, but you do know that if something goes wrong, she's not going to respond in the same way a normal person would.  I'm glad that we can still count on that with this new season of Cougar Town.  It may prove to be an interesting season after all.