Cougar Town: so much more than just sex-crazed women
by Jeffery Racheff
Cougar Town is on the prowl for a new name.
After a dramatic 180-degree turn midway through its first season, producers of the hit ABC sitcom starring Courteney Cox are looking to change the show’s title because the old one doesn’t quite represent it anymore.
The show follows a recent divorcee named Jules (Cox) who, after a bitter divorce, tries to jump back into the dating pool in an effort to make up for lost years. In the beginning of the season Jules dates much younger guys and tries to party like she did in her 20s. But as the season progresses, Jules starts to date men closer to her age, worries less about her wrinkles and finds herself struggling with deeper issues of aging not popularly associated with the word cougar.
Series creator and executive producer Bill Lawrence believes the Cougar Town name severely limits its potential audience, and that Cougar Town is capable of much more than its name allows.
“Partly as a result of common sense and partly from [the studio’s] research, they find too many instances of testing of people saying they would never watch a show called “Cougar Town” — ‘I don’t want to see some show about a 40-year-old woman nailing younger guys’ — and then they screen an episode, and people go, ‘Oh, I would watch this show.'”
Whether your definition of cougar denotes just a single middle-aged woman or includes virtually anybody over the age of 30 who so much as blinks at a younger man, nearly all versions are wrapped up with one central connotation: sex. This was great when Cougar Town was being pitched — sex on television is ratings gold. But the show is a whole new animal now, and has mutated more into a dramedy ensemble about a group of friends trying to navigate middle age and less about the raging, aging hormones of women on the prowl for fresh meat.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to call a dish dinner after you’ve already sold it as dessert. Folks with a sweet-tooth for sex won’t take kindly to a bleaching of their television fantasies, and new audiences will be confused by a show that doesn’t even know what to call itself anymore. “Cougar Town” sounds less like a family comedy series and more like the ultimate amusement park for teenage boys with itchy pants (it’s a wonder it was even allowed onto the Disney-owned network). Besides, the word itself has long gone stale.
So what are cougar handlers to do? Keep the name and attempt to transcend the label’s negative connotations? Or change it to something more domesticated (House Cat Town? Courteney Cox’s Family Fun Hour?) and risk losing fans who were drawn to the edginess?
Cases of sitcoms that have changed names in the middle of their runs are few and far between, though it has happened. The ’90s comedy These Friends of Mine helped launch the career of a certain popular daytime talk show host and comedian, but only after its name was changed to Ellen before the start of the second season. Saved by the Bell was originally called Good Morning, Miss Bliss and then went on to become colon-ized with Saved By The Bell: The College Years and Saved By The Bell: The New Class.
That’s the most likely option for Cougar Town now. The original name attached to a new phrase — Cougar Town: Life of Jules, or maybe Cougar Town: Babes In The ‘Burbs — something to show the original brand while adding a twist that showcases the series’ new direction.
Cougar Town may change its name but it still wants to take you home. And instead of ferocious mountain lions clawing for your attention, it plans on keeping things a bit more tame. We’ll see if it loses any of its bite.
