I have to do it. I have to start a thread for ABC's Modern Family/The Middle/Cougar Town Lineup

cougar town is winningly loathsome p sure the title refers to c.cox character & this other rich old lady that likes doin it specifically + i guess southern florida generally.

cougar town is hella funny tbh altho they really rely on like character one says smnthn selfish or stupid or repellent character two zings them character one ruefully acknowledges their shortcomings no1 learns anything type jokes and plots. modern familys gotten a lot tighter & better @ using confessionals but i still like cougar town more.

better off ted was really the best of the abc morality plays but i guess its been canceled????

feel like the immediate precursor to these shows is the american version of kath & kim. come to think of it, so is new adventures of old christine. all these shows plus christine are better than kath & kim too. they've perfected the formula. i wanted to like kath & kim simply cuz i worship selma blair, but it really was the pits. if i won't watch your sitcom then you really have some trouble on your hands.

(and yeah i know that these shows all steal from a dozen other shows, but the vibe of kath & kim is really similar to cougar town and the others in some ways)

cougar town is hella funny tbh altho they really rely on like character one says smnthn selfish or stupid or repellent character two zings them character one ruefully acknowledges their shortcomings no1 learns anything.

Totally dead on, and it gets really claustro after a few minutes.

Also there is something weird and choppy about joke timing on cougar town.

yeah the rhythm of the show is really offputting -- i feel like single camera shows have to work extra hard to find a pacing that functions as well as a trad three-camera/live studio audience sitcom, and most of them fall pretty flat in that regard. but then i can't even watch the US Office.

Agree with you guys. It's not like the show doesn't have some decent jokes and delivery, and I think the attempted tone, to get back to more bitter early-Scrubs days where the characters were far more antagonistic (my guess) has merit, but the general direction/rhythm seems off.

I kind of like The Middle but it feels like it hasn't quite geared up yet. Janitor and the daughter are both pretty good, though.

I watch The Middle and Modern Family and I prefer The Middle more (my family prefers the other more (not sure about my mom though)).

I think it just comes down to personal taste.. these shows probaly just about tie in favor by viewers. Brick and the daughter win it for me

i still don't know what to think of that musical ending to cougar town last night with sheryl crow. that song was so bad. but the episode itself was okay. the song seemed to last forever. like watching someone's uncle sing in public. so embarrassing.

can we have a serious adult discussion about how cute modern family character mitchell is?? luv that ginger neckbeard

i really can't bring myself to explore cougar town though, like it took me about a year to look into parks and rec beyond thet tivo-tag opening segments featuring a hilarious sassy large black woman

My favorite of these shows is "The Middle". I think Patricia Heaton is very funny on that. Her facial expressions alone make it worthwhile - the rest of the cast is pretty good too. I missed it this week, but last week's episode with Amy Sedaris as the consultant at the auto dealership was classic.

i don't even mind monkey guy from snl on the middle. this, despite the fact that i have a grudge agaainst him for stealing from my brother's record store.

― scott seward, Wednesday, February 3, 2010 8:33 PM

i wanna know the record store story plz scott

WARNING To Record Store Owners And Employees

ha basically one big infomercial but possibly the best ep yet

cougar town a+ last episode imo. kinda feel like theyve just >> to that point in a sitcoms life when the characters become absurd caricatures of their own worst qualities but im enjoying how committed this show is to making these ppl joyfully loathsome.

mb its just that its an always sunny where dennis and dee managed to hold on to their main line affluence

cougar town killing it last nite.

fred willard was gold on modern family too.

From this interview with Bill Lawrence on Cougar Town:

And it's always odd how there's this bunch of 40somethings, then there's Laurie who's also a grown-up, and then there's this teenager hanging out with them.

I like that he's almost the adult observer of a group of grown children. I long for the day when he's old enough when he and Laurie can flirt without it being creepy. I think in real life, those two aren't that far in age, but the way they've been written, whenever we do a scene where Travis is into Laurie, that was always met with the network going, "That's inappropriate."

This show isn't... good... but yet just barely entertaining, like late life Scrubs. Good that they ditched the original premise of the show - I dig that "joyfully loathsome" vibe (that reminds me when half the cast hated each other in early Scrubs) though this show will never be at the misanthropic level of Sunny. At least Busy Phillips is getting a steady paycheck out of this.

haha well it can be hard to separate "good" from "fun to watch" sometimes. & sure no network show is ever going to come close to being as bizarre and cruel as sunny. but i think theres some resemblance in the sensibility and the storytelling. really my only beef with the show is that the joke writing is rarely better than lazy

also lol @ me upthread. only found out yesterday that the travis graduates episode wasnt the season finale.

http://www.movieline.com/2010/06/which-of-the-insane-new-cougar-town-titles-do-you-prefer.php

jules neighbourhooding

hahaha wtf. retitling shows almost never works, Cougar Town's not a great title but they went with it and now need to make the best of it imo.

ok I'm finally giving Cougar Town a chance tonight, and in the first seven minutes it's okay.

BUT I caught the opening last week and this week and I like that the descriptors "Badly Titled" and "Not What This Show's About" appear above the title.

props where they're due.

cougar town srsly killing it this season

it kind of unnerves me how long Cougar Town's 'cold opens' are, like 10 minutes in suddenly the title card shows up and it's like wtf isn't this episode half over?

the show has a weird structure - its usually like two long scenes @ the ends with a middle section featuring tonnes of cross cutting - but i kinda vibe it

lol that u watch this show tho!!!!

isn't anyone else kinda annoyed by the primary courtney cox / girl from freaks + geeks / jordan from scrubs relationship? why does everyone worship cox?

isnt the subtext/text of nearly every episode bent on answering that qn?? like its p hard to watch the show & not get why these ppl need each other

I don't watch it that much, even though I know it's much improved over how it started, but the few times I have I've really liked it. I like that Bill Lawrence is keeping Scrubs actors in the loop (I'm only basing this on having seen the episode where Dr. Kelso played Courteney Cox's dad).

difference between needing other people and the kind of power cox wields over these other two women. it's the difference imo between relatable + pathological and it often crosses way over that line

isnt the subtext/text of nearly every episode bent on answering that qn

the subtext maybe but it doesn't seem like they ever plan on addressing it textually. it's always like, "this is just the way the relationship is," but never why it became that way or why they would be okay with it.

like if i had two close friends who were always competing for my attention + insulting each other in some weird oneupsmanship I'd be like, "hey guys this is really weird and uncomfortable can't you just be cool?" but instead cox is like, "yes, i love being the center of attention"

well one of the pivotal comic underpinings to the show is that cox's character is an unrepentant narcissist but e.g. the recent thanksgiving ep went out its way to address what cox's character does for the others - the sense of family & belonging thats she chiefly responsible for providing, how much she genuinely cares for them - so idk

i mean i guess my point is a) in a comedy relationships are often exaggerated and unhealthy in order to be funny and b) the way the characters interact and the psychological/emotional reasons driving these relationships are p long-established and easy to grasp by just watching the show

I prefer The Middle to the other two. I've tried to get into Cougar Town but something about it annoys me. Modern Family is pretty damn funny though. Overall it's a pretty good lineup for ABC. Don't remember the last show I actually liked on that station.

Don't remember the last show I actually liked on that station.

I was into Grey's Anatomy for the first two seasons, but then I couldn't fucking take Ellen Pompeo anymore (or most of the rest of the young cast either...the older teacher doctors were okay).

D'oh! And LOST ffs.

Courtney Cox's face is pretty hard for me to look at these days.

matthew perry looks really really old in the teasers for his new abc show

lol that u watch this show tho!!!!

― Lamp, Thursday, December 9, 2010 6:18 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

why is that lol?

yeah i saw that promo for Perrys new show. I did a double take.

lol @ this on cougar town wiki entry:

Even though she has been out of the dating world for a while, Jules decides to find love again while living with her teenage son.[10][clarification needed]

they took cougar town away last night to make room for premiere of mr. sunshine. replacing one Friend for another. i dunno about mr. sunshine. i think i can live without it. matthew perry's hair was distracting too. and i don't know if i can blame it ALL on absolutely fabulous, but jeez louise i don't know how many rich clueless rude white women who drink and do drugs i can take! i think they are on almost every show on t.v. it almost seems a given that i will see latino people shaking their heads over some stupid and insensitive thing that some white person says on t.v. latinos attack! or maybe i should blame The Office. or Arrested Development. but AbFab came first. that guy attacking foodies in that magazine article should do an essay about this instead. it must be some sign of late period imperial decine and fall or something.

holland taylor on two and a half men has pretty much made a career out of this character so i give her a pass. i mean there are people who are really good at it. but making the mom from that 70's show on the new bad abc show she is on some sort of half-assed abfab lady just seems so desperate for laughs. and the whole "oh just get pablo or paco or whatever the hell is name is to clean it up" is just standard joke #234 now. the difference now is this is supposed to be endearing in some way cuz they are so fucked up and clueless and don't know any better a la the office. eh, i don't know. i mean race and humor go hand in hand, but it kinda stopped being "outrageous" a zillion years ago.

although i guess this has been standard since archie bunker. cuz arch was endearing too. and you cringed but you were supposed to root for him. that kinda thing.

karen walker! i mean megan mullally. she was good at it. the post-abfab thing. it was all downhill after that.

forgot to mention that i saw the dude from cougar town who goes out with courtney cox's character at LAX when we were getting to our flight the other day. my only celeb sighting!

weird abed cameo on cougar town.

matthew perry loser show only lasted nine episodes but it was a loooooong nine episodes.

i think it's cute that apparently Scrubs + Cougar Town occur in the same universe. "Hooch is crazy."

happy endings is p lol, actually

actually

actually

cougar town is pretty awesome ... the only other network shows that bring the LOLs as consistently this season were parks and recreation and community.

no that is her, i just think balls mean the character 'looks like' the actress who is playing her

bowen's big speech was definitely one of the first modern family scenes in a while that i thought was really great

ahhh - gotcha. I'm terrible at recognizing any celebrity lower than "A list" so it was a shining moment that was almost taken away from me!

Mitchell spitting as he cried was pretty lulzy too. Much better episode than the first two! My husband is the EXACT same way as Cam when hungry. Heh.

I don't really get the love for happy endings, everyone just seems like such self-satisfied dicks.

i kind of like that the show isn't trying hard to make the characters likable (but also isn't quite going in an opposite seinfeld/it's always sunny direction). the worst thing about a lot of pretty young ppl network sitcoms is the overwhelmingly needy stench of LOVE US LOVE US LOVE US.

Julie Bowen had some good moments but I thought that was a really terrible episode.

why didn't my dvr record happy endings last night? :(

this dvr is so terrible. i can never get it to work properly

Cougar Town has been delayed until March, with its episode order cut from 22 to 15. RIP.

There's always Cougarton Abbey.

only 6 episodes tho

This just hasn't been Abed's week.

Pudi's on the Cougs, too?

He did a guset shot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWfJYJMrYa0

But I was just refering to the bad news about Community & Cougar Town breaking so close together.

cougar town!

huh.

during this ep of The Middle there is a scene where sue is talking to the older brother and a pink jacket keeps jumping around the shot with every cut and disappearing and reappearing. it is very distracting

Huh- I didn't notice that.

I've come to the conclusion that, with the exception of Happy Endings, ABC's Wednesday night lineup is an embarrassment of winning comedic performances on shows that I don't otherwise care for at all.

Gave up on Suburgatory so I'd agree.

Like, if your only requirement for a solid sitcom is funny people being funny, you could do much worse.

there is so much talking on this thread about the other shows that aren't modern family...modern family is pretty much the best comedy.

the little segments over the closing credits in modern family (like the one when everyone's talking about gloria's mispronunciations) >>> pretty much any other entire 30 min sitcom on the air now.

sorry modern family hasn't been great since season 1 (maybe halfway thru season 2 to be generous)

The best ABC comedy on Wednesday is Happy Endings

NZA must be an Emmy voter because afaict those are the only people who are still excited about Modern Family

The little pre-opening-credits vignette yesterday with Phil Dunphy in the doctor's office was pretty funny. I don't remember word for word but they were talking about the real estate market:

[Doctor behind Dunphy, putting on a glove.]
Dunphy: Well, it's a buyer's market so if you're a seller, y'know...
Doctor: Bend over.
Dunphy: Right, so it's not great for them, but...
Doctor: No, bend over.

Modern Family is still funny, don't get me wrong

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cougar-town-ric-swartzlander-329745

Showrunner carnage continues as Cougar Town moves to TBS. This seems less contentious though.

"that's the risk you take with street eggs."

A couple of years ago, I started stopping on this occasionally, then started watching whole episodes in syndication (so all jumbled up), and I'm finally watching it from the beginning. Long way to go--I'm halfway into Season 3--but most of the time I love it. Don't know if there's a major drop-off at some point, as there usually is with long-running shows. There's not one of the 10 principals I don't like a lot, putting aside non-entity (so far) Lily. The most surprising thing is that a handful of times--Phil and Claire getting properly married for the first time in Hawaii, for instance--I think it even approaches art.

I think it held up very well over the years (spoiler: Lily becomes an entity, and joins the good cast members. A later addition, not so much). I think Manny is one character that is even better in the latter part of the series.

I have to disagree, I recently encountered a contemporary episode and thought it was utter hack, and I really liked this show at its height.

Took a long break, started up again, and am working through season 6.

I'm laughing because I was mystified by something that returned search results and evidently mystified others too: Mitchell looking at the wedding video at the end of E3, "The Cold."

The show does tail off, but there's almost always a few things that make me laugh in every episode.

One thing this show does really well is work in guest appearances from well-known people: Catherine O'Hara and Andrea Martin (Martin Short was pretty good too), Steve Zahn, Ray Liotta, Kelsey Grammar, Matthew Broderick, etc. Not to mention all the semi-regulars like Fred Willard and Shelly Long. (I consulted a list to jog my memory--I didn't even that was Edward Norton as the Spandau Ballet guy!)

Fred Willard was so, so enjoyable on this show.