NBC is currently watching a war unfold within its own ranks: Who can cram the most pop culture references into any given episode of a comedy show? Before this year, the award clearly went to “30 Rock,” a program that effortlessly slid between Huffington Post and “Harry and the Hendersons” references without missing a beat. No matter how many times Steve Carell uttered “That’s what she said,” or “Outsourced” did … whatever it is that “Outsourced” does…they just couldn’t keep up with the culture-consuming writers of Tina Fey’s hit, hip show.
But this season, a dark horse appeared on the horizon. While the first season of “Community” dealt with establishing the characters and giving Joel McHale a chance to prove he was more than just a pretty face from “The Soup,” the second season quickly moved beyond the sly wink of self-awareness to become a show that reached, as Patton Oswalt describes it, “the ETEWAF* singularity.” It was the closest TV has ever come to being the Internet (sorry, Tosh), with in-jokes doubling back on themselves the way a Television Without Pity forum thread might. Nothing was sacred: not Dungeons & Dragons, Charlie Kaufman or the Web itself (which creator Dan Harmon has used on occasion to throw his fans off-track with fake spoilers on his Twitter feed).
But last night both “30 Rock” and “Community” reached their respective peaks in terms of a meta-media analysis. While Liz Lemon met her match in a walk-and-talk cameo with “The Social Network” scribe Aaron Sorkin (who I swear to God I thought was Eric Roberts for a good five seconds) in an episode called “Plan B,” “Community” busied itself in “Critical Film Studies” by making the most unlikely double-parody of all time: a “Pulp Fiction”-meets-”My Dinner With Andre” mashup that would have been impossible to pull off on any show that did not feature the incredible Danny Pudi. (Honestly, who in the 18-25-year-old demo has even seen that ’80s film that is literally just two people talking in a restaurant for 110 minutes?) So while the Wallace Shawn references may have gone over some viewers’ (read: everyone’s) heads, the scene in which Pudi’s character, Abed, talks about his experience on the set of “Cougar Town” was one of the most riveting monologues ever given in a 30-minute comedy show, as ridiculous as it seems. That dinner monologue pulled off the impossible: transcending its own esoteric references and becoming something greater than the some of its pop-parts.
Sorkin’s appearance on “30 Rock,” on the other hand, was the more obvious and immediately gratifying jump-off point, proving that the comedic powerhouse of the older show still holds the cards when it comes to pulling in big talent. (Especially considering the show’s flagrant dig at “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” a show written by Sorkin that failed in part because it was too conceptually close to “30 Rock.”)
So who won the collective hearts of its media-savvy fan base last night? I’d have to give it to “Community,” just for sheer chutzpah: while the “Pulp Fiction” element turned out to be more of a red herring to the “Dinner With Andre” bit, it was still mind-boggling to see a popular prime-time show combining – successfully! – two films that couldn’t have been more diametrically opposed and having them resonate with a college-age audience. Well done, “Community.” Now if you could just get around to that Godard/”Akira” episode we’ve all been waiting for…
*”Everything That Ever Was – Available Forever” **
** It should also be noted that Oswalt has guest-starred several times on “Community.”
How’s that hopey-changey thing working out for ya? Just great, actually. In a year when Mel Gibson raged, Lindsay Lohan went back to rehab and Glenn Beck still had a television show, it wasn’t easy to believe that people could embrace progress, whether we were talking about the economy or the Denver Broncos. But in 2010, some people actually did. Once known for their flubs, their misdeeds and their general awfulness, a stalwart few picked themselves up and raised their formerly rock-bottom standards. The phrase that could be considered the year’s motto — “it gets better” — is certainly embodied by our 10 Most Improved.
Michael Vick
No one will forget his gruesome role in the abuse and killing of canines while running a dogfighting ring on his property. He has failed drug tests and filed for Chapter 11. And when he signed with the Philadelphia Eagles in 2009 after serving 19 months in prison for felony charges, his return to football was greeted with angry protests from animal lovers. Michael Vick knows exactly what it feels like to be one of the most reviled men in America.
None of that was magically wiped away on Nov. 15. But in a historic game against the Redskins, Michael Vick threw an astonishing four touchdowns and rushed for two. He ended the game with 333 yards passing and 80 yards rushing. And he made the city of Philadelphia utterly jubilant. “I’ve had some great games in my day,” an amazed Vick told USA Today, ”but I don’t think I’ve had one quite like this.”
Vick has not just been kicking butt on the field, either. He’s been working with the Humane Society to end dogfighting, speaking in schools around the country about animal cruelty and encouraging kids to pursue their dreams. Sure, it’s good — and public — damage control. But the thing about paying debts to society is that eventually they’re supposed to get paid. And Vick’s rehabilitation efforts seem as genuine as they are tireless.
He’s been dragged through a hell of his own making. He’s lost everything. But the experiences that made Michael Vick so despised are exactly what make him such a determined player — and a convincing role model — now.
Domino’s
Maybe it was the whole booger incident that set this off. Or maybe it had something to do with the legendarily appalling quality of the cuisine. Whatever the motivation, Domino’s looked America in the eye this year and, in a brutally frank video, shared the feedback from its own focus groups. “Worst pizza I’ve ever had.” “Tastes like ketchup.” “Totally devoid of flavor.” Now that’s a commercial! And then, Domino’s owned its horribleness and admitted it had to “start over.”
The company subsequently revamped its sauce, switched from mozzarella to a cheese blend, and seasoned up its notoriously cardboardesque crust. And some critics admitted it actually had improved.
Look. It’s still Domino’s. It’s not a family from the old country and a brick oven. It’s sauce and dough and a promise that you can get it in less time than it takes to watch “Two and a Half Men.” But it sucks just a little bit less now — and in a year when so many things got worse, that’s accomplishment enough for us.
The widower, who lost his wife on 9/11, became an unlikely champion for the building of the Park51 Muslim community center in downtown Manhattan (aka the “ground zero mosque”), saying, “We don’t want to turn an act of hate against us by extremists into an act of intolerance against people of religious faith.”
More stunningly, he emerged as one of the nation’s most outspoken advocates for same-sex marriage. And in a searing, eminently rational appearance this summer on “Fox News Sunday,” he knocked host Chris Wallace out of the Proposition 8 water, declaring, “Would you like your right to free speech, Fox’s right to free press, put up to a vote? These are fundamental constitutional rights … It is extraordinarily damaging to our citizens, our family members, our brothers, our sisters, our co-workers and our neighbors when they are labeled second-class citizens. Why are we denying them the right to happiness we accord to all our citizens?” Ka-POW.
As he now fearlessly digs in for a fight in the California 9th District, one that will likely take him all the way to the Supreme Court, Olson has become not just a persuasive champion of equality, but living proof that compassionate conservatism is not an oxymoron.
Kanye West
His tweets run from self-aggrandizing to barely coherent. He replaced his teeth with diamonds (presumably not from the Sierra Leone). And his album cover featured a Kanye monster getting it on with an armless angel monster. But the world’s most famous awards show interrupter was also easily one of the most consistently engaging artists of the year — and the most self-actualized “douchebag” in entertainment.
After laying low for the first part of 2010, West emerged this summer with the bracing “Power,” a song that felt like a shot of Four Loco at a Katy Perry cotton candy buffet. And as the MTV Video Music Awards approached and breaths were held that he’d flip out on Taylor Swift or someone else again, he instead posted a lengthy (albeit rambling) mea culpa, and then went on to debut the stunning, strange “Runaway.” Surrounded by a phalanx of ballerinas, he admitted, “You been putting up with my shit just way too long” and raised a toast to the “scumbags.”
He then did a stark, riveting performance of “Power” on “SNL” that blew America’s collective mind. He directed a mind-boggling 35-minute opus video for “Runaway.”
He finally released the dizzyingly brilliant album “My Dark Twisted Fantasy.” He even got a former president to call his notorious post Katrina-remark that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” the lowest point of his time in office. In short, he dominated. He’s still crazy, but he’s still brilliant — and he managed to avoid bum rushing any of America’s sweethearts this year. Hey, anyone who can give George W. Bush his “all time low” has officially won back our hearts.
“Cougar Town”
A sitcom about a 40-ish woman prowling for younger men while wearing cute outfits and self-deprecating her “sagging” butt off? Hasn’t “Sex and the City” done enough collateral damage for one lifetime?
When “Cougar Town” premiered in 2009, in the time slot following the infinitely amusing “Modern Family,” the show promptly distinguished itself as the scariest non-vampire-related television series on the air. The premiere episode featured Courteney Cox flashing her neighbors, comparing herself to a farm animal, and having a humiliating oral sex encounter. It wasn’t even good enough to qualify as terrible.
But then a funny thing happened: Funny things happened. The show, boosted by its adept cast, became less of a star vehicle about a pathetic single lady and gelled into a witty, boozy ensemble. Cox’s womanizing neighbor Grayson (Josh Hopkins) evolved into a convincingly sweet romantic interest for her. Her flashy assistant Laurie (Busy Philipps), endearingly loserish ex Bobby (Brian Van Holt) and droll best friend Ellie (Christa Miller) all grew from stock one-liner dispensers to nuanced, reliable scene stealers, and the show moved out of its “tragic old bag” rut. So if you’re still traumatized from those early episodes, do as they do in “Cougar Town” — and slap out of it. The title is still horrible. But like divorced and hot-even-by-Hollywood-standard ladies, everybody deserves a second chance.
Perez Hilton
The bullies hall of fame is lined with notorious sand kickers. Nelson Muntz. Biff Tannen. Gordon Ramsay. But now, we no longer have Perez Hilton to push us around.
After a devastating slew of anti-gay attacks and suicides inspired an array of famous and ordinary YouTubers to take the stand that “It Gets Better,” the self-made gossip maven formerly known as Mario Lavandeira posted his own message of inspiration and hope. And then the guy who gained fame drawing semen on celebrity faces decided to do something new to combat hate and harassment — starting with the man in the mirror.
In an October message to his friends and fans, he admitted he wanted to “step up to the plate and be the change that I want to see.” No more flippantly calling people whores. No more Miley upskirts. No more moral scolding.
He promised instead to still be “sassy” but to keep his snark in check. And since then, he’s stayed mostly true to his word. He still can’t resist posting pictures of someone who looks a lot like Ke$ha getting orally serviced or speculating on Nic Cage’s apparent toupee, but he’s also praising Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees and cooing over Christian Bale.
And while some cynics will note that a friendlier Perez is also an advertiser-friendlier Perez, he does seem to be genuinely trying. He may be far from perfect, but the old belligerent queen of mean is dead. Long live the new, improved and decidedly drool-free “Queen of All Media.”
Eliot Spitzer
He hasn’t had to run the state of New York for a while, but he isn’t the hooker guy anymore, either. Two years after truly outdoing himself in the highly competitive field of “disgraced American politicians,” Eliot Spitzer became something else. He became a complicated, damn near almost sympathetic human being.
In Alex Gibney’s fascinating documentary on the forces that brought down a once untouchable governor, “Client 9,” Spitzer emerged as both the victim of an elaborate, aggressive campaign by his political enemies and a man who keenly understands, “I brought myself down.”
That mix of humility and hubris served him well when he moved to CNN to co-host a news show with conservative journalist Kathleen Parker. And in spite of rocky ratings and awful initial reviews, he’s become the surprise breakout star. Several weeks after its October debut, the New York Times wrote, “There is no doubt that Mr. Spitzer dominates,” and the Los Angeles Times enthused about “the irrepressible Spitzer, whose strengths as an interviewer and host have been underestimated by most critics.”
Aside from fueling speculation that the show will soon be one co-host short, the critical response has been a bracing reminder that there’s a reason the guy was gangbusters as a politician — he’s smart, lively and disarmingly charismatic. He will likely never again run for public office. But as a sharp, welcome addition to cable news, he gets our vote.
Diane Ravitch
She believed in the system. Until the system failed. That’s when Diane Ravitch — the Bush administration’s former assistant secretary of education and the former advocate of No Child Left Behind – did something radical. She changed her mind. Armed with a wealth of firsthand experience in the trenches, she became a fierce voice for our beleaguered public school system.
This year she released her blistering indictment of the culture of testing, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.” And she has strenuously, tirelessly continued to explain how the deeply entrenched problems in public schools are not going to be fixed by artificially inflating test scores, a slash and burn, fire all the teachers strategy, or abandoning the public system in favor of those deep-pocketed charter schools.
And when that feel-good advertorial for charter schools, “Waiting for Superman,” came out, she took filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, a private school alum and parent, to task for the “propagandist nature” of his documentary and use of “misleading” data.
She has asked, again and again, what happens when we turn over the education of our children to private business, and she has been one of the most eloquent voices in the discourse over Obama’s horrifically misguided “Race to the Top.” In short, the woman who helped create the culture of competition — and assessing children, teachers and schools based on numbers on a sheet — has done exactly what we wish for our kids: She’s learned something. And she’s trying to give all our children a fair shot at doing likewise.
Jonathan Franzen
Where have you been all this time, Jonathan Franzen? We missed you. But you were worth the wait. Nine years after the astonishing, almost overwhelming success of “The Corrections,” Franzen roared back this year with another critically acclaimed doorstop of a novel. “Freedom” soon became the must-read book of the year not written by Stieg Larsson.
But while the quality of his writing remains impeccable, what’s different this time around about Franzen is his willingness to embrace the trappings of his own awesomeness. The only human being in the history of civilization to express ambivalence about being selected for Oprah’s bestseller-making book club finally gave her a thumbs up this year, as his novel became the first book club selection of her final television season. This is the literary equivalent of saying, OK, you wore me down; I will let you give me the Heisman trophy.
He’s still in no danger of Kardashian-level overexposure. And he managed to deadpan that appearing on Oprah’s show “was work,” but “there were no disasters.” But he made the cover of Time, spent 10 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and even had his trademark glasses ripped right off his face – all while remaining effortlessly cool. He’s always been brilliant. But now, he’s a little more comfortable being brilliant. Welcome back.
With 10 Grammy nominations and the best-selling album of 2010, Marshall Mathers didn’t just come back with “The Recovery,” he proved that clean and sober does not mean safe and tired.
First, his ferocious single “Not Afraid” became the most badass anthem to sobriety ever recorded, and then his dark, domestic violence duet with Rihanna, “Love the Way You Lie,” made it clear that Slim Shady has a whole mess of hot buttons yet to push. And eight years after his electrifying debut in “8 Mile,” he’s set to star as a boxer in “Southpaw.”
More than just racking up acclaim and hit songs this year, though, the biggest achievement for the guy who once rapped, “Do I hate fags? The answer is yes,” is how much he’s matured as an artist and a man. Speaking to the New York Times this summer he opined dryly, “I think if two people love each other, then what the hell? Everyone should have the chance to be equally miserable, if they want.” And anyone who can combine the sentiment that “I’m too busy gazing at stars” with “Ain’t no way I’ma let you stop me from causing mayhem” is a guy who has a very unique path to emotional growth. He’s doing it Eminem style, full of cynicism and wit and provocation. Getting clean never sounded so intoxicating.
New TV shows usually suck. Take it from someone who watches every single one of them, every single year. Slogging through a herd of untested pilots can feel like speed dating for speed freaks: Twitchy people tell you their life stories in three seconds flat — they laugh, they cry, they knock over their drinks, stuff blows up, ambulances arrive, roll credits. You’re lucky if you escape without a migraine, let alone a venereal disease.
But this year was different. Watching this fall’s new shows was like wandering through a magical bar filled with charismatic, funny people and delicious, icy-cold cocktails. Great music was playing, the mood was spirited, and everyone had a charming or poignant or funny anecdote to tell. As long as you stayed away from the ones wearing scrubs and surgical masks — oh yeah, and the bony, Botoxed cougars — you were sure to have a great time.
The life of the party this fall is ABC’s “Modern Family.” In a sea of attractive and witty guests, spewing quips and tossing back drinks, “Modern Family” (9 p.m. Wednesdays on ABC) is that unnervingly funny guy in the corner whose jokes keep making your mojito blast out of your nose. I’ve been waiting for this show to falter or underwhelm for weeks now, and each episode has been better than the last. Ty Burrell is consistently hysterical as hapless, pandering dad Phil. Here he is in one of my favorite scenes from the pilot:
Along with Burrell, Manny (Rico Rodriguez) — that’s Jay’s (Ed O’Neill) kid — is an unexpectedly hilarious character (loved the scene where he stroked his fake goatee when considering avenging the kids that drew it on his face), and every episode ends on just the right note. Yes, we saw it coming when Phil’s teenage daughter’s boyfriend, Dylan (Reid Ewing), sang a sweet love song that turned raunchy. But how great was that song? And then ending with the whole family, humming “I just wanna do you, do you” to themselves as they brushed their teeth or got ready for school? Brilliant. I love the dramatic choices by the excellent writers of this show, I love the little touches thrown in by this incredible cast (Eric Stonestreet as chubby, earnest Cameron makes me laugh out loud every single time he’s on-screen), and really, I’m just in awe of “Modern Family.” If you’re not watching this show, you’re nuts.
All of which stands in sharp contrast with another ABC show that I chose as one of the best new shows of the fall. If only I’d had a “FlashForward” to how mediocre this serial drama would become, I would’ve stopped watching weeks ago. From the lead character, Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes), to his doctor wife Olivia (Sonja Walger) to his partner Demetri Noh (John Cho), this show is crowded with flat characters, and the story transformed from an eerie big bang of a pilot into a big sopping mess of nothingness in a few short (but seemingly endless) episodes.
It’s astonishing to me that ABC could compare this show to “Lost” and then do so little to develop its characters over the first few weeks. What stands in for real character traits, back story and nuanced flaws on “FlashForward” (8 p.m. Thursdays) are cartoonish details like “He has a drinking problem” (Mark) and “She’s a dedicated doctor, mother and wife” (Olivia). My favorite, though, is Demetri, who is somehow interesting because he’s in love with his fiancée and he’s going to die soon. He and his lady Zoey (Gabrielle Union) spend their time smiling sweetly at each other, which tells us zero about them, while Demetri tries not to harsh Zoey’s premarital bliss with the nasty omens that he’ll soon be dead.
Oh, and by the way? “He’ll soon be dead!” isn’t character development either, nor is it a hefty foreshadowing element when you don’t know who Demetri is in the first place. Aaron (Brian F. O’Byrne) is still gloomily worrying about his daughter (whom we also know nothing about), Olivia’s doctor friend Bryce (Zachary Knighton) has a new lease on life, but we don’t completely understand why he was suicidal in the first place, and Nicole (Peyton List) is depressed about her vision of being drowned, but secretly, we can’t wait until she’s attacked because all she does now is wander around like a sullen model badly in need of a psychotropic intervention.
This is the trouble with pilots that have a powerfully creepy premise — what if everyone on Earth blacked out at the same time, and had a vision of the future? — along with lots of conflict and panic and exploding stuff in the first episode. All of the real drama is frontloaded, and then the rest of the series feels like slow-motion denouement. Unless the writers happen to have a really smart story to tell — and, let’s face it, writers who create an entire show around a premise this flashy aren’t typically all that fond of subtlety or character development — the whole thing is destined to fizzle before we come close to solving the central mystery.
I should’ve known better. The damage is done! “FlashForward” is the third most popular new show this fall, according to Nielsen, based on average ratings over the first four weeks on the air. In case you’re wondering, CBS’s “NCIS: LA” is first (personally, I’m indifferent to “NCIS” and its soon-to-be-countless spinoffs), CBS’s “The Good Wife” is second (a great new drama, explored in more detail here, that richly deserves the attention), ABC’s “Modern Family” is fourth (Hurray!) and ABC’s “Cougar Town” is fifth (Oof). Not surprisingly, ABC has picked up all three of these shows for full seasons, along with the alternately amusing and tone-deaf Patricia Heaton sitcom “The Middle.”
Aside from Courteney Cox and her chafing stampede of screeching harpies, you have to hand it to ABC. And it’s great to know so early in the season that an excellent show like “Modern Family” and a promising show like “The Middle” will both be around for a while.
Which shows won’t be around? All of the new medical dramas seemed to be on life support this fall, from NBC’s flashy but blunt EMT dud “Trauma” to NBC’s mercilessly self-righteous nurse drama “Mercy” to CBS’s stomach-churningly bad organ-donor soap “Three Rivers.” Nonetheless, “Mercy” unexpectedly won its time slot last week, so those tireless nurses are likely to keep wagging fingers at cartoonishly self-concerned doctors for a little longer.
Just in case you care (which seems unlikely), the CW’s “The Beautiful Life” was the first pilot to be officially canceled, taken out at the knees after just two pretty but empty episodes.
As far as older shows go, Fox’s “Dollhouse” has been getting horrible ratings, even with a bump from DVR viewing, which is disappointing because the series has been smart and transfixing lately despite consistently lukewarm performances by Eliza Dushku. (Can’t someone just give Joss Whedon a blank check to create his own show without strings attached? What, the TV industry doesn’t work that way? Why not?) In other confusing, “What were they thinking?” news, NBC’s promising cop drama “Southland” was given the ax before even a single episode of its second season could air, presumably because Leno has razed the 10 p.m. time slot on that network with his slow, lumbering reign of terror. NBC is really suffering from its crappy decisions this fall.
But as long as NBC keeps its new comedy “Community” (8 p.m. Thursdays) around, I won’t be complaining — at least not for another few seconds. “Community” is still hilarious and has more than enough absurd moments per episode to keep me watching. Joel McHale’s character isn’t all that interesting, because he’s too busy mooning over Britta (Gillian Jacobs), but the others are great, from Abed’s (Danny Pudi) alien hoax to Chevy Chase’s deadpan confused retiree to Senor Chang’s (Ken Jeong) unraveling mental health, showcased in this clip:
Scenes like that one leave “Community” battling it out for the second-best new comedy of the fall against HBO’s “Bored to Death” (9:30 p.m. Sundays) and Fox’s “Glee” (9 p.m. Wednesdays). “Glee,” which has been picked up for a full season, balances some recent lackluster music numbers with consistently great scenes featuring sadistic cheerleading coach Sue (Jane Lynch), while “Bored to Death,” which is already lining up a second season, continues to amuse, mostly thanks to priceless moments featuring Zach Galifianakis and Ted Danson.
So let’s raise our glasses to the best fall season of TV in years! Keep the music blasting, the laughter roaring and the free drinks flowing as long as you can, network and cable overlords, because on TV, the good times can only last for so long. Here’s to keeping the magic alive a little longer — or at least as long as it takes for Dylan on “Modern Family” to pen another sleazy love song.
If aliens learned about our culture by watching our newest television shows, they might assume that planet Earth was terrorized by predatory middle-aged women with hairless, bony bodies and the same blank expression on their overly Botoxed faces, a look of creepy awe at the joys of 20-something tenderloin.
“They’re addicted to those botulism injections, which make them jittery and sick,” the aliens might hypothesize after watching shows like “Cougar Town” and “Eastwick” and “Accidentally on Purpose.” “Their lives are so addled by substance abuse that they pace and second-guess themselves with their googly-eyed, like-minded friends, then giggle and high-five like schoolgirls at the sight of some well-defined abdominal muscles, which are apparently a sign of inner purity.”
“Why don’t the other humans just snuff them out?” some young alien would interject, but no one would answer him because in the galaxy of Zoron, young men are seen as hopelessly naive and confused and are generally ignored until they hit 35. Besides, all of the older aliens would already recognize that these “cougars” clearly serve as some sort of cautionary tale for female humans, a moralistic narrative that humans refer to, strangely enough, as a “guilty pleasure” — “guilty” in this case meaning “it makes you want to stick your head in the oven” and “pleasure” referring to the feeling humans get from having their fingernails ripped off one by one.
What else can explain the surge of good feelings welling up around Courteney Cox’s abjectly awful new sitcom “Cougar Town” (9:30 p.m. Wednesdays)? While ABC’s “Eastwick,” based on the 1987 movie “The Witches of Eastwick” and the John Updike novel before it, and CBS’s “Accidentally on Purpose,” a sitcom with Jenna Elfman as a late-30s writer knocked up by a 20-something stud, have both been greeted with lukewarm reviews and middling ratings, “Cougar Town” has been lauded as an “unfailingly funny” delight by fans and respectedcritics alike. On Tuesday, ABC picked up the show for a full season, and announced that the always funny Rachael Harris will take a recurring role as Cox’s new rival.
Now let’s be clear: This show isn’t awful merely because it’s disconcerting to see a fit, healthy, 40-year-old woman depicted as a prowling old cat — no, that part, although unrealistic, might be funny under the right circumstances. Sure, the aliens might find it curious that while Cox winces and makes “silly me” faces over her shameful sexual urges while men Cox’s age and older — George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Alec Baldwin — are seen as having reached the peak of their sexual appeal, but no matter. That’s one for the earthling sociologists to sort out.
No, what makes “Cougar Town” — and to a lesser extent, “Accidentally on Purpose” and “Eastick” — so bad is that we’re supposed to find these mincing, wincing, mediocre women so charming. Even though most of them appear to have been injected and spot-toned to the point of being exact replicas of their 20-something selves, we’re still supposed to believe them when they whine about how ugly and old and hideous they feel. Even though they’re mature adults, we’re still supposed to think it’s cute when they get all crumply and disillusioned and then rally a cheering section around them, because they have the arrested identity development and porous ego boundaries of junior high school girls. And while we’re meant to find their bikini waxing appointments and their sporting of sexy lingerie hilariously distasteful, as if it’s hopelessly indulgent to do much more than clip coupons and circle the drain when you’re over 35, we’re still supposed to cheer them on when they throw back Jagermeister shots and ogle young studs and screech at each other like coeds at a kegger. Ah, if only we, too, could slip back into the sweet, dizzying folds of aimless, beery banter and meaningless one-night stands with clumsy, baseball-cap-sporting bobbleheads!
But let’s not get too lathered up around the sheer ludicrousness of the cougar meme. The real crime here is that despite the mind-swelling lameness of “Cougar Town” — which is far, far worse than the occasionally amusing “Accidentally on Purpose” and the dull but relatively innocuous “Eastwick”– the show has been proclaimed riotously funny and hopelessly addictive.
Addictive the way dropping an anvil on your big toe is addictive? Because not only does Jules spend most of her time on-screen in a hunched-over, wild-eyed state, like a street mime trying to convey panic, she’s mostly panicked about how she looks. From the first scene of the series, where we find Jules pinching the loose skin on her elbow disapprovingly, all Jules can talk about is how hard it is not to look disgusting at her age.
“Why are you wearing full makeup?” asks Jules’ neighbor friend, Ellie (Christa Miller), when she visits Jules at dawn.
“I’m not ready for Josh to see my morning face. So I set two alarms, one at 4 and one at 5. Then I get up and do my hair and makeup, I go back to bed, fake sleep until the next alarm goes off, and then he thinks I wake up looking like this!”
Later in the same episode, Jules runs through a water fountain, then exclaims, “I spent so much time on my hair this morning. That felt like cheating death!” Yes, this is today’s version of Mary Tyler Moore: not throwing her hat into the air to celebrate her life as a career girl but running through a fountain to celebrate the sheer time-suck that is her high-maintenance beauty regimen.
Next, here’s Jules, breathlessly announcing before she takes a bite of bagel, “This will be my last bite of food today so that my stomach looks super-flat tonight!” Aw, what’s cuter than a middle-aged woman with an eating disorder?
Here’s what the creators of “Cougar Town,” Bill Lawrence and Kevin Biegel, think is cuter: Watching Jules dashing in circles, doing sit-ups, spritzing herself with perfume, worrying out loud that she’s not good enough in bed. “We’re 40, Laurie,” Jules snaps at her younger friend. “For us getting ready for sex is like prepping for a space mission.”
Yes, and tuning in for “Cougar Town” is like watching a sci-fi horror flick about a 40-year-old woman who wakes up one morning with the brain of a 13-year-old. Although Billie (Elfman) of “Accidentally on Purpose” occasionally jokes about the side effects of pregnancy — giant boobs, “sexy hot feelings and one’s booty becoming bootylicious,” and “happy feelings in my downstairs area” — at least she doesn’t prattle on about whether or not baby pee makes your skin softer (thank you again, Jules). And instead of worrying about her sexual performance post-coitus, Billie growls, “Oh, I’d kill for a meatball hero.”
But talk of meatball heroes doesn’t exactly make ratings soar the way jokes about blow jobs do. And even though, in theory, the idea of a show about middle-aged women partying like rock stars, chasing hot younger men, and then second-guessing themselves about it afterward doesn’t sound all that bad, “Cougar Town” is that bad — and then some. As obnoxious as it is tone-deaf, the show can be adequately summed up by the scene where Barb, Jules’ older colleague, goes to see a bikini waxer.
“I know you’re probably impressed with what you see,” Barb tells the woman solemnly. “That, Carol, is total rejuvenation surgery. Up here, I’m 48. Below the belt, I’m 19. Now let’s detail this Ferrari.”
Blecch. But ultimately, the subject matter isn’t the problem. In one memorable scene from the first season of “The New Adventures of Old Christine,” a far more enjoyable look at the perils of middle-aged divorcees on the rebound, Christine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) waves off Brazilian waxes, saying, “I did that once, and it was like a hair arrow pointing to my C-section scar.”
See? A joke women can laugh at without feeling dirty inside. Louis-Dreyfus on “Old Christine,” Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon of “30 Rock,” Holly Hunter on “Saving Grace” — there are plenty of fantastic late-30-something and 40-something female characters on TV who greet the perils of middle age with self-deprecating humor. So why do audiences rally around the one show that makes turning 40 look like a life sentence at a sadistic day spa/asylum/penitentiary for the self-obsessed? Maybe we’re all just as masochistic as Jules.
What’s in a name? Would that which we call a cougar by any other name still be as controversial? With “Cougar Town” debuting tonight on ABC — a show that Heather Havrilesky has already tarred and feathered, calling it “a comedy that’s at once insipid, noxious, offensive, and just plain bad” — discussion of the trendy term has reached a new pitch. Late last month, the first National Single Cougars Convention was held in Palo Alto, Calif.; it featured a Miss Cougar America Contest, in which one woman was crowned queen of the, um, jungle. And in an article masquerading as a memo in Tuesday’s Washington Post, staff writers Monica Hesse and Ellen McCarthy address “all the single ladies of a certain age,” urging them to stop calling themselves cougars. To Gloria Navarro, the newly crowned Miss Cougar America, they write, “Love that spirit, Gloria. But we’re asking it to end. Not the dating of younger men. Please, date the younger men! But using the world ‘cougar’? How ‘bout you don’t.”
The question is, why not? It’s true that, as Hesse and McCarthy point out, it’s absurd when the media applies the term indiscriminately (what to do but laugh when a 27-year old Kirsten Dunst is called a “puma in training” for hooking up with a 22-year old guy?). And it’s annoying when men use it as putdown for any woman over 35 who dares display a bit of skin or sexual interest. If Hesse and McCarthy were asking men not to use “cougar” as an insult, I’d be inclined to agree with them. But to ask women not to call themselves cougars — as though the proliferation of the term were some sort of emergency, linguistic or feminist or otherwise — isn’t this a bit maternalistic? If a woman feels that identifying as a cougar is, for lack of a less hackneyed word, empowering, what’s the problem?
The problem, according to Hesse and McCarthy, is partly that “using a predatory animal to describe older women makes it sound like the men involved are vulnerable prey.” (Rebecca Traister made a similar argument in her excellent cri de coeur about the term last spring.) Of course, women have long been made prey by men, but never mind. There’s another issue, that the word was coined and foisted upon women “by a Canadian high school boys hockey team in the 1990s.” But this etymology is hazy, as the authors themselves readily admit. Even assuming “cougar” was originally a sexist slight, why not let women take back the term, as gays and blacks have done with certain unfortunate disparagements? “We were all about ‘reclaiming’ in Feminist Theory 201 — about taking ownership of ‘queer’ and ‘fat,’” the authors write, as though anticipating this question, “but let’s not embrace ‘cougar’ just yet. Let’s at least try to squash it first.”
Good luck with that. The word “cougar” is everywhere, and if frequency of use is any indication, so are the “older” women to whom it applies. There’s not only Courtney Cox in “Cougar Town,” but “cougar empowerment tomes on Amazon.com,” and an International Cougar Cruise on Carnival Cruise Line embarking in early December. (Don’t come knocking when that ship’s rocking.) The authors point to all of this as evidence that “cougar” is something of a marketing construction that repackages the existing and familiar in a clever, newfangled, exploitative way: “The biggest problem with the cougar craze is that it takes an age-old dating dynamic and pretends it’s something new.”
This is true, and it isn’t. While there have always been older women who have paired up with younger men, the phenomenon was often viewed as a sad act of convenience rather than a positive act of desire — the frustrated, divorced and aging woman hooking up with the opportunistic or inexperienced young pool boy. (Though Mrs. Robinson, Susan Sarandon and the 35-year-old consort of Henry II are all provided as encouraging examples, they were once the progressive exception rather than the mainstream rule.) These days, when women themselves use the term “cougar,” it more often refers to a devil-may-care sexual freedom, or a re-arrangement of power in relationships, or even a novel recipe for life happiness. See, for instance, “The Real Cougar Woman,” a Web site for women who are “smart, sexy, independent … and proud to be over 40” — here, being a cougar does not mean prowling for younger men but rather refusing to accept the ageism of our society. “Imagine how different life is going to be when you stop worrying about what other people think and start living the life you have always dreamed of,” Linda Franklin, author of a bimonthly “ezine” for “Real Cougars,” writes. Calling yourself a cougar isn’t necessarily some pathetic or self-hating stance.
So are Hesse and McCarthy correct, that cougars always existed, and we have just given a shiny new moniker to an age-old reality, the dating-world equivalent of calling shyness “social anxiety disorder”? Or are increasing numbers of women emboldened to act on their inner feline by the mere existence of the term? Either way, cougars are out there and unashamed about standing up as such. Executives at Carnival are no doubt steeped in market research and counting on enough cougars to fill a cruise liner. It’s an identity, a movement. Cougar pride is the new gay pride. Who knows? Maybe cougar travel will explode the way gay travel did — and, once again, what began as a marketing scheme may have the very real effect of helping to normalize a once-alternative lifestyle.
This is why the prescription offered by Hesse and McCarthy — to resist our impulse to label the cougar trend — is unlikely to work. “The way to really embrace the concept of an older woman dating a younger man,” they write, “is not to give it a name that sounds like it was conjured up during a marketing meeting for cheap 1970s cologne. It’s to not name it at all.” But maybe the best way to embrace the concept is to reappropriate it, in a lighthearted way. After all, it’s out there, and women can either claim it, or they can surrender it to the testosterone-infused masses. To own one’s identity, even if it was bestowed by another, is a form of power. (And it’s not as though sleeping with younger men, or remaining sexual into old age, are particularly negative qualities.) On an entirely practical level, it doesn’t make sense to expect that people won’t see the phenomenon and slap a word on it. The human mind has a linguistic instinct. Naming all the animals — the turduckens and tofurkeys, the Brangelinas and Bennifers — is fun. Older-woman-dating-a-younger-man doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Writing of Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, the authors ask, “Should their relationship ever be categorized as anything but ‘awesome’”? I suppose not. But people might like a way to talk about it.
“There’s a corresponding name for single males who prefer to date younger females. They’re called ‘men,’” write Hesse and McCarthy. Actually, they’re sometimes called cradle robbers and, when money is involved, sugar daddies. True, these aren’t exactly pleasant epithets, but maybe, if men were smart, they would reclaim these terms for themselves.
Ah, the many joys of Los Angeles in August! What’s more romantic than a freeway of ants running through the kitchen? What’s more exhilarating than thick clouds of brown smoke, billowing in the hills and threatening untold tracts of overpriced, overleveraged real estate below?
It’s hard not to have a kick in your step on a day like today, when it’s 103 degrees outside, the world is in flames, and even the ants are looting, looking to steal the water that the residents of Los Angeles stole from somewhere else, some lusher place where you nonetheless can’t get a spray tan with your morning doughnut.
I wonder if, so many decades ago, the robber barons of Los Angeles paused in their diligent and important work of bloodily oppressing various indigenous and imported brown peoples to gaze across this scrubby desert basin with a sense of awe at what it might one day become: an enormous maze of pavement, thirsty lawns and overvalued stucco. How proud they might be, to see that their selfless efforts to rape the land and disempower the laboring classes have paid off in acre upon acre of foreclosures, punctuated only by auto body shops and shitty Chinese restaurants! Los Angeles, glorious and vast, land of roof rats, home of the Whopper!
You don’t know Jack(ie)
Yes, I know that L.A. is a thriving metropolis filled with interesting people and good food and breathtaking vistas. But it’s also, occasionally, a stinking, smoky hellhole. To be fair, the smog is nothing like it was back in the early ’90s — except when the hills are on fire. Then the skyscrapers are obscured by dense smoke, the kids and the dogs have to stay inside, and every hour of the day looks like sunset. Sadly, though, the news lady on TV has had so much Botox that she can barely move her mouth, let alone offer up a facial expression appropriate to the spectacle of million-dollar homes engulfed in flames.
This is the ultra-crabby, dystopic perspective I bring to the finale of “Nurse Jackie,” which I cannot, in good faith, allow to pass without comment. Because like Los Angeles, which either looks green and charming or overheated, smoggy and plagued by its ill-considered, unsustainable nature, “Nurse Jackie” is alternately winning and pointless, witty and painful, spirited and wildly frustrating.
Sure, we could rave about how convincingly Edie Falco inhabits her role as a devil-may-care E.R. nurse with a drug habit and an unfortunate propensity for cheating on her perfectly wonderful husband with a nice-guy pharmacist. We could discuss Eve Best’s delicious turn as the unrepentantly self-centered Dr. O’Hara, or Anna Deavere Smith’s almost cartoonish take on unforgiving hospital bureaucrat Mrs. Akalitus.
Or, we could muse about the sociocultural ramifications of not one, not two, but three TV shows about nurses on the schedule this summer and fall, from Showtime’s “Nurse Jackie” to TNT’s “Hawthorne” to NBC’s forthcoming “Mercy,” all focused on these tireless heroines struggling to keep their patients alive and well. In the depths of the recession, the harried leisure classes of “Lipstick Jungle” and “Dirty Sexy Money” and “Privileged” have been elbowed out not by doctors or lawyers or Indian chiefs, but by common nurse ladies, fighting the good fight for the common man, armed only with the stubborn, righteous insistence that doctors are, more often than not, self-serving twats. Naturally I don’t need to tell you that this us-against-them routine gets old faster than the mumbling zombie woman on the local news, struggling to emote as her city is overcome by hellfire and damnation. And I don’t need to mention that “Nurse Jackie” should, by all rights, be the dark and somewhat jaunty antidote to the self-serious foolishness of “HawthoRNe” (oh God, that name alone!) and “Mercy.”
Ultimately, there’s only one thing you need to know about the first season of “Nurse Jackie”: When the first episode begins, it’s tough to understand why Nurse Jackie would cheat on her perfectly dreamy husband, and when the last episode ends, we still don’t get it. In other words, we spend 12 episodes watching Jackie act like an asshole without ever understanding why.
OK, fine, she’s an addict. She has a problem, and she’s in denial. She still tries, sure. She wants her family to be happy. She really loves Eddie (Paul Schulze), the pharmacist. They have great sex. So do she and her husband. Both of these guys are just swell. But we knew all of this by the end of the first episode, and we never learned a single new thing since then.
And also, how plausible is it that an exhausted nurse with a serious pill problem and two little kids at home is having wild and delicious sex with not one but two men? Not only that, but a dashing young doctor in the E.R. also decides that this frankly rather haggard, depraved-looking woman is his one true love?
Just as Los Angeles pretends to be a suitable home for several million human beings, when it is, in truth, a horrible sprawling sham packed with overpriced stucco hovels on tiny tracts of land, a gigantic human mistake that demands resources pumped and trucked and shipped in from faraway places, so, too, does “Nurse Jackie” pretend to be a comedy (or a drama?) suitable for several million viewers, when it is, in truth, a disjointed, reckless sham packed with bewitching jokes, a wicked romp that ultimately goes nowhere. At the end of the season, Jackie is the same mysterious blank slate that she was at the beginning.
And when Eddie finds out that she has a husband and kids, what happens? Nothing. Eddie gets drunk and acts weird, apparently without blowing Jackie’s cover, and Jackie is left freaking out and scarfing drugs, just like she was at the beginning.
That’s not a cliffhanger. That’s a flying leap off a cliff, landing with a Wile E. Coyote thud in the dust. We watch the dust cloud rise and then, the credits roll. Without any character development, there is no story. We feel about as confused as Eddie does when he sees that Jackie is living a double life. He never really knew Jackie at all, and neither did we.
Blowing in the wind
But while I’m feeling crabby and unforgiving, it’s probably time to conquer the worst new show of the fall season, hands down: ABC’s “Cougar Town” (premieres 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 23), a comedy that’s at once insipid, noxious, offensive, and just plain bad – hilariously bad, in fact. This is a show so utterly devoid of comedy that it’ll make you laugh out loud.
Courteney Cox plays Jules, a desperate, jittery, outspoken, pathetic middle-aged woman with a son who’s constantly embarrassed by her. Isn’t that karmic retribution for having played the sort of hopelessly stylish, effortlessly wealthy, easily embarrassed young person on “Friends” that cringes at ever becoming pathetic and middle-aged? Just as Jules publicly humiliates her son, she also publicly humiliates Monica Gellar.
But most of all, Courtney Cox should really consider firing her agent and her manager and breaking up with every single friend who allowed her to sign on to this wretchedly, hideously awful sitcom. In fact, it boggles the mind that she’s not smart enough to notice that this show is absolutely cringe-inducing and scary.
There are so many examples of creepiness here that it’s hard to know where to start. In the first minute of the show, Jules examines her body flaws in the mirror and announces that she looks “like a farm animal.” She summarizes by proclaiming, “Crap.” And we’re off to an enlightened and oh-so-amusing start!
But let’s skip the ridiculous details and get right to Cox’s best lines:
“Look at that cute guy right there. I’d like to lick his body!”
“You know how it goes, I was 19, I started thinking with my coochie-cooch and then bam, I had a kid!”
“Man, you are hot as balls!”
Yes, she did actually say “coochie-cooch.” Jules isn’t just an embarrassment to moms or to women in general, she’s an embarrassment to humanity at large.
But the best part is when Jules announces to her younger lover, “OK, I’m going to do something that I have not done in years. I told my husband that I hated it, but I don’t hate it, I love it.” You can only assume that she’s going to pull out a bag of cookies or some other misdirection. Instead, she starts unbuttoning the guy’s pants. Get it? She’s going to give him … a blow job! Teehee!
Then — you guessed it — her son and ex-husband walk in. “There’s my boy!” Jules yelps, and her husband says, “Ohhh, you said you hated that!”
Why is comedy this bad simultaneously depressing and vaguely decadent, like smoking crack with your mentally unstable cousin?
Not that I’m suggesting you should move to “Cougar Town,” but you should at least stop by for a visit, so you can marvel at the depraved goings-on along with me. After all, there’ll be plenty of mediocre new shows on TV this fall, but it might be years before a sitcom this unnervingly awful comes along again. And if there’s one thing that’s more romantic than ant freeways and billowing clouds of smoke and overpriced desert real estate, it’s got to be deeply stupid comedies about pathetic middle-aged women, the roof rats of this golden, glowing age.
Car of Shame 
I Know Where I Stand With Craig Carton, Next To A Radio 
"American Idol" Elimination Show: Big Mike Takes A Hike 
The factory jobs aren’t coming back 
Jack Donaghy fears the 99 percent 
Tim and Eric’s comedy of repulsion 
Who is Newt’s sugar daddy really helping? 
“Eastbound and Down” heads to the Redneck Riviera 
David Brooks: “I have heard of Jeremy Lin” 
Come back, “Colbert Report”! 
Anthony Shadid, the best of his generation 
Billionaire Romney donor uses threats to silence critics 
Secret papers turn up heat on global-warming deniers 
