September 24, 2009
"The Modern Family" and "Cougar Town" Premieres
CBS Gets Edgy
Last night I decided to give "Cougar Town" and "The Modern Family" a shot. What can I say, I just wasn't in a "Glee" kind of place.
"Modern Family" was better than I expected. At first sight, it just seemed like the premise was trying too hard to be edgy. And aside from the gay men with a baby, the other "crazy" couples are not very exciting -- you know, married guy with wandering eye (and let me guess, a shrewish wife?), older man with younger woman, blah blah blah.
But since the older man is played by Ed O'Neill (of Al Bundy fame), and since Sofia Vergara plays his fiery Latina wife at full throttle, it's pretty damned funny. The rest of the cast is good, too, but those two really made the first episode for me.
Ignore the lame fat joke...
"Cougar Town" was, in my humble opinion, just as good or even better. It was definitely edgier. I liked that the show's characters were on the fence about cougar-hood, reflecting the shows's generally ironic aesthetic. Importantly, that distance kept it from becoming either a cheesy family sitcom or a wannabe SATC.
The women got to make a lot of sex jokes, however, which I really enjoyed. Playing newly-divorced real estate agent Jules, Courtney Cox-Arquette shows off some pretty impressive comic chops. She's accompanied by veteran comedienne Christa Miller ("Scrubs", "The Drew Carey Show") and (my personal favorite) Busy Phillips, a fine, funny actress whom I expect to see a lot more of. Miller plays Jules' married friend Ellie, while Phillips plays her younger single friend Laurie. The two friends fight for Jules' attention, nicely incorporating some married/single tension a la Bridget Jones.
I was pleasantly surprised that both shows did manage to be edgy, and funny. I'd watch both again -- if they don't cancel "Cougar Town" right away.
Here's the part where I bitch (yes, there's always going to be something, that's actually how high standards work): on Metacritic I find that "The Modern Family" gets a whopping 78 -- that's "universal acclaim" -- while "Cougar Town" gets a meager 49.
What the hell is this? That's a rhetorical question, I know what's going on. Women's genres get universally lower scores, that's just a given. But I'm also guessing that "The Modern Family", with its only slightly unorthodox nuclear family units (and lots of comforting kids thrown in) is not as scary as family unit comprised of a single woman on the prowl -- with a kid, oh no!
And of course we get the same phenomenon we had with The Ugly Truth, where many of the critics mysteriously start using judgemental terms like "vulgar". I'm sorry, but why is it OK to have tired sex jokes galore on "Two and Half Men" (which really isn't that funny), but the minute chicks start getting raunchy we're prim little Puritan viewers? Oh, that's right, men have needs and women don't. Boo to that BS. Sure makes me glad that Lois Griffin returns to the small screen this week.
