Cougar Town ‘Blue Sunday’ review: Happy wine, happy life

Shortly put, there’s no possible way to express the amount of gratitude all of us Cougar Town fans feel for having TBS save our favorite wine-soaked show. That said, and I think it’s something that’s quite obvious, the job of the season four premiere was to be open enough to new viewers. TBS wonderfully spent a lot of time and effort in showcasing to viewers, hopefully new alike, that Cougar Town isn’t a show about cougars in any which way. (Sending good vibes that it worked, seriously.) Of course, I wasn’t expecting an entire re-introduction to everyone. On many levels, tonight’s outing “Blue Sunday,” was a good way for new viewers to understand the Cougar Town universe without everything feeling like one. Jules is the center and glue of the Cul-de-sac crew? Check. They drink a lot of wine? Check. There are oftentimes popular idiom changes? Check, check, check! On the other hand, the A plot of tonight’s episode, while feeling like a complete Cougar Town storyline, felt more sitcom-y than this series likes to handle things.

Season three was a great season for Cougar Town in that the show finally understood what it wanted to be. And I think this episode ends on a great, heartwarming note as it usually can tee up pretty well for some time now. I just felt cheated that Grayson would actually have to apologize about something as ridiculous as Jules’ dreams rather than Jules not being completely honest about her feelings, which is how things probably would have worked themselves out in season three. Because for as ridiculous as Jules can be at times, those are just the manifestations of her own psyche and is usually part of the comedic element before the big resolution of these episodes. Eventually, she and the rest of the group realizes what is underlying those offbeat moments and that’s what is resolved.

Basically, I just don’t want a new viewer to watch this and go, “Is this really the show where the husband apologized for her dream?” even if I know that part of the storyline is about Grayson knowing when Jules can’t always be upfront about her issues. Maybe I’m over-thinking this.

What worked however is tonight’s plot with Travis giving advice to Bobby about not running away from your problems (much like Jules was doing), which I think is a homerun in traditional Cougar Town storytelling. Of course, you have the established adults acting as children that we’ve come to expect from this show, with sage advice from Travis. And while there wasn’t exactly a resolution here, either, where I think this part of the episode excelled where the other plot didn’t is that it uses these gimmicks to unearth exactly what is going through Travis’ mind one week after he professed his feelings. Once Travis literally runs away from his problems this week, it’s one of those Cougar Town aha moments that sort of didn’t happen with Jules and Grayson. Somehow the ambivalent grey area conclusion of Travis and Ellie in this storyline becomes more compelling because of that.

It sort of reminds me of the ending of “Let Yourself Go” where Ellie sort of matter-of-factly states that you just never know what your kids are up to when they’re not around. That gut-wrenching uncertainty is something that I think Cougar Town does quite well.

How can 40-year-old alcoholics make us feel this way?

Other sips:

• “Are you alcoholics? Are you attending AA now?” “Those are two different questions.”
• Wine Guy sort of reminded me of the Friends pilot.
• Maybe I haven’t watched all episodes of this show. What does Andy actually do… you know, for a living?
• Also, was it just me or was this episode filmed more… film-like? I think there’s some upped up production for TBS. It’s very colorful and polished.