Derek Hartley: TV Viewer

My Cougar Town Conundrum

So, this is how it goes: I love Cougar Town. And I have been with the cul-de-sac crew since episode one. Other people may not have enjoyed the long gone cougar side of things, but I worship at the altar of Barb (the divine Carolyn Hennesy) and really miss seeing Nick Zano shirtless. But most of all, I am completely in the tank for the core characters of the show.

Because I have the great good fortune to host a radio show on SiriusXM, we had nearly the entire cast of the show (sans Courteney Cox) join us a few months ago as the latest season of Cougar Town kicked off on ABC. Everyone was great, no one disappointed. Last year, Christa Miller sent me my own personal penny can and I made sure that everyone else signed it while they were there. I am a sad nerdy fan like that.

We conducted the interviews over three days and my co-host Romaine and I are not at all shy about pitching ourselves to be extras on the shows we love. Romaine loves to make and decorate cakes so some kind of rivalry with Busy’s character Laurie seemed in order and Christa was very polite about the notion of Ellie having a gay brother. Busy Philipps was our last interview of the bunch and while she was there I told her on-air my ideas for an episode. She liked the A story idea until she heard the punch line (you’ll see why). And after all the interviews were over and aired, I settled in to watch the latest season of Cougar Town.

Well the ideas I had kept running through my head and since lately I have been writing TV scripts as a procrastination hobby whenever I am stuck working on my latest book, I decided to throw together my ideas into an episode of Cougar Town. And here it is. I even saw a bit of trivia that all of the show titles are Tom Petty song titles, so I found one of those that fit: “Inside Out”

Now, I thought about sending it directly to Christa Miller but that is VERY tacky. The absolute tackiest thing you can do in Hollywood. First of all, sending it over in the first place suggests you know how to write their show better than they do. That’s rude. Second, if your script sucks, it implies you think their show is just as bad as the horrible thing you just wrote. Finally, what would be the point? They aren’t going to produce a show emailed to the star of the show because then every nut with a typewriter would be tossing scripts left and right in the hopes of similarly catching fire. It is a lose-lose-lose scenario anyway you slice it. 

So this was my problem. I like Cougar Town and I like my Cougar Town script but there really isn’t anything to do with it. Then it hit me. I can share it with you, our Derek and Romaine show listeners. I already told my ideas on the air weeks ago so they already exist out in the public realm. It will never be produced anyway. And if you like it, it will whet your appetite for the show’s return next year to TBS. And if you hate it, well at least you aren’t poor Christa Miller forced to see her character mangled by an unprofessional hack.

And maybe it will spawn a sea of fan fiction episodes of Cougar Town on the web that will generate even more interest in this little gem of a show. But mostly I hope you will discover Cougar Town for yourself so they have big ratings next year as they move to TBS and then they can stick around for at least two more seasons. Or until Barb marries Josh in a nudist colony. Whichever comes first.

So sit back, pour yourself a bottle of wine, and check out my take on Cougar Town. I hope you like it.