TVSquad

(S01E02) I'll say this much about the second episode of Cougar Town: It didn't make me laugh as much as the first did. But I feel a whole lot better about the show's future after seeing it.

Sometimes that happens, and it happens a lot with Bill Lawrence-led shows. Sometimes it's not wall-to-wall laughs, but the story is satisfying enough that you don't care. In this episode, we see some more humanity behind Jules and her quest to finally have a life even though she's in her forties... and we see the consequences of trying to pursue a life in your forties. We also got a little more out of Ellie than just the bitter wife we saw in the pilot. We also see the beginnings of a weird flirtation between Jules and Grayson that most people figured would happen from the first three minutes of the pilot.

For this show to work at all, we need to believe that Jules, a woman who has the capacity to rope in pretty much any young'un she wants, is toeing that fine line between living a life and being completely pathetic. We know what pathetic looks like; it's in the scary shape of fellow real estate agent Barb, who does yoga so she can twist herself into various sexual positions without pulling anything.

So far, we're seeing Jules balancing on that line. She has her all night boozing session with Laurie, but has to stay in bed the next day. She dates a youngster, but has instituted the "ten date rule" before he gets to touch her, complete with arming noises as he blocks her naughty parts from his prying fingers.

But this weird friendship with Grayson, who seems to be grudgingly humoring her mid-life crisis while he has his, doesn't make a ton of sense just yet. He makes like he doesn't want to be "paper buddies," makes fun of her as she limps around the bar in his restaurant, sees through Jules' and Ellie's ploy of sending Andy over with pizza and beer, and happily makes fun of Jules' think-of-every-contingency purse named Bessie.

But he's out there at the end of the episode to talk to Jules as she gets the paper, and you can just tell that the two of them will be in bed together by the end of the first season. It's the only reason why he's there; to be the forty-something person in Jules' life that she finds a relationship with. Though I could be wrong.

At least we figured out why Ellie was there in the first place; Jules needs her. And the fact that Ellie was hurt by her friend's need to sow her wild oats makes sense to a middle-aged fart like me. The married people hate think the single people are sad, and the single people think the married ones are boring. The speech Jules shouts between windows has become sort of a Lawrence signature, hasn't it? It sums up the conflict of the episode, and carries it to its inevitable conclusion. And this speech worked as well as any of the ones J.D. or Dr. Cox delivered on Scrubs. Courteney Cox did a nice job with it.

More fun stuff:

• The post-blackout, phone-camera-snapshot-reminder montage worked well... when it was used during the final credits of The Hangover. Seriously, though, it was funny even though it was a direct take-off on that scene. Lawrence even got in there, playing one of the cops Jules and Laurie hung out with that night.
• At least the montage made hearing Beyonce's "Single Ladies" for the umpteenth time this fall a little more palatable.
• Still not sure what the role of Bobby is, other than being a buffoon. Travis seems to be a smart kid -- he studies advanced calculus at five in the morning -- at it seems like he got all of it from Jules. However, it seems like he gets along OK with his dad, as we saw when they teamed up to attack a bouncer that was mean to Jules during her night of debauchery.
• "Monster!"
• The biggest laughs, for some reason, was Andy's exclamations every time he drank something. "Holy crap, that's good coffee!" Not sure why that recurring joke got to me, but Ian Gomez really sold it.

[Watch clips and free episodes of Cougar Town at SlashControl.]