Cougar Town 2.06 “You Don’t Know How It Feels” Review

Halloween episodes, like any episode built around a specific holiday can be a crutch. Halloween is particularly tricky for comedies because so much humor can derive from putting the characters in idiosyncratic costumes and basically say, ‘Hey, look, it’s funny!’While that stuff is often funny, it’s always nice to have more.

Interestingly, Cougar Town is more successful with the poignant, emotional moments than the broad comedy gags in its Halloween episode, “You Don’t Know How It Feels.” Of course, the broad comedy gags still work pretty damn well, though.

I haven’t seen every episode of the series, but this is absolutely my favorite one thus far. The costume gags are hilarious without being too important to the episode itself and there is the usual Cougar Town character-based humor. However makes this effort so successful is that it’s absolutely willing to tell a heartfelt and realistic story about Jules and father Chick (the always-awesome Ken Jenkins) without it seemingly too suffocating to the rest of the episode.

One thing that’s been interesting about the first batch of Cougar Town episodes is that it’s quietly lacked any direction. Most of the episodes have involved the crew just sitting around, drinking wine and playing games, which is great, but at some point, there needs to some sort of development. I think. Sorry, I let my love of Penny Can distract me from my critical faculties.

Anyway, most episodes this season have been direction-less in terms of the macro level, but at the same time, jam-packed with jokes. And although there have been a few attempts at some character development based on stories that came before the recalibration, none of those beats have been overwhelmingly weighty or effective. However, ‘How It Feels,’while still not directing the series towards a specific point, proves that the series is at least interested in bringing in some different kind of stories and characters that don’t exclusively involve drinking and game-playing.

The story here between Jules and Chick is explored wonderfully, without being melodramatic. Jules doesn’t like having her father around not because he’s a bad father – because he’s a riot to be around – but because he cannot really relate to her on an emotional level since Jules’mother died. And even when she pushes him to open up, he can’t really do it, so she kicks him out.

Then we know that the goofy-ass idiot in the bear costume bothering Jules at the bar is her father, but somehow, the episode makes it charming anyway, particularly by using the bear head as a way to cover up the crying in the final scene between the two of them. Again, Jules’mini-reunion with her father at the end of the episode doesn’t necessarily change Cougar Town‘˜s direction for this season, but it suggests possibilities, something previous episodes lacked. Perhaps Chick continues to recur, or perhaps the change in the relationship with her father allows Jules to treat Travis in a different way. There is now proof that the season is at least interested in doing something, even if we’re not sure what it is yet.

This episode also succeeds because it’s a little less cluttered than the last few efforts. The Jules-Chick thread is centralized to the whole episode, and so it creates a few natural, small extensions from it – like Chick and Grayson playing music together – but it’s dominant enough that the other characters get to sit around and be hilarious, particularly with their costumes. Sometimes, that kind of approach doesn’t always fit, but when the series needed to slow it down and find some footing, it’s a smart approach and one that makes me more optimistic for Cougar Town‘˜s season-long arcs.