If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you undoubtedly know I could not wait for the show Cougar Town to return to ABC last night. The long wait had finally ended.
I threw myself headlong into the social media promotion headed by the show’s co-creator (and my non-sexual man crush) Bill Lawrence. I’m sure this bothered some of my followers, but I don’t really care. You do crazy things for things which inspire you.
I take my television comedies very seriously. I consider the medium an art form which deserves as much respect and consideration as any other form of entertainment even if the stakes rise and fall on poop jokes occasionally.
Cougar Town provides exactly what I look for in a sitcom – a specific world with relate-able characters who make me care about their actions whether they are playing in front of a homemade green screen or making important life decisions. Lawrence and his co-creator Kevin Biegel have created a world I want to visit each week.
The same goes for the other network comedies I watch regularly – New Girl, Raising Hope, The Middle, Modern Family, Happy Endings, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, Community (pour one out for the homies of Greendale who are currently on the shelf) and The Office. But the way the network treated Cougar Town combined with the way the creators and cast interact with the show’s fans gave it a special place in my heart.
I left out two shows – How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory. While I love both of them, they are way too sitcom-y and either don’t hit an emotional note (Big Bang) or cheapen the emotion by using deception to screw around with the viewer (HIMYM). I continue to watch them, even in reruns, but don’t get the same feeling I get with a show like Cougar Town.
The show has struggled with misconceptions about the premise, but continued to chug along because of die-hard fans. People like me get that way because Lawrence makes you feel like part of the action whether it’s through goofy videos pitting the writers against the actors or by creating a toll-free phone line where you can talk to the actors (I chatted briefly with Brian Van Holt and Ian Gomez).
So when a group of people create a world which entertains people, then invites those people to take part in the world, you get folks who continually pester their friends to give the show a chance. My only regret in all this is that I could not attend one of the viewing parties thrown by Lawrence – he actually paid for an open bar in somewhere close to a dozen locations so fans could get a peek at a few episodes before last night’s premiere. I had tickets to the one in Philly, but had too many conflicts to make the trip.
Lawrence has said all this guerrilla promotion – which ABC had nothing to do with – will eventually turn into something all shows have to do as network affiliation and Nielsen ratings play a smaller role in the industry. I don’t know if we can all predict that, but I think we can all get behind outreach by television shows to the fans who enjoy them.