Cougar Town: The Complete First Season

Here's your chance to bring home the hottest single mom in town! Golden Glober nominee* Courteney Cox ("Friends") stars in the hilariously sexy hit comedy COUGAR TOWN. After spending the last 17 years as a wife and mother, recently divorced Jules (Cox) has reluctantly waded back into the dating pool and quickly finds herself in over her head. Now 40-something and single, Jules is tackling real- world issues like dating, parenting and friendship. It doesn't help that her two best friends can hardly stand each other, her ex-husband is hanging around more now than he did during their marriage.and then here's that handsome, divorced neighbor she can't quite get out of her head

Though Courteney Cox followed Friends with FX's deeply cynical Dirt, she returns to her comedy roots with ABC's far sunnier Cougar Town. Created by Kevin Biegel and Bill Lawrence of Scrubs, the sitcom centers on 41-year-old Jules Cobb, a divorced real estate agent who lives in the Florida suburbs with her 18-year-old son Travis (Dan Byrd, from CW's underrated Aliens in America), who finds his excitable parents embarrassing. With her form-fitting dresses and sassy gal pals, party girl Laurie (Busy Philipps, Dawson's Creek) and bossy mom Ellie (Christa Miller, playing a variation on her Scrubs harpy), Jules is more Desperate Housewife than Friend, and even starts the show by having a fling with a young hottie, though she's just as much of a perfectionist as Monica. If Cougar Town revolves around women (and wine), the men--Cobb's lovable loser ex Bobby (Brian Van Holt), Ellie's goofball husband Andy (Ian Gomez, The Drew Carey Show), and bar owner Grayson (Ally McBeal's Josh Hopkins, the Mike to her Susan)--get plenty of face time.

The series proved a bigger hit than Dirt, but it gets off to a bumpy start with shrill acting, lines that skew more crude than clever, and an unhealthy relation to body image, like the way Jules licks chocolates before throwing them away. Fortunately, the writing improves, the actors settle down, and chemistry of the "cul-de-sac crew" gels as the year unfurls. Renewed for a second season, the first features Lisa Kudrow as a catty dermatologist, Sheryl Crow as Grayson's age-appropriate girlfriend, and scene-stealing General Hospital vet Carolyn Hennesy as Barb. Don't let the title fool you, this is one sex comedy that prizes community building over bed hopping. As Lawrence states in the featurette, "No one's ever said the word cougar on Cougar Town." --Kathleen C. Fennessy