Cougar Town Deserves Scorn, Not Yuks

Forget new shows: You're missing out on these old shows

(NEWSER) - This fall, instead of trying to figure out what NBC's sure-to-be-mystifying The Event is actually about, why not pick up a great show that's already on the air? Kevin Fallon gives his 12 picks in The Atlantic :

• Cougar Town: Don't count Fallon among the many Cougar Town haters . He calls the Courteney Cox show one of "television's strongest ensemble comedies," a "sharply written sitcom about a quirky group of friends and neighbors."
• In Treatment: Don't be scared by its unusual format (often, "the screen is shared by just two actors for an entire episode"): Gabriel Byrne 's show about therapy is "one of the finest acting showcases in television."

Star turns from Romano, Braugher, Bakula buoy new TNT dramedy

(NEWSER) - The male midlife crisis is hardly a groundbreaking subject, but Men of a Certain Age doesn’t need novelty to augment the poignant and hilarious truth it deals in. The new TNT series “proves a powerful yet mercifully amusing experience—bittersweet, poignant, and wise," Tom Shales writes. "It's not just a series, but something of a tonic.” And the performances by its leads are fantastic. More»

NBC sitcom is refreshed in second season, but lacks viewers

(NEWSER) - Television critics far and wide, including Jonah Weiner, are coaxing viewers to tune in to Parks and Recreation, the underdog of NBC’s Thursday night comedy block. It “has gone from an erratically funny nonevent to astonishingly good,” Weiner writes in Slate , and if you watched during the “dispiritingly traditional” first season, it’s time to give the show another try—because if “NBC pulls the plug, it will be a familiar bummer: a great show that died young.” More»

Former fan would prefer an escape over this tedious show

(NEWSER) - Thirtysomething is finally on DVD, much to the excitement of baby boomers everywhere—and Seth Stevenson, who, inexplicably, loved the show as a 14-year-old boy. “I wondered: Would I find it even more compelling now that I’d actually reached my 30s?” he writes for Slate. But, though the performances are top-notch and the “late-‘80s fashions are exquisite,” Stevenson ultimately found the “nano-level dissection of the domestic lives of hypereducated white urbanites” tedious. More»

Jennifer Lopez buys Casper Smart a truck, and more

(NEWSER) - While your friends are all giving you $20 gift cards on your birthday, celebrities are giving each other $250,000 cars and entire vineyards. Celebuzz rounds up 18 of the most insane celebrity gifts ever given:

• Jennifer Lopez: J.Lo is the latest, this weekend giving her 25-year-old new boyfriend, backup dancer Casper Smart, a customized white Dodge Ram truck.
• Justin Bieber: He's snagged an electric car that costs more than $100,000 from his manager, a $200,000 Lamborghini Spyder from Diddy, and a Range Rover from Usher. And he can't really drive that well .
• Katy Perry: Bought then-hubby Russell Brand a trip to space for $200,000.