Cougar Town

Washington PostHank Stuever

This is Cox's best gig since the end of "Friends" and she clearly knows it, attacking the material at full tooth-and-nail.

USA TodayRobert Bianco

For all the sex jokes (most of which are amusing), this is at heart a family comedy, with Cox completely winning as a mom trying to make herself happy without making her son miserable. Odds are that other moms can relate.

Entertainment WeeklyKen Tucker

Cougar Town is so brashly vulgar, it's endearing.

San Francisco ChronicleTim Goodman

Despite the title, Cougar Town seems more female centric, which is key to ABC's audience, and it's a little more formulaic than "Modern Family," but both are welcome new sitcoms.

Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob Owen

As a single fortysomething mom, star Courteney Cox is in full frantic mode, yelling at and pushing everyone in sight, which makes for an entertaining (if not exhausting) half-hour comedy.

TV GuideMatt Roush

The show’s a little frantic and more than a little crude, but the jokes keep coming and many of them score in this depiction of Courteney Cox as a newly divorced and woefully insecure mom of a teenager.

Slant MagazineKatherine Stevens

Toning down Jules's freakouts, [and] we have the makings of a truly enjoyable sitcom.

The New York TimesAlessandra Stanley

The dialogue, timing and jokes have the madcap pace and anarchic spirit of “Scrubs,” and it takes a while for Ms. Cox to recalibrate her Monica persona from “Friends.”

Newark Star-LedgerAlan Sepinwall

Cougar Town, on the other hand, is still finding itself, but it’s already much better than the title would suggest.

Los Angeles TimesMary McNamara

Crude stuff for a family newspaper, but despite the warm-and-fuzzy-celebrity cred that star Courteney Cox brings to it, some funny lines and good acting all around, Cougar Town is a crude show, built on jokes about oral sex and droopy breasts, a show in which words like "coochie" are used with regrettable abandon.

Chicago Sun-TimesPaige Wiser

This is a story of desperation, not liberation. Cox is too good for this.

Chicago TribuneMaureen Ryan

The show demonstrates that none of Cox's ample comic skills have diminished; she still has impeccable timing. But she can be such a brittle presence that she needs to be surrounded by more sympathetic characters, not by friends who are, if anything, more raunchy and manic.

Boston GlobeJoanna Weiss

Where “Scrubs’’ managed to plumb some truth about medicine and camaraderie Cougar Town is less funny, and sometimes kind of creepy.

VarietyBrian Lowry

Serving as producer and star, Cox's cache might help get the program sampled, but if the pilot is indicative of the show's direction, it's unlikely many will yearn to linger for long in Cougar Town's untidy litter box.

Hollywood ReporterRandee Dawn

Cougar is a mess of a place no one would want to visit, even for a half-hour.

Wall Street JournalNancy DeWolf Smith

Jules will search for self-esteem in frequent sex and the proof that she is still "hot." Such a quest could be made funny, but here it mostly isn't. Ms. Cox is struggling with some ugly material and often seems desperate.

NewsdayVerne Gay

As the woebegone divorcee with an antic streak and a full-blown need to get down, Cox is not believable.

New York Daily NewsDavid Hinckley

It's a waste of Cox's comic talents to have her spend the whole show trapped in lines like, "We had sex three times without you needing a nap or a pill or anything."

Philadelphia Daily NewsEllen Gray

Some are so repellent you might actually prefer to spend time with your own. Yes, I'm talking about you, Cougar Town.

Philadelphia InquirerJonathan Storm

Cougar Town, a title that the capable executive producer, Bill Lawrence, acknowledges might turn some people off. He needn't worry. The show itself has more than enough power to do that.

Miami HeraldGlenn Garvin

Cougar Town (which doesn't debut until Wednesday, but I wanted to give you time to disconnect your TV set) is downright unwatchable, an agonizingly unfunny gutter-ball that will almost certainly be the first of the new season's shows to be canceled.