This week on Cougar Town, the subject was stupidity and how the various members of the Cul De Sac Crew cope with it: Jules spazzes, Ellie and Greyson get frustrated, Laurie gets sneaky, and Bobby, well, Bobby’s just an expert at being dumb. The big lesson though: Everyone is stupid sometimes, it’s how you cope that matters.
This week, Bobby is finally playing in a big golf tournament, and Andy goes with him as his caddy. Despite having spent weeks and weeks training in the pool, with a golf bag over his head, Andy is a horrible chaperone — he just wants to do the fun things Bobby wants to do, like zip him into a large duffel bag. Travis come to meet them to bring Bobby his lucky visor and takes over responsibility. Unfortunately, neither Andy — who has come down with the worst/grossest case of swimmer’s ear eve; ugh, the stuff that came out of his ear reminded us of the Neti Pot — nor Travis can keep Bobby from hitting his opponent’s ball during the match, a move that gets Bobby a penalty and leads to him totally blowing the tournament. He gets dubbed Bobby “Wrongballs” Cobb by the sportscaster and starts to trend on Twitter.
Meanwhile, Jules is shame spiraling. Upon finding out that all of her friends already do charity work, she joins Laurie’s charity to keep and open libraries in schools. (Laurie is only in the charity because she likes pretending “reading” got her out of trouble. As if.) Even though she’s only been in the charity for twenty minutes, Jules takes credit for a new library, and after explaining about her rough younger life to a roomful of little girls (“My best friend Jojo got shot in the face”), she leads the Pledge of Allegiance. Unfortunately, Jules thinks the words are ” … And to the republic for Richard Stans.” Cue humiliation. Rightly convinced that everyone is talking about her screw-up while watching Bobby golfing on TV, Jules wishes God would just take the spotlight off of her: That’s when Bobby hits the wrong ball.
Jules feels terrible, and her and Travis both want to apologize to Bobby — Jules for making him fail by wishing it (so, for a crazy reason), and Travis for just not taking enough care. Bobby hears their apologies and then shows Jules a thing or to about how to do something stupid gracefully: You just own it. He walks through town, wearing a Bobby “Wrongballs” Cobb T-shirt and saying hello to everyone. He explains now his golf lessons are sold out, and he’s the face of a meatball sandwich. “You can’t hear people laughing at you if you’re laughing louder,” he says, which is sort of sad but not wrong. Jules goes back to the class to do the Allegiance right — only to mess it up again (“invisible” for “indivisible”).
In C-story, Greyson has installed a trivia game at his bar. After he and Ellie dispatch Travis, Laurie challenges them to a rematch. Shockingly, she wipes the floor with them — a feat that becomes less shocking when it’s revealed Travis has been sending her the answers the whole time. In short, the show’s resident dumdums, Laurie and Bobby, prove a lot less dumb than the supposed smartypants. Life lessons, ya’ll.
And now, to the vocabulary:
Thelarmy: short for The Laurie’s Army; Laurie’s Twitter handle
Rabbity woodchuck: something that is very nervous (though it’s possible this is not exactly what Bobby Cobb said; he was mumbling)
Twibes: positive vibes that are tweeted
TGIGreysons: disparaging term for Greyson’s bar
A jelly: dumb person; usage: Ellie suspects someone is “secretly a jelly.”
The Shush Clap: how to quiet a room of children, by shushing and clapping simultaneously
Confidence Dance: has previously appeared, but a dance to inspire confidence in the dancer
Wrongballs: s nickname for Bobby Cobb, occasionally said as “bongwalls”
NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also sometimes mistaken for “the guy who lives in OJ’s guest house”
Richard Stans: the name of a man who sounds like he could have written the Pledge of Allegiance
Front part: cover of a book
