One of the rarely appreciated upsides of television as a form is the ability to take something that’s not working and almost completely re-invent it. The opportunity to build something over a long period of time, to step back from a finished episode and understand what could be improved and then actually have the chance to improve it in the next episode – this is something that television can do, and most other forms of fiction cannot. I say “rarely appreciated,” but of course this kind of radical mid-stream change is also rarely occurring. If things are really going awry, shows tend to get cancelled before they have a chance to really change anything. Sometimes the changes do take place, but the moment when the show could gain momentum has already passed. Dollhouse is a great example of this phenomenon: by the time the show shifted away from its creepy, morally ambiguous standalone format, its target audience was long gone.

But sometimes a show can actually figure out how to change while there’s still a chance for that change to do some good, and the best place to see this right now is on a show called Cougar Town (god help me). In the first several episodes, Cougar Town is exactly what you’d think it would be – Courteney Cox plays a newly divorced forty-something in search of hot young men. I feel unrepentant for not giving Cougar Town even a first glance when it premiered last fall, and even for scoffing whenever its name would show up in ratings or reviews. The name is, after all, Cougar Town, and everything about the concept and the proposed execution turned me off. I even overlooked Cougar Town’s possibly promising creator Bill Lawrence, formerly of Scrubs, because the title alone gave me the heebie-jeebies. A few days ago, though, I happened across Alan Sepinwall’s interview with Lawrence, where they talk about the changes that have happened over the course of the show’s first season.

This is an image from the pilot of Courteney Cox flashing a junior highschooler. Oh I wish I were kidding.

By all measures, those changes have been immense. Far from focusing on Cox’s attempts to wrangle a young lover, Cougar Town has become an ensemble sitcom about a bunch of wacky neighbors and their silly, normal lives. It has a strong undercurrent of the same bizarre humor that fueled Scrubs for so long, but the tendency to veer off into surrealism remains well in check. It’s no Modern Family or Community, but there’s no doubt that it’s funny. The biggest signal that what’s on now is a completely different show than what came before? They’re actually thinking about changing the name.

So now that the show has moved so far from the original idea, what are you going to do about the title?

I’d like to (change it), and the studio has been talking about it for three reasons: One, partly as a result of common sense and partly from their research, they find too many instances of testing of people saying they would never watch a show called “Cougar Town” – “I don’t want to see some show about a 40-year-old woman nailing younger guys” – and then they screen an episode, and people go, “Oh, I would watch this show.”

There were probably several impetuses behind the changes that have occurred over this season, but my favorite explanation is one that Bill Lawrence gives in answer to a question about the way television comedy has been developing.

I think it’s always very weird when television comedy chases the idea when it should be chasing execution. I read some logline for “a really conservative Ann Coulter-like talk show host is really messed up in her personal life.” Why can’t it just be there’s a really cool, interesting female character? I think feature films sell on the idea, and I think TV works based almost entirely on execution. I don’t think anybody is going, “Wow, that show is executed poorly, but the idea is so cool I just have to keep watching.”

This is a good description of problems with comedy, but I think it’s a strong explanation for a lot of network television right now. The difference between cool idea and strong execution is exactly what has made FlashForward such a terrible show, and the same can be said for the reason shows like The Good Wife are actually quite enjoyable. It started with a snazzy idea – the protagonist is the wife of a politician coping with scandal – but the reason it’s still entertaining is that that idea quickly became relegated to the bigger, more important work of putting together an effective show, week after week.

I seriously hope that Cougar Town manages to change its name. Not only would the name change signal this shift from concept-driven to execution-focused television, it would be moving away from a concept that wasn’t even good to begin with. Because right now, however good the show may have managed to become, it’s still called Cougar Town.