'Cougar Town' Creators Announce Plans to Crash TCA

Without a launch date or promotional push by ABC, Bill Lawrence and Kevin Biegel have planned their own panel during the winter press tour.

1:24 PM PST 1/4/2012 by Lacey Rose

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Bill Lawrence on stage at TCA in Winter 2010

With Cougar Town mysteriously absent from both ABC's primetime and Television Critics Association schedule, co-creator Bill Lawrence is taking matters into his own hands.

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Lawrence and Town's co-creator Kevin Biegel have opted to stage their own TCA panel at the Pasadena hotel that plays host to the winter press tour, according to an invitation the pair sent to members of the media this week.

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"TCA... that's when the networks trot out the shows their most excited about, both new and old ones," a famously outspoken Lawrence explains in a YouTube invite, with his Twitter handle @VDoozer displayed on the bottom half of the screen.

"Like ours?" asks Biegel, standing beside him with his own @KevinBiegel handle dangling below.

"No, not ours," responds Lawrence, before adding: "We weren't technically invited as a show, but we're going to go ahead and crash TCAs."

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Meantime, the aforementioned network will be hosting a Wednesday comedy showrunners panel on Jan. 10, which is set to include Lawrence's former schedule mates: The Middle's Eileen Heisler and DeAnn Heline, Suburgatory's Emily Kapnek, Modern Family's Steve Levitan and Happy Ending's David Caspe and Jonathan Groff. Adding salt to the wound, Lawrence appeared on this very panel with Levitan and the women of The Middle in January 2010.

For its part, Lawrence's panel, which he labels "more of a wine drinking event" with the cast, comes mere weeks after the pair plotted its latest non-ABC sponsored promotional blitz that has the cast and crew criss-crossing the country hosting fan events for the third season sitcom without an airdate.