Go On review: More crying, Less-bians.

My only objective every week for these reviews is to be punny in the titles, obviously.

I’ll get straight to the point: for the third official week, Go On is still on a bit of a rocky path. But that said, this is a very technically well-made series. Its ability to to blend comedy, heartwarmth, and running gags into one half-hour size is not a small feat. And I admire it time and time again.

But there’s still that something that makes it feel as though it’s not exactly polished around the edges. I was at a point where I was paying more attention to other things (as opposed to the episode airing on television) as I was viewing this installment. And then finally, something clicked. When Anne kissed Ryan and said she liked the human King as opposed to the cardboard one, I really began to pay attention. Because damn it, if this show can’t tug at the heartstrings! And from there, the episode was smooth sailing and felt completely cohesive. By the time Ryan went for the cry and admitted to how great it felt, I was literally exclaiming how much I love the show. It just made sense.  The truth is that Ryan is someone who would bottle his feelings up like this; Anne and Ryan’s friendship was explosive on screen (to me, anyway); and I even loved Yolanda laughing at “Yo soy lesbiana.”

The problem with that, of course, is that the moment came too late. Those moments were the final couple of minutes of the episode. And not everyone is as lenient as I am when it comes to television. (Unless Matthew Perry’s audience is that huge.) While last week’s episode only dropped .1 in the demo, this week there are several things premiering. This episode went against the premiere episode of New Girl. Do they have a crossover audience?

I don’t know. And much like that show, this series has a weird structure where Ryan (Jess) messes up a bit and then the group (the roommates) accepts him and does some sort of weird ritual like coming to his home at 1:30AM (or putting on silly hats in New Girl). The one problem with the series, for the most part, is that it seems to be perfect at humanizing its story and its characters but is insistent on making them complete caricatures at other points in the same episode. And it’s not doing it nearly as clever as something as, say, Louie does.

But that said, I appreciate its ambition in that sense. And more importantly, I like this show. I really like it. And I can’t wait for next Tuesday.

Going on…

• “I’m the talent. I’m the talent.” I laughed out loud the second time. Ha!
• There are still so many characters that we haven’t been able to learn about all of them. But I loved this look into Anne.
• “I always get the cry.”
• “Do you think I’m Rachel Maddow?”