Go On review: Comfort food

I apologize, I apologize. This review is obviously so incredibly late, but I just finished watching the latest episode of NBC’s Go On and found myself absolutely loving it, as opposed to all the previous episodes, which never went higher than a B grade for me. Then I went online to see how everyone else loved it as well (I figured I just wouldn’t write a review since it was crazy late, otherwise I wouldn’t read a review first) and was shocked.

Apparently, everyone hated this episode. It didn’t accurately portray what a support group is like. I knew right then and there that I had to write my love letter for this installment and see if either I’m just insane (sign me up for the support group) or if there was at least one other person who agrees with me!

Now of course, this show has weird misconceptions of what a therapy group should be like, and this episode was no exception. If my support group leader had shared intimate details of me, and others in the group, with her boyfriend, even if he’s her boyfriend of three years, then I would be downright furious. And I’d most likely never walk into that room ever again. That’s all very fine and dandy for the real world, but this show has been inching ever so close to making this show about a group of eclectic people who just help each other through things. In a way, that’s what the past couple of episodes have all been about.

Last week, we learned about Laren’s professional life and how that information coalesced with the support group. This week, it was her personal life. And both episodes continued to confirm that perhaps Lauren isn’t qualified to be running a support group — actually, the show is downright telling you this, ever since the first episode. Lauren has always been a closed book, never letting the group know anything about her. And really that’s the way it should be so that the group doesn’t stop seeing her as a person in authority. That said, we’ve seen the group trying to be her friend more and more, and that’s not truly in line with any therapeutic guideline, I’m sure of it. So the show isn’t going there. What these couple of installments do is help tear down the barrier between Lauren and the group, so that she may just enter the fold and be one of the cast.

We can have a show about a woman who helps people with their issues or we can have a show about a group of awesome people. I choose the latter, quite honestly.

With that said, I’ve also never laughed more at the show than this episode. The beat of this episode had an amazing flow and the jokes continued coming one after another. This was also the first episode that the group really had a chemistry, and you can totally see where their characters are being defined in a way that just having them in a room together talking (the entire premise of the show) is taking its own form. What I mean by that is, given a respective situation, you can just plop these people in and create comedy from them just being them. In other words, the ideal situation for any sitcom. For example, the group finding Lauren out on a date. “This is my third time at a restaurant.” “I’m picturing you in sexual situations.” And so on.

It also helps that they’re giving certain members of the group their own storyline to help them be known, basically. Some of their names are completely lost on me. This week, Danny gets that treatment…and what we find is that he may actually be insane; I don’t actually agree with Ryan letting him live in his fantasy world, so I hope that gets brought up sooner rather than later, because it’s really just keeping him in a level of stasis. As opposed to the group making Ryan binge eat, which actually did allow him to give it up and just stop for the betterment of his health.

But damn it, I loved the end where Ryan and Danny enter Harborville! Because this show is great at those heartwarming moments, just like Ryan’s story of how he first knew he was in love with his wife. Come on, show! Stop being this great.

Seriously, I didn’t know I’d like this show as much as I do, but this episode really hit a stride in knowing exactly what it wants to be. And I really like that — whatever it is.