Go On: “Fast Breakup” (Episode 1.21)
Photo courtesy of Justin Lubin, NBCIt’s fan night at KBAL, and Ryan is surrounded by a bunch of sports-loving dudes, his therapy friends and a giant basketball mascot. It’s nothing short of a recipe for success and exactly what the freshman comedy needed on its first Thursday-night outing.
The result of fan night is a drunk call Ryan receives from Lauren—only it’s not from Lauren, it’s from his adorable assistant Carrie, who has been absent for a few episodes now. He initially feels completely uncomfortable and finds solace in hiding in the mascot costume to avoid having any sort adult conversation with his assistant.
Meanwhile, it turns out Lauren is having problems of her own. She’s been engaged to Wyatt—a plot that was easily forgettable—and now she realizes she doesn’t want to marry him. It’s a terrific way out of locking down a character with a relationship that never worked anyway. But it doesn’t come easy. In fact, it’s up to Ryan to confront Wyatt and Lauren to talk to Carrie. However, Ryan finds Wyatt difficult to break up with, and Lauren still has to go to her bachelorette party because she can’t even tell the girls the truth.
There, Anne gets high on brownies, Mr. K surprisingly isn’t creepy and Fausta supplies “Deck Inspector” tees. When Ryan shows up, he reveals he not only didn’t break up with Wyatt, he convinced him to push the wedding up. On the other hand, it turns out Lauren successfully repelled Carrie away from Ryan, much to his dismay. That’s when Wyatt shows up and Lauren is finally able to break up with him.
This leads to Ryan telling Carrie that he does have a crush on her, but it’s complicated because she is his assistant. She promptly stands, kisses him, quits and tells him the ball is in his court. Now I love this pairing, and even though there have been some moments between the two, this feels like it came on too quickly. I’m not sure how this will all unfold. I’d like it to drag on a little because the best part of any sitcom relationship is the build-up, and Go On skipped that completely.
It may just be possible the writers are thinking of a way to wrap up neatly now that there is only one episode left in the season and the future of the show is still up in the air. Last week provided strong ratings thanks to Courteney Cox’s appearance, and hopefully that will continue now that the comedy is a lead-in to the highly anticipated Hannibal. I really do think that if Go On returns for a second season that there would be some minor tweaks and the show would really hit its stride. We just have to let it get there first.