Go On: "Go Deep" (Episode 1.17)

It’s been two weeks since Go On aired a new episode, and maybe the show should have skipped another week. It’s not that it was bad, necessarily; it was just adequate at best.

“Go Deep” tried to do something meaningful, but it missed on all accounts. It focused on Ryan pretending to be a deep person to impress Simone, Steven trying to get Ryan to go his job, Lauren investigating who gave her a bad review and for some reason Terrell Owens popping up and singing in falsetto.

Terrell reappears as Ryan’s temporary assistant and repeats funny lines he says in a sing-song voice. For absolutely no reason. I understand the sports connection the show has, but it doesn’t need to be as forced as it was this week. What scares me is that the ex-football player was brought in temporarily to replace Carrie, who will be gone for a bit, and I hope it’s not a multi-episode arc—because I don’t need to see T.O. more than I already do and because Carrie is one of my favorite parts of the show.

Most Popular

While all of this is going on, Ryan stages a walkout because Steven needs him to read ads for male enhancement, and it doesn’t impress Simone. This is the catalyst for the majority of the episode, and it starts with a funny joke about who exactly listens to Ryan. After that it fizzles, and Ryan goes through a series of yoga lessons with Simone and Mr. K. It explores how creepy Mr. K is and how annoying Simone is. Maybe the episode wasn’t trying to make Simone annoying, but this episode made me want her arc to just be over with.

Ryan is supposed to find his inner self and ends up getting yelled at by a hockey coach in his subconscious. This was probably meant to be the scene that drove the episode’s comedic core, but again the jokes just plain missed and everything felt flat.

With a lackluster main plot, the subplot couldn’t be expected to do too much. Lauren received her reviews from the group and discovered someone gave her a two out of five in the listening category. She enlists Yolanda, who enlists the barely recurring George, to figure out who did it. Frankly, I didn’t care that someone disliked Lauren because the show has been less than successful with developing her as of late.

I did appreciate George’s appearance and wish we saw more of him. This all goes back to my early criticism of the show’s lack of balance between characters viewers want to see and what the writers believe they want to see. Hopefully this was just a hiccup in the show’s progress and won’t become the trend.

Go On: “Go Deep” (Episode 1.17)