did the first season end? when is it coming back?
if it ended, will there be a second season or did it get canceled? please say no i really like this. its much better than that mr sunshine disaster, as a matthew perry fan i really tried to like mr sunshine but i just couldn't but i really like this one
*I solemnly swear I'm up to no good*
It's not done. It's going to be after episodes of The Office for the rest of its season, when it does.
http://chriscolleytvblog.blogspot.com
It has neither been officially cancelled nor renewed yet. Bad news is Go On's ratings have dropped significantly. About half the numbers in the 2nd half that it was doing in the 1st half.
Good news is NBC is in terrible shape and nothing else they have does much better. Of NBC's other on-the-bubble comedies, Parks and (surprisingly) Whitney have been doing slightly more numbers while Community has been just a bit less.
I think and hope it'll return by default. Trouble is, it's a renewal that is theirs to lose and right now they're starting to lose it.
NBC has 16 comedy Pilots on their slate, the most of any network. What gets picked up is going to determine what the direction of their comedy will be. Next season, they could have between 4 and 10 comedy slots open, depending on what happens. I counted 6 shows that I'm pretty sure will go, and 3 or 4 others that, while I don't like the premises, I could see going.
Community will be renewed, Parks will be renewed. Go On and Whitney need a lot of help to get renewed. For Whitney, even though it's beating Go On, they are not going that direction with their comedy Pilots, so it's going to be left on an island if it gets renewed (similar to Parks and Community). All you can really hope for is that Go On manages to scrape a 1.5 behind The Office, and that it gets renewed because of that number being better than most. They've prepared for the worst, so they'll have a lot of options for next season, and that doesn't even include the horrific potential expansion of reality TV for them.
http://chriscolleytvblog.blogspot.com
Community will be renewed, Parks will be renewed.
Again, Community will be renewed, unless someone really pisses off NBC from the show.
http://chriscolleytvblog.blogspot.com
I'm still not convinced. Its ratings are awful and this season hasn't been doing anything to help itself out. Even die hard fans are starting to say that they're about done with the series. I see its ratings falling off pretty hard by the end of the year.
I won't go as far to say it will be canned but I'm not buying any argument that renewal is in the bag right now. 50/50 at best.
Its most recent L+7 DVR ratings gave it a 2.0 in the 18-49 demo, and it's been pulling in a 1.7 in L+7 every week that I've gone back recently. The original intent was for it to be shown on Fridays with numbers similar to what it's been getting on Thursdays (it might get higher ratings on Fridays, as well). If it pulled in a 1.7 with L+7 numbers on Fridays, you wouldn't even wonder about whether this show would be renewed.
Community is a perfect Friday candidate, as is Parks for next season, depending on where they decide to go with their comedy direction. I would honestly be surprised if Community doesn't return somewhere, unless they have 3 more similarly themed shows to Parks on next season's schedule, or one of the makers of the show pisses off NBC. They're not going to leave Parks on an island (that is a guaranteed renewal), and Community is the only other show that currently fits the bill well enough. I could totally see Parks at 8pm and Community at 8:30pm on Fridays next season, again, depending on what they pick up from the Pilots.
http://chriscolleytvblog.blogspot.com
Go On will move to Thursdays next week. I hope the show gets renewed and stays on Thursday.
¨*
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Could've, should've, would've if NBC hadn't effed it up. Not looking good right now, but we'll know more in a few weeks.
http://chriscolleytvblog.blogspot.com
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The show was pretty much there from episode 1. By episode 6, it was nearly clicking on all cylinders. Then, they started randomly dropping cast members for no discernible reason (or at least not showing them for weeks). Then, they brought in a temporary love interest for Ryan that completely changed the dynamic of the really good ensemble cast. Then, they turned it from being a realistic show with a fun ensemble cast into a caricatured ensemble that had almost no basis in realism. They never stopped tinkering with it, and the audience just became fed up with the whole nonsensical Simone storyline which, as I said, wrecked the entire chemistry and storytelling style of the show. I haven't seen this week's episode, yet, but at least the one previous sort of got it back on the right track, though even it wasn't very good in comparison to the early episodes.
The basic winning formula for the show was simple. An a-hole sportstalk radio host goes to group therapy to deal with the loss of his wife, and becomes a better person despite him having no intention to improve. All they needed to do was balance the group and the radio station, with the group outside of the radio station (if the radio station weren't an important part of the story, good characters wouldn't have been written for it). Instead, we've had longer stretches than we should where we have no clue that he even works at a radio station, because they wanted to focus on other things. I've actually never seen such a good show become such a mess. It's the type of show where if it does, by some miracle, get renewed that they'd almost want to completely forget the first season. Anyone who watches sitcoms knows that nearly every good sitcom hits its stride by episode 6, and then just expands on what makes it work. This one never seemed to realize what worked, and they couldn't stop effing with it until it almost completely stunk. Now they're trying to put it back together, but it's likely too late, unless it has miraculous ratings behind The Office.
http://chriscolleytvblog.blogspot.com
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I still need to watch this week's episode, and I'll report back after I've seen it to tell you what I think. There's only been one episode, I think, since she left, minus this week's.
http://chriscolleytvblog.blogspot.com
Watched this week's episode and here are my thoughts.
1. The caricaturing of the characters is just really bad. It's really something when Mr. K, the biggest caricature of the early episodes is now easily the most well-rounded character.
2. Too much Lauren. I really don't care about her relationship. I like her as the dysfunctional, underqualified group leader. Every time they try to expand her character, it becomes caricature. She was very much a good straight man at the beginning, but now they're trying to make her funny, and I don't think it works at all (just makes it seem like bad overacting).
3. Where, where the hell is Carrie? That's the radio station straight man, if you didn't know. Without her, the radio station becomes nothing but complete caricature. They were allowing Cho to be a comedic straight man, but they're not even trying to play that character straight anymore.
4. Where, where the hell is Bill? I absolutely loved Bill Cobbs in this, and don't forgive them for his ruthless cut outs and disappearances. He played a pretty bad part extremely well for what it was, and he was genuinely likable and funny.
5. Danny is not a good character. He's meant to be on the back burner with occasional funny stuff to say. The more he talks the bigger caricature he is, even though his character was meant to be a caricature anyway.
6. They can't seem to find the balance of Mr. K. I absolutely hated his character early on, because it ruined the ensemble chemistry, but he's really become just about the best thing about this show now...and that's kind of sad. Also, they really botched that storyline this week. I thought he was totally on to their little plan to find out about him. Because of that, I figured everything he did was an elaborate set up. Nope, I have no idea what was going on there. It ended up feeling like it was supposed to be real at the end. Weird...
7. Yolanda is a character that could be mined, but they just turn it into a one trick pony. This person is a doctor, yet everyone hates her. She's a caricature that could easily be a good and funny character. Too much try hard.
8. Owen is a great character, but they give him almost nothing to do anymore. Him and Matthew Perry have great chemistry, but almost no real scenes together anymore. Probably the funniest scene in the recent shows was when Matthew Perry got him to say those lines. That was just absolutely perfect comedy.
9. Anne is probably the best character on the show outside of Mr. K, right now, but they are still fumbling around with what they want her to do. Her and Owen are really the only characters not played in caricature right now. Her and Owen had nice chemistry, too bad their storyline just wasn't that good.
10. Fausta proved in the bingo episode that her character does have depth. Too bad they can't mine her better. She has great chemistry with Perry, and they should make an effort to make them have more scenes together. She's a perfect example of a caricature that's started turning into a character.
11. They've tried to turn Sonia from being a caricature to a character, but that's failing miserably. We like her as a caricature, like Yolanda, with a slightly interesting character behind it. Some of her earlier stuff was really good, but she's just given absolutely nothing funny to do anymore.
12. Finally, Ryan. They've tried to build depth, and failed. They've tried to give heart to him, and failed. They've tried to turn him into a caricature, and failed. They've almost completely botched this character so much that even he doesn't know what he's supposed to be. His line about "just can't get there" in the two scenes after his number 1 is totally apropos for his character. His character is (or should I say what he should be?) basically an a-hole who doesn't care about anyone but himself. Through his self serving ideas, he starts to come around when his self absorption backfires on him. Then, he becomes more of a human being, able to see what's going on around him, but he still will say nice things in a mean way, because that's just his character.
To sum up, when this show started, here was what worked:
1. Carrie grounding the radio station stuff.
2. Lauren playing a moderator with a goofy backstory that people don't want to invest in but do.
3. Ryan growing in unexpected ways despite not intending to.
4. The original group chemistry and character/caricatures as originally developed.
5. Steven as a funny straight man who grounds Ryan. It's easy to pick out his best scenes, such as the hockey game "reel in".
6. The balance between radio station/group/outside activities.
7. The show was genuinely funny because of the diverse personalities of the group and the situations that came out of that (it's just a bunch of try hard now, except maybe one or two times per episode).
I don't know if you agree, but those are my in depth thoughts about the show as it stands now. They've gone too far in the other direction for me to think the show as the unit it once was can be saved. If it miraculously gets a second season, I think you're going to see major cast shake ups and additions to try to bring back some of the original ensemble chemistry the show once had that it doesn't anymore. This show is a perfect example of when characters become caricatures and caricatures become characters.
As originally developed, here's my thoughts on who was a character and who was a caricature.
Characters:
Ryan (sometimes played in caricature)
Steven
Carrie
Anne
George
Owen
Lauren
Caricatures:
Mr. K
Fausta
Yolanda
Sonia
Danny
Probably the most telling thing about the show is that Ryan's caricature drawing did not look like a caricature of him at all (all of the other caricatures on the walls were really great caricature drawings). It just looked like a nice drawing. A caricatured drawing would have had him with a huge hairdo, a big nose, and huge teeth. Think about that for a minute.
http://chriscolleytvblog.blogspot.com
I personally don't really understand the need to break the cast up into "must be caricature" or "must be character."
If all cast members can be both then doesn't it give the creators of the show more tools to use? I personally loved the part where Mr K suddenly became all insightful, he was playing the straight man to his own funny man and it was great!
If they rely too heavily on the same characters to be funny and the same to counter that then it limits the shows depth and gives it a structure it doesn't need. I personally feel the laughs and "aaaww" moments are made far more genuine by not knowing who they are going to come from.
If Anne was always the angry one or Mr K was always the goofy weirdo then I think it would get boring.
Also I am glad the writers are trying new things, even if they don't always work out that well as to me it seems they are trying to make the show better and really hit the right groove. I sincerely hope they are given more seasons to do so as i think they are doing a fantastic job.
There isn't a need to do that, but they set it up that way. Nuance is great, but when you turn every character into a comedy routine it has a tendency to become one note and fall flat. Balance is what makes a show with a large ensemble like this work. For excellent examples of how to handle ensemble casts watch Parks and Recreation and Veep, which probably feature the two best ensemble casts on television. Go On nailed the ensemble in early episodes, but screwed all of that up by the midway point in the season. They were trying to put it back together at the end of the season, but it never worked as well as it did at the beginning.
The problem, in my opinion, is that they were endlessly tinkering and making the show worse. We can disagree all day about it, but the people watching the show lost interest, because we never knew what show we were watching each week, or even who the cast members would be in each episode. Excellent characters would just disappear for weeks at a time, and we'd be stuck with weak caricatures. That's not improving the show, it's killing it.
There's probably a 1 percent chance this show returns. Don't get your hopes up. It tanked awfully in the ratings behind The Office.
http://chriscolleytvblog.blogspot.com
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Ryan's work place is probably also unnecessaryI kind of like the work place being mixed in. I think just the group would get stale. Plus I really like Cho and Perry working off each other. Great fun
I think the show needed to be set up like it was at the beginning, half show, half group. The show did have an audience at first, and a pretty big one (it was once the highest rated sitcom on NBC...lol). The shame is they kept tinkering with the show so much that the audience gave up on it. The show really had a big drop in quality from the first half of the season to the second, in my opinion.
http://chriscolleytvblog.blogspot.com
The show did have an audience at first, and a pretty big one (it was once the highest rated sitcom on NBC...lol).
You're preaching to the choir. I just wrote a semi-long ratings post about it in another thread. We won't know how much of the loss was due to The Voice, because it never had the lead in at mid-season (though the ratings dropped further to the cancellation level with the Simone introduction, something I thought was just a terrible decision). I just think almost zero of the Off Their Rockers audience would be interested in Go On, and its failure behind The Office is nothing short of spectacular.
http://chriscolleytvblog.blogspot.com
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Uh, the Courteney Cox episode had The Voice as a lead in. Its ratings abruptly dropped after being off the air for an extended period of time. When it returned, NBC had the first episode advertised as a rerun (lol) on cable guides. Its numbers did drop significantly without The Voice, but not to the level they were at at the end until the Simone storyline (I loved this show at first, but it was a chore to get through it around that time).
One thing to note is that no show this season did better post-The Voice than Go On. My theory is that people watching the show would stick around because they saw "that funny guy from Friends". None of them were looking for it, they just stayed. This show would have been renewed if they had never aired an episode without The Voice as a lead in. The Voice obviously impacted its ratings in a major way, but the point I think I was trying to make is that we didn't have a great show that was clicking on all cylinders that just crashed in the ratings without The Voice. We had a show that was once very good, that constantly changed the formula and characters from week to week, lost its good lead in, and then introduced what most people feel was a terrible character that wrecked the entire vibe of the show. It never recovered from all of these factors. We can easily say, with the Courteney Cox episode, that The Voice had a great impact on Go On's ratings, but exactly how much we won't know, as the show was not consistent in performance throughout its run. The ratings were not good when it returned, but were nowhere near as bad as they were at the end (if it had maintained the numbers for the January 8 and January 15 episodes, it would have easily been renewed, and even at the January 22 numbers it would have had some chance of coming back).
Here's the list:
1/08: 1.5 in the 18-49 demo (listed as rerun on many cable systems)
1/15: 1.7 in the 18-49 demo (Ryan returns to dating, something viewers probably didn't want this early)
1/22: 1.3 in the 18-49 demo (Simone episode 1)
1/29: 1.3 in the 18-49 demo (Simone episode 2)
2/19: 1.1 in the 18-49 demo (Simone episode 3)
2/26: 1.1 in the 18-49 demo (Simone final episode)
3/05: 1.1 in the 18-49 demo
3/19: 1.0 in the 18-49 demo
3/26: 1.9 in the 18-49 demo (The Voice lead in and Courteney Cox)
4/05: 1.1 in the 18-49 demo (The Office lead in)
4/12: 1.1 in the 18-49 demo (The Office lead in and series finale)
I might be wrong, but I contend the two major errors were having Ryan go back to dating, and the introduction of the terrible ensemble vibe wrecking Simone character (this show was at its best as an ensemble, and it stopped being that with Simone). The ratings drop appears to bear that out. The secondary problems were the constant character musical chairs, and the complete changing of multiple characters. The audience couldn't get comfortable with what the show was trying to do, so it left. It's a shame, because I really liked the first half of the season, and was very disappointed with the changes they made to the show. We can disagree all day, but this show was tinkered into oblivion.
http://chriscolleytvblog.blogspot.com
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So that allows you to completely disregard that the first two episodes after mid-season had much higher ratings than the Simone episodes that caused the ratings to crash?
http://chriscolleytvblog.blogspot.com
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I watched it tonight and during one of the breaks they said it was being moved to Thursday at 9:30. Must see TV folks!! It is a pretty good show and deserves that time slot. I have to say I did NOT like Courtney Cox on the show tonight, I think she cheapened it and made me think that Go On is trying to "jump the shark" WAY TOO SOON!!!!
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