Matthew Perry did two episodes of The Good Wife last season and
those two episodes where he was only present briefly were a thousand
times more interesting and funny than the first two episodes of Go On.
Perry stars as Ryan King, the host of "The Ryan King Show" on KBAL, a
sports-talk radio program. We join him a month following the death of
his wife. The company that owns the show thinks he needs counseling, so
he gets put into group therapy sessions, a novel concept, if Charlie
Sheen hadn't done something very similar this summer on FX's Anger Management.
The comedy comes from the fact that each member of the therapy group has
some kind of quirk. The rest of the comedy comes from Ryan not
believing in therapy and taking every opportunity to take the sessions
from Lauren, played by Laura Benanti, and lead them himself. It was
annoying when he did it in the first episode. It continued to be
annoying in the second.
Supposedly, Ryan is a man in mourning, but his actions don't reflect
that in the slightest. The death of his wife is meant to justify his
behavior, no matter how obnoxious like when he stalks and grows
semi-co-dependent of his assistant, Carrie, played by Allison Miller. I
think the makers of this show want Ryan to become endearing, but the
deficit that's created in these first two episodes will require them to
do a lot of work.
One Star out of Five.
Rated TV-PG.
Running Time: 30 mins.
Airs Tuesdays at 9PM on NBC.
