Great News flexes its comedic muscles and really demonstrates how good the show truly can be in this week’s episode, “Competing Offer.” With the sexual tension between Katie and Greg at an all-time high, Carol realizing she’s outstayed her welcome as an intern, and a lawsuit set against the Breakdown and Chuck that could ruin the whole network, this episode is jam-packed with jokes and entertaining conflict as it ramps up for the last two episodes of the season.
After watching this episode, all I can really say is, my goodness, if the show had started the season out with this must gusto it’d be all anyone could ever talk about. NBC better have plans to renew Great News for another season because I can’t.stop.watching.this.show. It’s so good. It’s so, so good. It’s definitely entered into the territory of ‘the next 30 Rock’. It’s that good. It took it a little while to get here, but it got here, and now it’s so, so, so good.
And can we just take a moment to speak on how good of a year NBC is having in terms of comedy in general? I mean, good grief, the network has Superstore, Great News, and The Good Place all in one night. Holy cow, that’s a crammed evening of fantastic programming.
And Great News is just killing it. I laughed out loud so many times this episode. As a working woman who wants to find love and just can’t seem to get it, Katie is such a relatable character to working female population. And this episode, man. She stands up to Carol’s meddling in a way that we haven’t really seen before and it really grounds the show in a way that we haven’t really seen before. This is an extremely positive move, as it helps to amplify the humor in all of the comedic ridiculousness that goes on around the office.
Katie standing up to Carol also adds further dimension to both Katie and Carol’s characters, helping round them both out and giving Katie even more ground to stand on when she plays the straight character opposite her mother. That was the show’s greatest flaw, in my opinion, when it started: the show was meant to be a mother/daughter show and the writers kept trying to pair Katie and Carol together, but neither one of them was grounded enough to balance the other out, and so the show felt chaotic instead of funny. Now that Katie’s character has grown and evolved into someone who can play the grounded person, pairing Katie and Carol together is absolutely hilarious.
The episode also brings a certain sympathetic-ness to Chuck’s character that we’ve slowly began to see cropping up more and more. He’s still super narcissistic, but more and more, he’s making an effort to do right by others and to consider his coworkers his friends. In the case of this episode, he still manages to screw everything up and make things ten times worse, but at least his intentions were good.
Finally, Katie and Greg. Greg! What are you doing, man? You’re not happy, get out of that relationship with Cat! There’s someone who could make you happy right in front of you, ugh! I love that the show is playing cat (ha – pun possibly intended) and mouse with Greg and Katie’s feelings for each other, because if the show were simply to give us what we wanted (Greg and Katie together) it would become immensely boring and what would we have to root for? However, Greg’s uncertainty about breaking up with Cat is starting to move into red flag territory. Why is he still with her when he clearly loves Katie and Katie loves him? Why doesn’t he, when he discovers that the feeling is mutual, decide to finally break things off with Cat? Basically, why does he need to think some things through?? It’s clear as day! He should be with Katie! Come on, Greg, get it together!
Ahem. Anyways, this episode was great. Highly recommend you go watch it.
Season 2, Episode 11 (S02E11)
Great News airs Thursdays at 930PM on NBC
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Tasha is a freelance writer currently based in Los Angeles. Originally from Kansas, when she’s not writing about or watching TV, Tasha is searching for the best BBQ place in LA to fill the KC BBQ hole in her stomach.
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Tasha Cerny | Contributor
