On Monday, Saturday Night Live alum Ana Gasteyer debuted her comedy web series on Yahoo.
Going There with Ana Gasteyer follows the comedian and mother of two as she runs errands and commiserates about parenting with other actors with kids, such as Jenna Fischer of The Office and Maya Rudolph of SNL and Bridesmaids. The debut prominently featured a Chevrolet Traverse, a mid-size SUV aimed at parents on the go.
There is ample opportunity for product placement, aside from the vehicle. After Gasteyer picked her up in the Traverse in front of her home, a sheepish Fischer admitted she brought her grocery list on their kid-free outing. No worries — Gasteyer shows her how to use Yummy.com, a grocery delivery site that promises results in a half-hour and apparently delivers to outdoor parks.
Ellen DeGeneres and Jeff Kleeman of A Very Good Production are executive producers, along with Blue Ribbon Content, the short-form digital studio Warner Bros. put together in 2014 that has made a name for itself with animation sourced from comic-book material. Warner also produced Suburgatory, an ABC sitcom co-starring Gasteyer that ran for three seasons on ABC.
Going There doesn’t break much new ground, either in format or content, but the first episode is genuinely funny, with Fischer and Gasteyer spilling ignoble truths about pregnancy and parenthood and playing confessional lightning rounds timed to traffic patterns. The conversation is less about advice than laughing at adversity and the absurdity of adolescent logic.
As for the car, the Traverse was named Best SUV on Parents magazine’s list of Best Family Cars of 2015. However, the award for Best High-Mileage Car went to the "clean-diesel" Volkswagen Golf TDI and hasn’t been changed since it was revealed the Volkswagen was cheating on emissions tests. So your mileage may vary, literally.
The nine-episode series is reminiscent of other shows that feature comedy on the road: Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, which is sponsored by Acura, and Carpool, a Robert Llewellyn vehicle that had the actor interviewing other British actors in a Toyota Prius.
This story originally appeared on the website of Campaign.
