It Only Looks Like a Ball

It looks pretty much like a typical Monday morning at any office anywhere. There’s a sign posted to let everyone know that flu shots will be available tomorrow afternoon. In the lunchroom, employees drift over to sign up for the “Monday Night Football” pool. Out in front, a few people have gathered for a quick smoke and a chat about plans for the upcoming holidays. However, there’s just one difference between this setting and most offices around the country. It’s a place where the employees could be sent packing at any moment because the product they produce each week doesn’t seem to be in demand anymore.

Welcome to the Land the Nielsen Families Forgot. Welcome to the set of “Two Guys and a Girl.” In the beginning, it was simply about Pete and Berg, a pair of Boston twentysomething roommates (Ryan Reynolds and Richard Ruccolo) who hung out at the local pizza place, and their money-hungry friend, Sharon (Traylor Howard). The show, which has been airing at 8 p.m. Fridays on ABC, hovers in the southern half of the ratings. In its fourth season on the air, the Show Formerly Known as “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place” has occasionally been the lowest-rated returning sitcom on a major network. It’s also taken a continual beating from critics throughout its history. So just imagine, for a minute, what it must be like to go to work every day with the knowledge that you’re being rejected on such a large scale.

“It feels really personal,” explains Ruccolo, who plays Pete, a neurotic architect-turned-firefighter. “I know it’s not. This is absolutely a business, but it’s hard not to take it personally. This is a business where emotions are so intertwined that it does feel personal. But there’s no rhyme or reason on television. What will drive you crazy is trying to figure it out.”

“Two Guys” is getting some help from its move to 9 p.m., following “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” Yet while that scheduling fix may provide a bit of a ratings lift, from a perceptual standpoint the damage has been done, and “Two Guys” still finds itself on Fridays--the night when overall TV viewing levels are at their lowest.

It’s not as if days on the set are filled with hand wringing and complaining. Everyone explains that their days of obsessively waiting for the ratings to come out each week have long since faded. In fact, according to Suzanne Cryer, who plays Ashley, Berg’s on-again, off-again gal pal, “It’s a kind of que sera sera attitude here. We’re pretty mellow about it at this point. We’ve kind of thrown up our hands and said, ‘We’re going to do what we’re going to do.’ ”

“It does sometimes feel like we’re coming down here to do little plays for ourselves,” admits Howard, whose Sharon is a high-strung career woman and now a high-strung newlywed. “With the routine of coming here, of having a great time with everyone you work with, you almost forget what it is you’re really doing. I definitely have days when I get frustrated, but I think everyone has moments like that in their job.”

Nestled in a studio surrounded by sets for the more headline-grabbing likes of “Spin City” and “Will & Grace,” the cast and crew have come to accept the fact that network television is the oddest of art forms. Filmmakers can max out their credit cards and come up with a low-budget hit that makes them a festival sensation. Musicians can record something in their basement and be content as a cult hit on college radio. When you’re in network television, however, it’s all or nothing. There are at least 100 different shows in any given week on all six networks, and while those in the top 20 get the bulk of the buzz, somebody has to fill in the other 80 time slots. That doesn’t mean they’re necessarily lacking in quality. It just means that they operate in a nationally televised limbo.

“There are more shows in our position than there are shows like ‘Frasier’ and ‘Friends,’ ” adds the show’s executive producer, Kevin Abbott. “The feeling is sort of like having a terminal disease. You know you’re eventually going to die, and you go through all the stages like depression and anger before coming to acceptance. I think that’s where we are now. We’re in remission for a while, and that’s not an awful place. I’d rather be working and around creative people every day than not, and that’s what we have here.”

He has seen the penthouse, working on “Roseanne” when it was one of television’s biggest shows, and he admits that life on the ground floor takes some getting used to. “At first, the fight keeps you going,” Abbott says. “I knew that the pieces were here to make a good show. We have been at least a modest ratings hit. This year, I know that’s not happening, and that’s a hard adjustment. It’s hard to go from feeling the passion that you can do classic television episodes to feeling that this is a day-to-day job. It’s nice to get a check, but that’s not why I got into this business.” And certainly there isn’t a soul on the set who is just phoning it in. Spend just a little time on the set and it’s clear that everyone is working hard to get the show done each week.

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Still, life has never been easy on “Two Guys and a Girl.” The series was originally developed and then cut loose by the Fox Broadcasting Co., and ABC picked it up as a midseason entry in the 1997-98 season despite some objections by executives there. “In its infancy, there was never a lot of enthusiasm here for the show, but [former Entertainment President] Jamie Tarses and I liked the cast,” explains ABC Entertainment Chairman Stu Bloomberg. “It didn’t have a remarkable concept, but the cast was really appealing. We didn’t have a lot of shows for a younger demographic, so we decided to let it grow.” During its initial run following “The Drew Carey Show” on Wednesday nights, “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place” regularly won its time slot at 9:30 p.m. in the 18-to-49 demographic, pulling in 12.6 million viewers a week. However, the show’s title and some less-than-stellar episodes turned it into a favorite target for critics and turned the cast into realists. “How we survived that time is beyond me,” sighs Reynolds, who plays womanizing medical student Berg. “The first 13 episodes were rough. They were not good shows.”

Nonetheless, the ratings were good enough to earn a second season. After moving to an earlier slot on Wednesdays behind “Dharma & Greg,” it drew an audience of about 12.39 million. Last season, it was moved to 8 p.m. to open the night, and its ratings took a slight dive to 10.54 million. And this year, after being moved yet again, this time to Friday night, it is averaging a relatively paltry 6.94 million. It’s kind of like being the child of a parent in the military. You move around so much that you never get the chance to develop a serious relationship anywhere you stop. “We’ve become the utility show, where they just fill in the blank with you,” says Ruccolo. “After awhile, you start to feel like, ‘Oh, we’re the denominator divisible into any spot in the schedule.’ People can spin that into a compliment, but to me, it sends a message that they’re just using you for what you’re good for.”

Low ratings are one thing. But the fact that the steep drop in numbers happened because of something out of their control--the move to Fridays--has created a bit of a helpless feeling. “Our demographic isn’t at home on Friday nights,” explains Reynolds. “People between 18 and 49 are going out, not sitting down for a night of television. That night is not our audience, and I’d love to be back where we were. We make no bones about that at all here.”

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For years, ABC’s Friday night lineup was built around programming for the pubescent set, such as “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.” This year, however, the network opted to go in the opposite direction by adding established, adult-oriented comedies like “Two Guys and a Girl” and “Norm,” and newcomers “The Trouble With Normal” and “Madigan Men.” The plan hasn’t worked so far, with the latter two shows already off the air. Bloomberg acknowledges that “we’ve asked ‘Two Guys and a Girl’ to do a yeoman’s job, and the audience isn’t there yet.” Meaning that, for the moment at least, there is no chance the show will be shipped to another night. Admits Abbott, “You do get down about that move. When I heard about it, I went into a severe depression. I didn’t talk to anybody for about two weeks. ABC had their strategy for it, but I felt like we were going to Siberia. I felt like we still had a shot at good things on Wednesdays. Moving, to me, said that we would never have the chance to grow.”

Still, like Dodger fans during spring training, he and the cast at first tried to keep their hopes for a great season alive. On Mondays following a Friday airdate, people on the set would have water-cooler conversations about what was going wrong and how it could be fixed. “You couldn’t help it when a show did poorly in terms of numbers. It became a matter of conversation on the set,” says Nathan Fillion, who plays Johnny, Sharon’s new husband. “In the kitchen, we grabbed doughnuts and talked about it. When you got to work on Monday morning, you were a little disheartened, getting into the whys and wherefores. Are we getting enough promotion? Are we on the right night at the right time?”

“The move definitely affected morale on the set,” adds Abbott. “That first Monday after our first Friday airing was very hard. Now, some people are matter-of-fact about the ratings. Some are still bitter. At some point, I talked to everybody about the situation. We talk about it all the time. But we’ve regrouped and said, ‘Let’s try to make it work.’ ”

That’s easier said than done. Making it work, according to Ruccolo, means giving the audience what it wants. However, when ratings are low, it’s tough to divine exactly what that is. “TV is so much more about what people are talking about at work the next day,” he says. “That buzz ignites a creative fire with producers and actors, and things start to stretch and develop. We’ve never really experienced that. When people start saying, ‘We love Will & Grace,’ you have this meter. You hear what they like, what they don’t like. You stick to what they like and you’re on the road to success. When people aren’t tuning in, you have no meter, so you’re guessing every week. Will this work? Won’t it work?”

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While some shows at the deep end of the ratings pool slip below the surface without a trace, “Two Guys” has been trying all sorts of new strokes to stay afloat. The series has continually tried to move beyond its original concept to pull in a larger audience. Since it went on the air midway through the 1997-98 season, however, Abbott and a new team of writers have been brought in to turn the show into something more than the quip-of-the-week series that it had been. The pizza place has been dumped. Pete and Berg have been given steady jobs. Sharon has married. And several new actors, such as Cryer and Fillion, have been brought in to create an ensemble cast. To some degree, the changes have paid off. After all, the series is still on the air and the network has ordered a full season of shows. And, as the cast and producers have discovered, being No. 89 in the national Nielsens means never having to play by the rules. How often do you see a top 20 sitcom kill off every character one week and bring them back as if nothing had happened the next?

“There is a freedom to our situation,” explains executive producer Don Beck. “The network and the studio have both been very encouraging when we want to try new things, things that are a bit more bold. We wouldn’t have that chance if we were a top 10 show or a bottom-rung show. We did a show without dialogue. We did an hommage to Hitchcock. You don’t see that sort of thing normally in a sitcom, and part of being low-rated is you get to do that.” Adds Reynolds: “There’s not so much at stake. We’re not going to get 40 million viewers screaming, ‘My God! What did they do?’ And so far, I think all the risks we’ve taken have paid off creatively.”

Some of the actors have also noticed a personal advantage to life on a low-rated series. It’s actually helped when they try out for movie roles. “When I go in for films, I don’t get put in a box,” says Howard. “If you’re Matthew Perry [from ‘Friends’] and you go in, they expect to see Chandler. I get, ‘Yeah, we liked that one episode you did,’ but they don’t lock me into just being my character. That would make me uncomfortable. Jennifer Aniston couldn’t change her hairstyle for two years. I’d hate that.”

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It’s not, however, that she wouldn’t like to spend a year at the top. “Let’s face it,” she adds. “If this show was hot and huge, that would be a really fun experience. I look forward to having that someday, but then again, I don’t feel like the stepchild over here because we’ve always gotten a good response from the people who watch the show. We never get, ‘You guys suck!’ I don’t feel that. I just feel that this is a show that’s never really gotten its legs. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we can’t.”

That sense of faint optimism pervades the set, but there’s also plenty of realism. As Abbott admits, “20 years from now nobody will be talking about ‘Two Guys and a Girl.’ ” The show is part of a business that cares for its employees the way Cruella De Vil treats the help, and because of the uncertainty that creates, no show stays on forever. Which means that ultimately, life on a low-rated sitcom is not much different from that on a hit.

Out on the set, Reynolds and Ruccolo are proving just that. On a Monday following a November sweeps Friday when ABC chose to air a Beatles special instead of their show, the two actors are improvising a gag that will last all of 20 seconds at the end of a show. It’s a bit with Pete coming home to find a sleeping Berg blocking the entrance to their apartment. And while it will only run over the closing credits, everyone including the camera operators has already spent 20 minutes offering all sorts of gag ideas. Finally, they settle on a punch line. Pete tells Berg, “You can’t sleep there.” He steps over him, moves his roommate into the hall and grabs the morning paper. “You can sleep there,” he says. And the set erupts in laughter.

“I have friends who are on sitcoms that are massive,” says Reynolds. “What we’ll talk about is the dynamic on our sets, not ratings. And the one thing I’ve learned in the short time I’ve been doing this is it’s all the same. Every show becomes a big family that has to slam together 22 minutes of television every week and you just hope it flies with an audience. If you can get big numbers, that’s great, but ultimately the only goal is to be proud of each week’s show. And I think we are here.”

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“Two Guys and a Girl” airs Friday nights at 9 on ABC.