The Group Therapy Five

Ducey      Betty Cahill

Tracey Ellis   David Beach   Scott Adsit

Day 5 -- Tuesday, February 23

12:30pm. The "Group Therapy Five" arrive on the lot for the last day of rehearsal and eventual taping of the show. We're not up first. Or second. Or third. We're not up for a while.

3:30pm. The "GTF" are called to the set where we run the scene a few times, keeping everything pretty much the same as it was yesterday. It takes about 20-25 minutes and everything is set. Back to our trailers to wait.

5:00pm. Dinner is served. The GTF find each other and enjoy our last meal together. The Dijon sauce is just about the most exciting thing we've seen all day.

6:30pm. The audience is in place. Now things are starting to get a little interesting. We're actually going to do a show here. Cool. The cast congregates in the make-up room to do a speed-through of the show. Our ducks are now officially in a row. This is it! Now go wait.

9:00pm. It is time. The Group Therapy Five move into place and run through our little bit of comedy. The audience seems to be reacting OK, no one is going into convulsions or anything, but it is about as good a run of the scene as might have been expected. We run it again, per usual, and the second pass is about the same as the first, which was about the same as yesterday, which was pretty much the way it's been done all week. We had a third 'pick-up pass' scheduled but word came from on high that we would do that after the audience was dismissed. Back to the waiting game.

11:15pm. The taping comes to a close. We all run out and bow for a little curtain call. The audience roars for the Barenaked Ladies and is then set free. There are two scenes that need pick-ups. So we'll go back now and get them, right? Well, not so right. There is cake and champagne for the Barenaked Ladies to thank them for being on the show and wish them luck at the Grammy Awards tomorrow night. Schmooze now, shoot later.

11:45pm. Later. The champagne bottles are empty and the cake has been eaten. Musical instruments have found their respective cases and everyone is ready to do some more work. Just not with us. The GTF will have to wait a little longer. they're going to pick up the other scene first.

12:15am. Later still. They are done with the first pick-up scene and are preparing to re-shoot ours. As I look around at the GTF I can sense a little fatigue (or at least I feel a little fatigued anyway). We have done this scene so many times now. We have rehearsed it and opened it and had a nice little run and said goodnight at the curtain call. And now we were back? Just get through the pick-ups, I tell myself, and you can go home. From what I could see of the coverage earlier, I'm not even on camera for these, so I just need enough strength to coast down the hill into the garage and put it all to sleep.

12:30am. Twelve hours after arriving for the day, six days after scurrying into the table read and giving birth to the thankless four-line Louis, as the clock ticked away the witching hour, it was then in the dark of the night, that the week finally began! This wasn't just pick-ups of some extra camera angles. This was a whole new Scene H. The major tweak was that Pete, the lead, would now have a tougher, go-get-em, I-can-do-this approach to the meeting. It made all the difference in the world.

We ran the scene with the new Pete. Better. But we were far from done. Next was changing some of the dialogue to fix the, dare I say, clunky jokes. I got a new line or two and we did it again. Better. Now the attitudes were starting to gel and it was all coming across much more enjoyable and interesting. Another line or two is tweaked and we do it again. Better. In a little over half an hour, we accomplished more than we had all week, and we had ten times more fun doing it. Now who knows? Maybe if we had started with this Pete, by tonight it would have seemed boring and stale to us, but given its birth right under our noses in the wee hours of the morning, everyone thought it was damn good. And on top of all that, most of the new lines were mine and they were very well received so I felt twice as great.

And so the journey was complete. Last Wednesday when I sat at the table and read my four little Louis lines, I wanted to get out. I wanted to be saved from this experience. After tonight, I am so glad I was a part of it. It was one of the most rewarding and enjoyable jobs I had and as a result, one of the most educational as well. Much thanks has to go to Kevin Abbott who brought me in and then kept me in with his hard work and encouragement and talent. What a ride.

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