Day Three -- April 25

Odd day.

All along, all during our rehearsals, things seemed to be going so well. The jokes were snapping, the lines were crackling, the bits were popping. It was the veritable Rice Krispies of sitcoms. We got so much done. We blocked every scene, rehearsing them three or four times each. We even had a chance to go back over a couple of them before the studio executives showed up to watch a run-through. It was fantastic. It was incredibly fun to be putting it all together with great dialogue and scenes and fun people. Everything was right on track.

Then the train derailed. The run-through for the studio was anything but stellar. The new jokes were barely making dents. The old stand-bys were starting to lose their luster. The whole show chugged along under its own feeble momentum to the bitter end, and like an undertrained marathon runner, we collapsed across the finish line. Ugh.

And, OK, maybe it wasn't all that bad. People eventually stop laughing at a joke after they've heard it fifteen times. That's to be expected. It's hard to maintain the perspective to appreciative the jokes that used to work eight run-throughs ago but now no one seems to find very funny. It was also the very first time we had ever put the show on its feet. The rehearsal process exists for a reason. Today made that clear. We were rough on the edges. Hell, we were rough all over. But that's no reason to hang up our sitcom shingle just yet. Our official taping is still a full week away and we can accomplish plenty in that time. Beneath the agony of the stumble-through, as David Basche referred to it, was the rough stone waiting to be polished into a gem. We can do it.

Go on to Day 4

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