With season one of Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place in the rearview, it’s time to honor the Second Look tradition by ranking each episode of the sitcom’s tumultuous first season. So without further ado…
13. Episode 7 – “Two Guys, a Girl and a Recovery”
Boy, who would’ve thought “Berg hooks Pete up with a dying woman” would’ve made for a messy episode? Neither committed to the bit or the examination of its characters, “Two Guys, a Girl and a Recovery” takes an incredibly odd premise and underwhelms at just about every turn. There’s a bit of an interesting episode in there somewhere, mostly about the ever-optimistic, neurotic Pete getting out of his own way to try and find happiness in his life… but to say this half hour embodies these ideas successfully would be an incredibly stretch. This is not a good episode of Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place – outside of giving us Pete singing The Monkees, this whole episode is wildly miscalculated and unsurprisingly forgettable.
12. Episode 3 – “Two Guys, a Girl and a Guy”
Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place‘s third episode is a bit ahead of its time – but not in a good way. When Pete and Berg are forced to consider a life with less Sharon in it, they collectively lose their minds and plot to take her new boyfriend Ted down – a great idea for a plot, but one that comes a little too early in the show’s lifetime, before the show’s really had time to establish who Sharon is (beyond the very basic bullet points). Their attempts to undercut her relationship with Ted has enough comedic potential – I’m convinced this episode would play better if it was later in the first season’s run, but as the show’s third episode, it is underwhelmingly superficial.
11. Episode 9 – “Two Guys, a Girl and a Chance Encounter”
“Two Guys, a Girl and a Chance Encounter” is the apex of what I’d call Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place‘s Shenanigans Era, where Berg’s immaturity was the episode’s driving factor, rather than any kind of tangible emotional or narrative arc. In “Chance Encounter”, Berg takes out a Chance Encounters ad (remember newspapers?) for Pete, which is answered by none other than a certifiably insane woman.
This episode doesn’t have much to offer outside of cynically laughing at the mentally unstable woman Pete begins dating, never grasping on the more interesting tendrils buried in the show’s extremely thin subtext. Whenever the episode briefly pauses to consider Berg’s resistance to chance, or Pete’s naive approach to companionship, it feels like there might be a path to a better episode – unfortunately, it’s one this episode never takes.
10. Episode 4 – “Two Guys, a Girl and a Celtic Game”
“Two Guys, a Girl and a Celtic Game” features one of Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place‘s favorite freshman templates: Berg throwing Pete’s life into chaos because of his laissez-faire approach to actions and consequences. “Celtic Game” isn’t the best (or worst) of this format, but it is a good test of what’s working and what isn’t in the show’s early episodes; while Pete and Berg’s chemistry continues to shine in their shenanigans to cover up Berg’s theft of a Celtics championship banner, the underwhelming extended presences of Melissa and Dr. Bauer showed this young sitcom still had a lot to figure out.
9. Episode 2 – “Two Guys, a Girl and a Presentation”
There’s a solid thought behind Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place‘s second episode; but its execution is wildly inconsistent, 22 minutes culminating in an extremely silly plot twist based around Berg’s ongoing side hustle performing medical experiments on himself. Better we remember this episode as the genesis of Berg’s med school career, and an encouraging sign the series had a firm grasp on the dynamics within its titular trio of protagonists.
8. Episode 8 – ” Two Guys, A Girl and a Party”
“Two Guys, a Girl and a Party” feels like a bit of an experiment for the young sitcom; though the premise is undoubtably fitting alongside its earliest episodes – Berg throws a fake 30th birthday party for Pete, for a girl he has a crush on – there’s also hints of a Gen X rom-com peeking through in an episode that features a slightly softer version of Reynold’s Berg. Though it doesn’t quite coalesce into a powerful third act, “Two Guys, a Girl and a Party” is a brief glimpse of a more experimental version of the series, an identity that would come to define the show in its best moments in later years (also, this episode is the first “Melissa existing outside the series continuity” episodes, getting drunk and yelling at Pete for how ‘old’ he’s gotten).
7. Episode 6 – “Two Guys, a Girl and a Softball Team”
Six episodes in, Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place was starting to find its footing – though “Two Guys, a Girl and a Softball Team” is an unremarkable, marginally funny episode, the building cast chemistry and comedic energy is clearly starting to bubble to the surface. Plus, it features the best Mr. Bauer scene of his short run on the series, a pitch-perfect homage to The Natural revealing a wealth of untapped potential for the young comedy to grow into, in episodes (and seasons) to come.
6. Episode 5 – “Two Guys, a Girl and an Apartment”
Of the first half-dozen or so episodes after “The Pilot”, “Two Guys, a Girl and an Apartment” is the most promising of the bunch – though it certainly doesn’t appear so at first, leading the way with yet another comedically underwhelming Berg medical experiment (this time, he gets PMS symptoms after signing up for a women’s medication trial). However, “Two Guys, a Girl and an Apartment” eventually finds its footing in the end of Pete and Melissa’s relationship (though even that is neutered by the season’s sequencing, which continues to feature her as his partner in later episodes). Melissa moving into Pete’s building is finally the catalyst to end their relationship, and finally begins to find some pathos in the unlucky, anxious character that is Pete. Far from a perfect episode, but with a really promising third act that the series would eventually lean into with later, better episodes.
5. Episode 10 – “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Delivery”
“Carmen Electra guest stars” is almost a rite of passage for any supposedly “cool” sitcom or teen movie of its time period; perhaps the most interesting part about her presence here is how muted it is, featuring as Isabella, a hot painter Berg discovers is Pete’s favorite, secret pizza delivery spot. Though the episode spends way too much time establishing a conflict it ultimately renders pointless, this episode (which obviously aired out of production schedule, given Melissa’s presence) smartly uses its final minutes to squash any notion the writers heralded the immature antics of its protagonists, revealing that ultimately, Berg and Pete’s semi-chauvinistic, utterly narcissistic pursuit of Isabella is something of ridicule, rather than something to be heralded (a sign of the show’s narrative growth to follow in season one’s final act, it would turn out).
4. Episode 1 – “The Pilot”
“The Pilot” is a pretty solid starting point for Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, a first episode with enough comedic voice and presence to distinguish itself as just another Friends spinoff. Though there’s a considerable over-reliance on gimmicky side plots (Berg’s medical experiments and Dr. Bauer’s nonsense chief among them), it’s not hard to see the potential with the core of Berg, Pete, and Sharon, even in a format that would change considerably in its later seasons. Led by Reynolds’s committed performance, Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place‘s pilot has an infectious energy that’s hard to ignore, even despite its strange plot choices (Pete decides to break up with his girlfriend Melissa because of Hong Kong being returned to China) and uneven pacing.
3. Episode 12 – “Two Guys, a Girl and a Dad”
When Berg’s father comes to town for an impromptu Beantown visit, Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place finds itself at a bit of creative crossroads; does it fall back on the Berg Shenanigans of episodes past to gloss over a creatively challenging premise, or would it look for something more resembling pathos for its main characters, softening its comedy briefly for a reflective moment on its protagonists?
The answer, thankfully, is mostly the later, once “Two Guys, a Girl and a Dad” reveal to Pete and the audience that father and son have been lying to each other, sharing a character flaw Berg always feared existed only within him. In the process, Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place engineered a story able to catalyze its own evolution, softening Berg’s character a bit and setting all three of its protagonists up to begin questioning the path they’ve set for themselves (itself setting the stage for the series to evolve and change multiple times over the seasons).
2. Episode 11 – “Two Guys, a Girl and How They Met”
Flashback episodes can run the gamut from inspired to mind numbingly awful; though “Two Guys, a Girl and How They Met” falls somewhere in the middle, it is certainly not a disappointing affair. Set six years earlier (in 1991, where Berg’s favorite song is “Girl You Know It’s True”), “How They Met” is set entirely at a local Boston bar, where the two guys meet idealistic environmentalist Sharon, fulfilling every flashback episode’s need to have at least one character be diametrically opposed to how the audience knows them.
“How They Met” works best not when embracing the cliches of its format, but when it rightly correlates the behavior of its main characters with the genesis of their friendship; after Sharon brings the warring boys to her home to put a stereo together, they realize all three of them are garbage, culling any potential romantic entanglements with a wonderful conclusion that openly rejects audience (and perhaps more importantly, network executive) expectations for what the series would be. (At least, for now…)
1. Episode 13 – “Two Guys, a Girl and a Landlord”
The final episode of Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place‘s freshman season is also its best, a self-assured comedy spending 22 minutes reflecting on the series it was, as it prepared itself for the series it would eventually become. Despite a silly premise – Pete and Berg get into a pissing contest with their militaristic landlord – “Two Guys, a Girl and a Landlord” is a surprisingly sober about its own identity when it reaches the climactic scene between landlord and tenants, a rare moment of a show recognizing its own flaws by contemplating them through the actual text. To its credit, the show has a point; “Two Guys, a Girl and a Landlord” is also the most aspirational episode of season one, displaying a confidence in what it wants to be (even when its characters aren’t so sure), and brave enough to let go of the pieces that didn’t work in season one. Though never remembered as one of the show’s best episodes, “Two Guys, a Girl and a Landlord” is an important inflection point for the series – and, most importantly, a great, low-stakes season finale.
(stay tuned for season 2 reviews later this year – thanks for reading!)