Second Look: Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place Season 2, Episode 21 – “Two Guys, a Girl and Barenaked Ladies”

Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place Season 2, Episode 21 “Two Guys, a Girl and Barenaked Ladies”
Written by Donald Beck
Directed by Ellen Gittelsohn
Aired May 19, 1999 on ABC

“Goodbye pepperoni, goodbye parmesan cheese
Goodbye to beggin’ for tips, when you’re down on one bended knee
Well you want a career, so you got a career,
and I’m sure everything will be fine
but if it all comes crashing down on your head
please don’t come back to whine
Say goodbye to pizza, Pizza Pete”

Though the end of Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place‘s Barenaked Ladies-narrated episode features an acapella song about Pete’s continued existential crisis (sung by the band appearing as a group of homeless men around a fire outside Beacon Street Pizza), it’s also a quiet ode to the series itself, as it winds down its much-improved, experimental second season – and more importantly, considers its titular location and its viability as the heart of the show as it looks towards the future. And though much of “Two Guys, a Girl and Barenaked Ladies” feels like typical Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place fare, its unexpectedly shocking final scene leaves the sitcom at an intriguing crossroads heading into the season two finale.

On its surface, “Two Guys, a Girl and Barenaked Ladies” is a prototypical episode of the series – except after kicking off with the latest iteration of Pete’s professional anxieties (he has his work at the pizzeria timed down to the millisecond), the cold open is accented by the disguised Barenaked Ladies, delivering beer to the pizzeria as they sing about Pete’s desire to not age “in a pizza joint, like a secondhand Fonzie”. This becomes the formula for Pete’s scenes through the episode, as he meets with his career counselor (played by the dearly departed Sam Lloyd, a few years before his breakout role as Ted on Scrubs), and then takes a disastrous attempt at running a group therapy session, where he drives a group of caricatures (including 30 Rock‘s Scott Adsit as an unstable man with rage issues) into a frenzy before deciding that, like his time as an intern, that’s just not the career path for him.

At first, the Barenaked Ladies asides feel like a comfy bit of late-20th century capitalism, with sweeps weeks, network showcases – and of course, opportunities for synergistic partnerships, of which music has always held a close relationship to television. Their songs, offered as little four to eight bar accents on the end of scenes, offer not only their talented musicianship (live vocals & instrumentals, which is practically unheard of today) but a running commentary on Pete’s despair, as he continues to wander aimlessly, the fifth wheel of the ensemble looking for a path – which he ironically finds, when he gets his own career counselor a job reading audio for automotive manufacturers, later revealing to Berg it led him to take his own counselor’s full-time position at the employment agency.

He reveals this to Berg, of course, when he arrives at the pizza shop to quit his job, which they presumably started together at some point pre-“The Pilot” (and even pre-“Two Guys, a Girl and How They Met”). Having spent the formative years of their young adulthood living, working, and attending school together, Pete leaving the pizza shop not only marks the end of an era professionally, but for the pair personally – which they take a moment to reflect on, in the incredibly vague, rose-colored terms every late-era Gen X male uses when their deeper emotions come to the surface in moments of reflection.

And as Berg reflects, one can feel the momentous shift occurring at the series core, as it begins to unbound itself from its central locale and retools to become a show about a group of young adults as they move fully into adulthood, into more mature jobs and relationships – which has happened to everyone across the season, except the perpetually in purgatory Pete, who ends this episode by exiting the coffee shop for the last time, after sharing a hug with Berg and briefly reminiscing over the times they had together. Smartly, Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place doesn’t treat this as a moment to look back, to reminisce about a journey coming full circle; instead, it ends on a hopeful, yet cautious note, a reminder that as Pete and Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place look toward the new, exciting possibilities of the future, the choice to separate Pete from everyone and everything else in the series is a risky one, and one that comes without the guaranteed safety of returning to his old, familiar job in the future.

As I’ve always said, though, Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place‘s greatest asset always was its willingness to never stand still, to continue pushing its characters into new places, experimenting with its form and never settling into a routine or formula for too many episodes at a time. Pete’s decision to leave the pizza shop is another pivot point for the series; after the season finale, the show would drop the Pizza Place title from its moniker altogether, and would abandon the pizza shop as a location for good in season three’s second episode. And though it seems like an obvious decision, given how dynamic the show’s range grew once it stepped outside the pizza shop more consistently, it is still a shocking, exciting moment to see materialize on screen, as true a representation of the show’s ethos as anything throughout its four-season run.

The rest of “Two Guys, a Girl and Barenaked Ladies” is more of a mixed bag, as Berg anxiously reaps what he sows when he pushes Sharon to become better friends with Ashley. Had season two pushed a little harder on drawing a contrast between their personalities, I think this storyline might play out in more interesting fashion; instead, it’s mostly them dishing on barely-plausible bits of background for Berg (he was an unpopular stutterer in high school? What is this, Just Friends?), giving Ashley the opportunity to bond a bit with both Sharon and Berg in the third act.

Perfectly workable material, but it pales in significance whenever it shifts towards Pete’s musically-enhanced search for a meaningful career, which takes on an increasingly existential bent for the series as it develops in the third act. These stories also leave Johnny completely on the sidelines, which seems a bit antithetical for a series whose development has hinged partly on the presence of his character within the group dynamic, and is poised to even further integrate him into the series as it continues. So although it is a fairly transformative half hour by its end, it is one that comes with a few minor caveats, some flaws in logic that don’t entirely fulfill the episode’s promise as a bridge between what was and what would be. Though not the episode that defines this transformation (season three’s “Au Revoir, Pizza Place” will serve that role nicely), it certainly begins it, and for that it makes a pretty strong topper to a much-improved sophomore effort for the underdog sitcom.

Grade: B

Other thoughts/observations:

• Pete: “I serve pizza, I serve it well, I serve it cheerfully. That’s my life….. my life sucks.”
  
• Sharon and Pete both make the same joke to Ashley that her perfume is “brimstone”.
  
• You can watch all of the Barenaked Ladies musical bits on YouTube here.
  
• Pete tells Kevin to ‘let it out’: “I’m going to take this chair and beat you featureless!” is probably not the response he was hoping for.
  
• We also learn Berg still cries at Bambi… and?
  
• Over the closing credits, the Ladies sing an acapella version of “It’s All Been Done” as Pete’s first client at his new job. His reaction is rather unimpressed – perhaps a telling sign this also might not be a career he lasts too long in.
  
• Up next: Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place‘s expansive second season comes to a close with “Two Guys, a Girl and an Engagement (Part 1)”.