Jenna Elfman

By: Hannah Blackman

What to do as a tourist in L.A.? You go to the studios and watch them shoot your favorite sitcom. And if you haven’t done it yet, come with me and watch the creation of a brand new sitcom at CBS in Studio City.  This one stars your favorite, Dharma from Dharma and Greg – that talented, very funny lady, Jenna Elfman, who is about to create the pilot episode of her new show, Accidentally On Purpose. So wear your most comfortable clothes and take some snacks, because you’ll get there at 5:00 and be entertained and fascinated for about four hours — you’ll need munchies.  You’re about to see how a new show is created. You’ll get to meet some favorite stars and have a hoot and a laugh in the process.

Let’s start on a very hot day in the Valley — actually 103F which is so hot that I wondered: How will they actually fill the studio (which has to be filled to create the laugh track live)? Well, surprise! No super heat will keep the fans away.  We start at the Radford CBS Studios’ huge parking lot and a good, hot, long walk to the stage where the show is being shot…and there, in the heat, is a line! Must get cleared first.  If you’re invited, show your identification, get your purse checked under the arch to check for metal, and if all the seats aren’t taken, there are plenty of fans waiting to fill them.

Now let me describe the studio: A very long room with seats in perhaps a dozen rows, separated by rails from the room a few feet below, which is a series of remarkably small sets — in this case, a living room, a bedroom, a small bathroom and, far to the right, a larger space which is the newspaper where Jenna (playing a film critic) works. The rooms have movable walls, and every once in a while, a stout guy in shorts checks the placement and kicks a wall into alignment. The sets stand side-by-side like a series of boxcars on a train.

In front of the sets: people. A mass of people! A crush of people: the director, her assistants, their assistants, the extras, the writer, network folk…so many people crowded between the great cameras on wheels…an amazement of people talking and laughing and working and assisting or walking to the back room and coming back with plates of food and eating!

TV Camera

Important for the audience sitting where we are is the master of ceremonies – a sometimes funny guy who stands in front and has the job of entertaining the audience between takes with jokes, tricks, organizing little games, getting the audience to be totally silly and getting them quiet when it’s time to shoot the scene.  So this funny guy promises a prize of an iPod to the winner of these games, and he also has plenty of giveaway t-shirts and candy. This being a long shoot, water is passed around, although the room is astonishingly cold. It must be hot for the actors under the lights.

Above his head are the monitors. When he calls for quiet, the scene being shot is displayed on monitors so the audience can catch all the lines and laugh in the appropriate places. No need to nudge the audience since the show is funny. Jenna Elfman is master of comedy with such great timing — the lines are good, so laughter there is. Also, there are a few scenes pre-shot, and the audience sees those on the monitor.

Before the scenes began, the funny guy gets some good games going, this time played mostly by Marines who have turned out in  numbers — a bunch of really good-looking, shaved-head guys out for some fun. They are called up to dance, wiggle, answer questions, join some brave girls in silly stuff…and suddenly we’re warned that they are about to start. The audience stills, the lights go on below, the crush of “others” quiets down, and the story begins.

From the first few short scenes (all the scenes are short — some of them done two or three times), we learn the plot: Jenna is late-thirties, just disappointed in a relationship with the owner of the paper who has decided not to commit, she’s hurt, so she and her buddies go to a bar. She meets a very young guy, has a big night in his apartment, and some weeks later finds out she’s pregnant. Her girlfriends are shocked. Didn’t she carry an emergency condom? You bet, but she didn’t take it out of her purse. Is it possible she wants this baby? Maybe so. But it’s not the guy’s responsibility and she tells him so. No way! He wants to be involved! He will be a visible daddy! She’s impressed with his responsibility. He has no place to stay at the moment, so she offers him a room. He’s there, often with a bunch of odd, dorky buddies — shades of Knocked Up – and yet…he’s a really sweet guy. Then the old boyfriend wants to take their relationship to a new level. So there she is — pregnant, two guys, a couple of great, very funny girl friends, and that’s the plot.

We see the director stop the action, dash over to the set, make a few requests and run back to her monitor. It’s Jenna’s kind of story, suited to her comic talents. She has such a great sense of comic timing — a rise of the eyebrow, a slight pause before a line…perfect and really funny.

On the set

So now we have sat and watched and laughed at short scenes, the retake of short scenes, we’ve watched the Marines being totally unmilitary, played some silly games, got t-shirts and candy bars — candy flying through the air toward the end, one really cute guy (I suspect a hopeful actor) wins the iPod, and the final scene is shot close to 9:00 p.m. A long evening, and the actors come out to meet the audience. Gracious Jenna thanks everyone, and we have seen the birth of a new show and had a lot of fun. It’s such an easy, relaxed way to shoot a pilot — everyone having such a good time.  What a great world they work in (at least, it seems so to us).

Now we can look forward to seeing how the little, almost makeshift scenes look on the screen — the fantasy that makes it real.

Will the new show appeal to the audience? I’d say a big yes! Jenna Elfman not only does comedy, but there are touching, emotional moments, moving scenes, and she tugs at your heart as well…and she’s as gracious off-screen as she is on.

So turn on your set shortly and watch Accidentally On Purpose with more interest because you’ve been with me to see how this pilot is created.