TV on DVD

Buddy series is no Friends, but cast has some chemistry

Two Guys and a Girl, complete series
Two Guys and a Girl, complete series

What is it? Two Guys and a Girl, complete series, 81 episodes on 11 discs from Shout! Factory

When? Tuesday

How much? $79.97

Two guys and a girl doing what, exactly? Working, hanging out, basically just trying to figure out their lives.

The show was originally called Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, that pizza place being Beacon Street Pizza in Boston. But after the second season, the pizza place was dropped from the show and the name.

Anxiety-ridden Pete (Richard Ruccolo) and aimless (but brilliant) Berg (Ryan Reynolds) are roommates in Boston, going to graduate school and working at a pizza place as they try to find some life direction.

Their best friend is Sharon (Traylor Howard), a former classmate who works in a soul-killing job for a chemical company. She's just one of the guys.

For the first season, their world also includes Bill (Julius Carry), the owner of the pizza place, and Mr. Bauer (David Ogden Stiers), a strange customer who tells movie plots as if they were stories from his life.

After Season 1, Bill and Bauer are gone and the series picks up a younger regular supporting cast when Berg enters medical school and comes across Ashley (Suzanne Cryer), a fellow student and rival, and Sharon meets and begins to date jukebox repairman Johnny (Nathan Fillion).

The series is basically the story of young adults going through those uncertain, post-college years full of personal and professional ups and downs.

How is it? This is the basic middling comedy from the mid-Friends era of the late 1990s-early-2000s. The writing is fine. The cast is fine. They generate some good chemistry. Like all series, it takes a little time to get over the first awkwardness, but it does eventually find its rhythm.

Even then, though, it's not particularly groundbreaking or special. It's not offensive or bad. Just kind of there.

The series did try something a little different (at the time): There were four endings filmed for the final episode of Season 4, and viewers voted for their favorite online. Of course, there was no real resolution since the series was canceled.

Extras? Nope

New this week: DCI Banks, Season 4; Vera, Season 6.

Next week: Death in Paradise, Season 4; House of Cards, Season 4; The Real Ghostbusters, Volumes 1-5; The Rockford Files, Seasons 1-2; Saving Hope, Season 2.

Style on 06/26/2016

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