Teaming With the Shrew
Copyright© 2025 by Argon
Chapter 6: The One With The Shingle
The rest of the production team had done their jobs nicely, with Sharon holding the reins, and we had the cast and the guest stars lined up. Only one show regular could not stay on, having secured a co-starring role in another production, but he could manage to appear as guest star in the first episode for a good exit.
The writers had already submitted the arc for the new season which would see Pris and Ricky handling a new roommate. There was only one glitch: we had not decided yet who would be playing him/her. Ideas were floated within the team, and we even contacted Gingham, asking him whether he had somebody with talent who needed work. It is always good to give the boss a chance find a space for a protégé, but Gingham had nobody available.
It was Sharon who identified a prospect. Germaine Brooks had been a top model ten years earlier who had even played herself in a moderately successful comedy movie. She still had name recognition and even some fans, but the previous years had not been kind to her. A cocaine possession rap had cost her a bunch of endorsement deals, and the rehab in a swanky clinic had cleaned out her bank account. She was interested, even eager to get work, and we scheduled a rehearsal for when Jennifer would be back in LA. After all, her new contract still contained a rider that gave her veto rights for guest stars.
As it turned out, we did not have to wait very long. Three weeks after I left Montreal, I was in my office and going over a guest star contract, when my door opened and a beaming Jennifer pushed me back from my desk to sit on my lap. Before I had a chance to say a word, my mouth was otherwise engaged. When Jennifer finally let go, I was contemplating just swiping the desk clean of folders and papers and having my way with her. She had other ideas.
“This is just a teaser. I have to go and see Sharon. Is she in?”
“She was two hours ago. What’s up?”
“My libido. That’s why I came in here first. As for Sharon, she’s our boss, so I have to pretend to report back. Be back in a sec!”
She was really back a few moments later, but only because she’d left her cell phone on my desk. After that, it took longer, over 40 minutes, before she returned with Sharon in tow.
“Our boss is inviting us for dinner. Attendance is mandatory,” Jenn announced and Sharon rolled her eyes.
“You guys must split up. She’s supposed to be the bitch queen, but you turned her into Little Miss Sunshine,” she told me.
“That’s me, the exorcist,” I gave back. “I swear, Petruchio never knew what didn’t hit him.”
“Oh, he knew all right,” Jenn laughed. “I’ll just be the happy bitch, not so uptight, and more devious, definitely more devious.”
“God help us!” Sharon grinned. “Can you join us, Ricky? Upstairs has given us some directions, and we need to formulate our response. Jimmy and Brenda-Lee will also join us.”
“They have problems with Germaine?”
“No, they have this idea to phase out the porn babes and bring in the network’s new talent or rehab cases like Germaine. You know, give them a chance to shine or shine again.”
I had to sigh. This had the potential for disaster.
“We’ll need veto rights. We have a great team and chemistry. We don’t need a succession of failed prima donnas.”
“I have veto rights, remember?” Jenn put in. “It’s not a bad idea though. It would also be a chance to bring in a bit of diversity.”
“Let’s see. We’ll have Suzy Chen, Ebonia Clarke and Lupe Vasquez on the female side. Tyrone Jefferson and Enrique Domingo are also slated. Damn, Sharon, the guys are right. Bringing in people from the business is getting a bit stale.”
“What about that American Indian motor mouth cutie we saw on YouTube?” Jenn asked.
We had seen the girl by chance. She defined the term ‘extrovert’, and was paired up with a deadpan sidekick in their YouTube channel, gabbing up a storm.
“Lucy Something ... Lucy Tanner, right? I checked. She’s still in college. She also appears in some cable ads in the Philadelphia area, doing her motor mouth shtick, even has some fan following already. We should keep her on the radar.”
“Can you give me some links?” Sharon asked, and I nodded.
“Can do. I can shift some of the adult performers to create openings for Gingham’s talent stable.”
“Good idea, Ricky. It’s not Gingham though; it’s Marilyn in Marketing. She wants to improve cross-promotions. Who knows, maybe she’ll place you as guest star in some show, too.”
“Yeah, as sleazy suspect in a crime show,” Jenn laughed.
“Better than lying around for hours playing a corpse,” I gave back.
“Oh, you’d be such a great stiff!” Jenn got out before she dissolved into giggles.
Jenn joined me at my apartment that night, bringing a suitcase.
“You plan on staying?”
“Smart boy! Would you rather we slept apart?”
“I guess I can suppress my misgivings.”
“Thought so. My apartment is a rat hole compared with this. You must have made out like ... well, a porn star.”
“Well, it made sense fiscally, but I had to forego my dream of making it on the theatre stages. At least, until now.”
“You couldn’t afford to sleep under a bridge with theatre acting,” Jenn laughed, hugging me tightly. “I’ve been doing alright, but it took me until last year until I could afford to rent my own apartment, and it’s a dump.”
“Well, it wasn’t all roses. There are some nice girls in the biz, but working with some of the others was no fun at all.”
“Poor you!” Jenn giggled unashamedly. “Why don’t you put some violin on the stereo to accompany your tales of woe? Gracious! You were boinking attractive girls for a living! Try to work at a fast food joint for maybe a tenth of what you made! Try collecting garbage for only slightly more! Even now you’re paid well. You do very good work, true, but you’re a lucky bastard landing in the clover at every step.”
“Hey, my parents are married! You’re right though. I came out of that career alright. I even have a fallback now.”
Jenn giggled again. “I cannot see you as a lawyer. There’s a fine line between fucking people and fucking them over, and I don’t think you have it in you to cross that line.”
“Thank’s for the vote of confidence! I did alright negotiating your new contract, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did, Sweetie. You are an amazing guy, really, and I’m happy to have snagged you!”
“It helped that we’ve been friends already. The way you stood up for me last spring was ... heartwarming.”
“I was pissed off royally. We had such a good chemistry, we had so much fun, and they wanted to force-feed that plonker Dumont to us.”
“Well, you butchered him.”
“I did, didn’t I? Oh, I saw Wesley Graham last week in Montreal. He came to our last show, and we chatted a bit. You know that he was playing the lead in Jeanne Renault’s new production? It’s called Lock-Out. It’s about two American ballplayers who join a French basketball team during an NBA lock-out. Well, Dumont was on the cast as second male lead playing Wes’s rookie sidekick. He was a total wash-out. Inept, flabby, abrasive, inconsiderate to everybody, including old Jeanne and even Melanie Renault. He hadn’t done more than two scenes when Jeanne fired his arse already for gross misconduct. Get this: they replaced him with a total newbie, Melanie Renault’s college boyfriend. He was a varsity player for the Trojans, and according to Wesley, he nailed the role. I guess, Dumont will really have to go into soft core porn.”
“Jeez, that guy, wasn’t he injured in a traffic accident and paraplegic, I mean Renault’s boyfriend?”
“Yes, but she nursed him back. Wes said they’re hooked for good.”
“Good for her, probably, after that shit with Brentano,” I opined. I had followed Don Brentano’s rape trial. He had violated the fourteen year old Melanie Renault, and her mother only used it to blackmail the slime ball into giving her lucrative roles, while her daughter went into a downward spiral that culminated in a DUI crash in which she almost crippled her future boyfriend. Then I had a brain wave. “Can we perhaps snag either of them as guest stars? Put the episode in the can and wait for their movie to be released?”
“See, you’re not just some big-dicked troglodyte! You even have ideas!” Jenn laughed, but she cuddled close and gave me a kiss. “Great ideas in fact. I haven’t met her yet, but I think it’s better if I sound her out. With all that shit in her past she might just be leery responding to a call from a disreputable rascal like you.”
“Point taken. You’re in the driver’s seat for this. They’ll probably decline anyway.”
We left it at that, and I helped Jenn putting her things away. It was late, and we hadn’t eaten yet, so we got into Isabella to drive to a restaurant in style. It was a small family place and under the paparazzis’ radar, and we could enjoy our food in peace. Afterwards, Jenn insisted on a stroll around Santa Monica Pier, and of course, ten minutes later, the gnats were swarming around us, asking stupid questions and trying to get pictures of us.
“I guess we’re having our coming out,” I remarked.
“Better to get it out in the open,” Jenn shrugged. “I’m not ashamed of you, Ricky. With Monahan out, the studio won’t care either, and after a while, us being together will be old news.”
“Your words to God’s ear, baby!”
The backlash was not as bad as I had feared. First of all, neither of us was front page news to begin with, and secondly, the fans of our show drowned out the clamours of the scandal mongers in the social media. We received about twice as much fan mail as normal, and three fourths of Jenn’s fans were supportive and even ecstatic. On my side, it was more like two to one. I guess my gay fans — I had never known how many I had — were disappointed over me turning openly hetero on them. Oh well, you can’t please everybody.
When we had our first scene together, somebody piped the Wedding March into the sound system, causing the whole crew to clap and hoot. Apart from that, we did our jobs as usual on the set and got the first two episodes into the can with only minimal time overruns. We had to shake out some rust after the summer. If anything, Jenn’s bitchiness on camera was even more scathing than ever before, with me the frequent target. She also kept summoning me using ‘Follow, Grumio’ and was not shy to explain the pun to anybody willing to listen.
Germaine Brooks joined the cast as recurring guest star in Episode 3. She needed some time to acclimatize to our ways and to grow into her role. Still, her joining the cast led to a twelve percent increase of viewership, improving our rankings by two positions, and by Episode 5, she had got the rust out of her system, allowing the writers to give her juicier dialogue lines.
Her Deep South diction — she was from Alabama — was another boon. She and Jenn initially had problems communicating even in reality, with Jenn understanding only half the words out of Germaine’s mouth. On the other hand, Germaine could not follow Jenn’s explanations in her rapid fire English, always delivered with her pitch raising towards the end of a sentence. I could sympathize with Germaine.
The writers soon made that a running gag in their dialogues, with either of them demanding repeats of the last line. We cast members of course accused them of just trying to get longer shoots out of whatever they wrote.
We also worked our way through our list of guest stars, alternating studio talent with the last of the performers coming from the adult movie side. In late October, we had one of the studio talents, Jolene Conolly, guest starring. She was a late addition to the cast of a long running crime show, playing a crime scene investigator, and the fans of the show disliked her heartily. Not only had she replaced a popular co-star, but she looked ridiculous, examining crime scenes in four-inch heels and skin tight pants. Her episode with us was planned to show her funny side. For two days, we searched for it and to no avail. She was wooden in the delivery of her lines, and always trying to pose to bring her physical assets to the fore. Those she had abundantly, but we were making a real sitcom, not one of the fake, porn sitcoms. Sharon took her to the side to explain that, Jenn even took her to lunch on day two to talk some sense into her, but she treated our cast and staff as minions, barely good enough to serve her aspirations.
On day four, with no useable scene to show, Brenda-Lee suggested a radical solution, and an annoyed Sharon readily agreed. Jolene was given a rewritten script of her entry scene, where she rings the doorbell and Jenn opens.
Sarah: Hi, I’m Sarah Jenkins. I came about the room you advertised. I guess it must still be free, given the poor condition of the house?
Priscilla: If it’s in such a poor condition, why would you want to move in?
Sarah: It’s only until I can find something more appropriate and in a better neighborhood.
Priscilla: Oh, I’m sorry. This is not a B&B. I am looking for a roommate; I do not let rooms on a weekly basis. Or hourly, for that matter.
Sarah (eyebrows raised): Well, you shouldn’t be picky. What would anybody want to move into this place for? I can hardly...
Priscilla: You really should not end sentences on a preposition.
Sarah: Who made you the pope? Can I see that room now?
Priscilla: You could, but you may not. Have a good day, Ms. Jenkins. (closes the door)
Sarah: Why, you bitch! (bangs the door with her fists) Open up, you stuck-up bitch. Open up! (bangs door again) I’m not going away! I’m gonna sue you, you hear! O — pen up! (keeps banging).
Special effects: Close-up of roof with a shingle coming loose and sliding down over the roof edge.
Jolene delivered the scene, needing seven takes, but when she learned the context, she did not stay to impersonate the corpse. A gaffer filled in for her, because the following scene showed a coroner’s van picking up a female corpse and a cop taking Jenn’s statement.
Meanwhile, Jolene stormed off the set, vowing to sic her agent on us. Apparently, she next barged into Gingham’s office, demanding that our entire cast and staff be fired. After a brief phone call with Sharon, Gingham simply fired her. We were told afterwards that she had been on notice already. The suitcase pimp she employed as her agent threatened to sue the studio and was told to knock himself out. We never heard of them again.
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