Chapter 3

In most professions when you decide to leave an employer, you usually receive regrets from your fellow workers that you are leaving. That is not necessarily the case in the acting profession or it wasn’t in Ryan’s case when he said he was leaving the soap. No one except for Trish made that type of remark to him. Sharon may have but she was gone doing her DWTS. That’s just the way it is in this business he thought.

This new television series Ryan was going to be involved in was ready to start production. He was required to attend a meeting this Friday at the studio where it was going to be discussed what was involved in making this series. Making the episodes were scheduled to start the following Monday.

At the meeting, before it started Ryan was welcomed and introduced to several people. Emma Carson was a very attractive lady who was probably ten years younger than him. She was cordial but at the same time, he sensed that she thought she was the star of the show. Ryan had learned from being in this business not to make waves or have an inflated ego. He would just take it as it comes, one day at a time, and see how it goes.

The meeting started with the writers talking about the storyline and how it would progress. That was followed by the producers indicating the locations where these scenes would be done. The scenes of indoor activities would be made at the studio but three outside locations would be used which would be combined to depict this clinic being located in a small town by a lake.

The one point that was stressed was the participation of actors and actresses. For sure the two main characters who were the doctors would appear in every episode along with their nurses and the clinic’s staff but that was not the case for the other actors. Some of them might make only an initial appearance in one or two episodes as the billionaire, his mother, and his aunt. Others as the foundation administrator, the hospital administrator, and lady friends would not be appearing in all the episodes either. The frequency of their appearance would vary and depend on the storyline development. This was being done in an attempt to control production costs. The main storyline will center on the two main characters.

It was mentioned that initially there were ten episodes scheduled to be made but after the first five were aired the network had the option of extending that number. Ryan was given a script to study for the following Monday when the filming would start.

Wanting to make a good first impression Ryan spent the weekend memorizing his lines in preparation for Monday.

The following week turned out to be interesting for several reasons. It was announced that the first episode was going to be combined with the second episode to have a two-hour premiere. This series started with Ryan playing the role of a successful plastic surgeon. Progression was to his hand shaking in doing a procedure, then to being diagnosed with dystonia, turning to drink, being involved in a medical emergency, and being offered and accepting the position of a small-town doctor.

It was a somewhat similar situation for Emma. It showed her finishing up her internship working in the emergency department of a large hospital in the center of the city of Chicago. She was treating victims of gunshots and stabbings along with the usual types of illnesses or injuries. After being accosted on the way home from work in an attempted carjacking she knew she wanted to leave the city. She applied for the position of a doctor at this clinic in northern California that her brother told her was being established. Both Ryan and Emma would be shown coming to the clinic and finding housing as well as having their first impressions of this small town.

The storyline of the following episodes continued with the two doctors meeting each other at the clinic and agreeing to help each other to make this medical practice a success. A number of these scenes in finding housing or getting hospital privileges were filmed at different locations. That made for a long day and a solid five days of work to produce a one-hour episode. To Ryan, it was harder work than what he had been doing on the TV soap but he felt it to be more professionally rewarding being an actor in making these episodes.

The network advertised its new fall season giving considerable attention to this new show. The time slot of seven on a Friday evening was a plus in that it was up against half-hour comedy shows shown on the other networks. Emma and Ryan did some virtual phone interviews with critics in several cities about the show.

The first show received positive reviews after it was shown. Trish phoned Ryan and congratulated him. She thought he did a fine acting job and said she would be a steady viewer. He thanked her and asked her out this Saturday but she declined, saying she had a prior commitment.

After the fourth episode was shown, because of the show’s top twenty ratings, the network exercised its option and requested a total of twenty-two episodes to be made for the first season. By the season’s end, the show was in the top ten of all television shows. The show was renewed for a second season of twenty-two episodes. What Ryan was being paid for each episode amounted to a big payday for him.

Making these episodes was not an easy thing to do. The workdays were long and sometimes ran into the evenings. There were occasions when they needed to work on Saturday because of the weather. Even though Ryan would be sitting on his butt when the scene solely involved Emma, he spent the time memorizing his lines for his next scene.

Sunday was his day of rest and he used that day to get ready for the following week by lying on his couch watching sports on television along with reading the next week’s script.

One thing he observed in making these episodes was that Emma was not as good of an actress as she thought she was. Her retention of the lines in the script left something to be desired. He got along with her but had the impression that she would like to be the domineering lead character on the show. The reactions of the viewers from what the producers would at times remark were that the viewers wanted to see more of Ryan in the show. Ryan did notice that he was getting more time on the show than Emma.

A few of the actors who had small roles expressed the desire to have their roles increase. Some of that did happen but the producers knew who their bread and butter were and stayed the course with Emma and Ryan being the main characters.