The chairs were critical. By having two extras, they decided they were at the lane, not at the bar or walking to get popcorn. That opened up the possibility that someone new might be coming. Andrews suspected someone was. Kornfeld had no idea. In his peripheral vision, Kornfeld saw the bouncy, assured energy of his partner, and he moved in the opposite direction.

Kornfeld (trying to enter his name on a pretend computerized scoreboard): What do I shorten my name to? Andrews: Pete? Kornfeld: Nah. I want it to be — Andrews: And they only give you three letters? … Kornfeld: It feels weird for it to be Pet.

And with that, an entire psychology and back story was born.

“Once he named me Pete and then Pet would be my name, it instantly made me think it was insulting to think of someone as being like a pet,” Kornfeld recalled. “I knew immediately I felt small and insecure and reassured around this guy. I knew I would be slowly revealing my insecurities so you can beef me up and make me feel better about myself.”

That sparked the question that would dominate the subtext of the first half of the show: What was making him so nervous? Andrews’s calm response to his friend’s insecurity clarified his character and the central relationship of the show. He didn’t tease or offer a big reaction. Part of this, Andrews said, is a strategy for opening scenes. “If you keep the energy steady,” he said, “you hear the notes of the characters over and over again and then it just helps slowly coming to an agreement about what’s happening.”

But it was also a choice indicating this was a real friendship, and that he was playing someone trying to help. “If I bristled, that would suggest a dynamic where I’m poking you and making you feel hurt,” Andrews said, adding that he believed that for characters to remain interesting for an hour, you have to empathize with them.

Kornfeld (deciding to input his friend’s name, Dou, short for Doug, first): You happy with that? Andrews: Yeah. I feel fine about it. Kornfeld: Back to Position 2. That didn’t buy me nearly enough time. I just feel like when the girls come here, I just don’t want to be Pet.

Andrews had begun to think this might be romantic anxiety. But he wasn’t sure until he turned his head to look around, and Kornfeld fretted about being called Pet. Now both performers were on the same page: It’s a show about a double date.

Andrews (after some disagreement over whether “adorable” is the right adjective for Pete): What’s your male machismo, what’s your attractiveness, what’s your main No. 1 selling point? Kornfeld: Oh, confidentiality.

Andrews cited a theory by Keegan-Michael Key comparing improv comedy to a camera starting in a close-up and then slowly zooming out. But there comes a point where the picture frame gets set and that’s when Pete said his main selling point was “confidentiality.”