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Here’s a little behind-the-scenes vignette on the Season 2 finale of 10 Items or Less.

A pox on that! Hither with the episode recap, anon!

Huzzah! It’s ye olde Renaissance Days at the G&G, and prices (and personal hygiene) are being rolled back to the time before the printing press. (Didn’t Steve Guttenberg invent the printing press?) Renaissance Days is Leslie’s best promotion ever. It’s much better than the “Cheese or Not Cheese” idea he and Carl had. The G&G crew is dressed up in their best Ren Faire attire. They look like rented costumes from a high-school production of King Lear.

The crew is not so thrilled with the promotion, but they’ll put up with it to get their bonuses (or is it bonii?) Oh, about that. Leslie announces that times have been tough and there will be no bonuses this year. Now Yolanda can’t send her kid to Space Camp or modeling school. (Leslie was once an underwear model in the Sears catalog. Well, not quite the catalog, more of a supplemental magazine.) Leslie says he’s going to cash in his mood ring collection and throw the employees a party or, better yet, they’re going to challenge Super Value Mart to a joust with shopping carts! How this gets Yolanda’s kid closer to Space Camp, I do not know.

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Leslie is taking very creepy photos of G&G employees for a promotional calendar. This year, they’re American historical figures. Todd is Paul Revere, the first American sex symbol. Sex sells. Sex sells food. Sex sells liverwurst and ant killer. Leslie gives Todd $300 to take his shirt off.

Ingrid and Amy are arguing about who gets to be Betsy Ross. Ingrid wins out, and Amy is stuck with the oversized frumpy Martha Washington outfit. The right woman won because Ingrid is a smoking hot Betsy Ross. Todd invites Ingrid into the freezer to, you know, have sex.

Leslie doesn’t want the calendar to be about history, but about “her story,” so he puts Ingrid on the calendar’s cover. Amy’s jealous that Ingrid looks awesome, even if she does look like a “colonial stripper.” Amy and Leslie get into argument about who’s more American. It seems Leslie has run for Senate six times, and lost.

Ingrid’s not very comfortable with being a sex symbol, having random customers come up to compliment her on her cleavage. And it seems Ingrid doesn’t know anything about American history, as she has no clue who Betsy Ross is. Embarrassed, Ingrid runs off crying.

We find out that Ingrid’s not really an American citizen. Leslie’s dad hired her with a fake social security number. She was born in Poland, but her family crossed the border from Canada into the U.S. Most people just assumed she wasn’t too bright because she was home schooled. Amy overhears that Ingrid is an illegal alien, and calls the police. Officer Chet shows up and Amy forces him to arrest Ingrid. But Ingrid doesn’t stay arrested for long, and she hides out in the dairy case.

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The G&G crew is enjoying Internet video of Amy from Super Value Mart getting it on with a district regional manager in the employee break room. Leslie scolds his crew for making fun of people, but the video of his high-school (and current) crush in action proves too much for him to resist.

Amy is distraught over being fired. Apparently she signed a morality clause, and having sex with her boss in the break room and having it broadcast to millions somehow violates that clause. Amy realizes that Leslie is her only friend. Suddenly, an assistant manager position has just opened up at the G&G! And there’s no morality clause — Amy can have sex with whoever, whenever and wherever at the G&G!

This doesn’t sit well with the G&G crew. But Leslie reminds everyone that even Darth Vader was nice in the end, and that they should embrace Amy as one of their own. The problem is, Amy doesn’t seem too excited about embracing the “G&G” way. She’s shocked that Leslie would send a customer to a different store to buy a product instead of trying to sell her something she doesn’t want. And she’s horrified that employees eat lunch with managers. Managers shouldn’t consort with the underlings, or the underlings will take advantage of the managers — case in point, Yolanda taking the afternoon off to get a mani/pedi.

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Todd put together a nice business presentation for Leslie. Todd must be serious — he’s wearing a suit and everything! It seems Todd won five cows in a game of poker, beating out some mentally challenged guy named Ricky who sucks at bluffing. Anyway, Todd thinks “The mouth of the people needs fresh meat!” and he wants Leslie to start selling fresh beef at the G&G.

Leslie likes Todd’s idea, and like a seed, Todd’s idea needs manure to grow. Someone needs to go No. 2 all over Todd’s idea. Like how customers can select live lobsters from an aquarium at the store, Leslie wants an “aquarium for cows” at the G&G. Customers can get “sushi-grade” beef — Mooshi! — from cows slaughtered right at the store. So Leslie and Todd enter a business romance, which Leslie calls a “bromance.”

Both Richard and Buck want off of work early tomorrow, but Leslie’s got big bromantic plans for Mooshi and can’t have both guys off at the same time. Leslie has to put on his jerk mask and use his jerk voice. Richard explains that he has an audition for a production of Lord of the Rings on Ice, and he needs Buck to give him a ride. Richard has a real chance to be Gollum. Leslie really loved Close Encounters on Ice, so he lets Richard and Buck go — now they too are involved in a bromance.

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Leslie’s new Customer Appreciation Corner offers free coffee for everyone. But there’s a problem — he’s gone through 45 cases of French Vanilla Coffee-mate creamer this week alone. Where’s it all going? Carl knows. He’s hooked on the stuff, drinking it straight, making Carltinis, adding it to Juevos Carlitos and putting it on fish.

At the customer service desk, Leslie notices Ingrid writing about her Virginity Goodbye Project. Yes, Ingrid is a virgin, but she’s decided to put an end to that. Leslie supports her in this effort, and wants to know if there’s anything he can do to, uh … help. Ingrid says that there is something Leslie can do. As a matter of fact, he’s the first one on her list.

But Leslie’s not so sure he can do it, after all, he’s her boss. But Ingrid says that it’s a work-related problem, and that fantasizing about Todd has affected her job. Well, since this is an HR problem, Leslie’s got to take care of it. It’s a business operation. They’re going to get it on tonight, and it’s going to be crazy!

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It’s the one-year anniversary of Leslie’s father’s passing. A year ago, Bud Pool collapsed in the kosher foods aisle, and like the yeast in the lavache bread, he never rose. Carl was the first on the scene, but he could not resuscitate Bud — there were mumblings that Carl had to stock the bread first. Leslie’s having a memorial service for his father in the kosher section, and Ingrid plays four mournful tunes on her accordion. Leslie wants to spread his father’s ashes, but he can’t do it in the store, as the ashes are too “chunky.” Leslie reminds us that death stalks us at every moment. He certainly convinced one elderly woman, as she dies then and there. The kosher aisle claims another victim.

Leslie realizes that if he were to die, he’d have no heir to leave the store to. He calls a meeting and announces that he’s dying … of life. Pieces of him are dying every day: fingernails, hair, skin cells. All dying. Leslie wants to leave the store to one of his employees, and he’s going to give each one of them a chance to interview to inherit the G&G.

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Buck is over an hour late to work, and he stinks of booze. He tells Richard that his friends took him out last night for his 21st birthday, and he drank a lot of kamakazes, cosmopolitans or cosmokazes — he can’t remember. And apparently he hooked up with an older blonde French woman … who looks a lot like Amy from Super Value Mart. Knowing Leslie would feel betrayed, Richard and Buck have to keep this a secret.

Leslie thinks Buck has a drinking problem, and he wants to mobilize the crew into helping Buck out. Yolanda has to get a strand of Buck’s hair for a DNA sample. Todd has to get the urine sample.

The crew holds an intervention (or “intermission” according to Carl). Leslie wants to send Buck to a camp for alcoholics. He also wants to send Richard to a camp for codependence, which just turns out to be a musical theater camp. Ingrid reveals a dark secret that she once had an obsession problem … with Milli Vanilli. When they lost their Grammy, she could not blame it on the rain. She blamed herself. Buck explains what really happened — he went out with friends, got drunk and picked up Amy Anderson at the Fantabulous Bang Bang Monkey Bar.

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Leslie and Carl are setting up for tomorrow’s big promotion in which Greens & Grains customers can go into one of those money booths for a minute and grab all the flying cash they can. Amy from Super Value Mart storms into Greens & Grains wondering why there are “Free Money!” banners all over her parking lot. As a gesture of goodwill, Leslie lets Amy into the booth to grab a little cash for herself. (Amy loves money. And Leslie loves Amy loving money.) But the booth is filled with $5,000 in silver dollar coins that Leslie’s father stashed away in the store for years. Amy grabs handfuls and shoefuls of the coins, which, much to Leslie and Carl’s surprise, don’t fly anywhere. But the booth has a sticky lock, and Amy can’t get out. She panics, drops all her coins, and leaves with nothing. Leslie sends Carl and Buck to the bank to change the silver dollars into bills.

Meanwhile, Yolanda is making out with Jim, a produce guy from Super Value Mart. Leslie protests, claiming that Yolanda’s sleeping with the enemy and could divulge company produce secrets — like that Leslie buys the bananas from the weird guy in the van out back.

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If you’ve tuned to TBS at all in the past few weeks, you know that 10 Items or Less is coming back for Season 2 on Jan. 15 at 11pm ET. 10 Items was one of the better comedies from the fall ’06 season and one that flew under a lot of people’s radar. If you haven’t seen it, think of it as The Office in a grocery store, sans the documentary style. If you’ve been looking for something to cleanse the palate from all the bad reality shows and uninspired midseason replacements during the writers’ strike, 10 Items might offer sweet relief.

We’re going to blog about and recap highlights (and product placements!) from 10 Items here starting next week, so come back and partake in the goodness.

Back in November, I talked with actor/producer John Lehr, who stars as Greens & Grains grocery store owner Leslie Pool, about what’s in store for 10 Items this season. Check out our interview below. And also find out which Starship Enterprise captain Lehr once peed next to in our famous “8 Questions With …” column, only in the January edition of Channel Guide Magazine.

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