DAY TWO A 9:30-A.M. production meeting around the long Green Room table, brimming now with bagels and containers of coffee, finds cast and crew in place, and Persky, as usual, communi- cating authority, intelligence and enjoyment of his role in equal parts. Green scripts, incorporating changes, replace the yellow scripts of yesterday. On the set it quickly develops that strange and wonderful things have occurred overnight. Miraculously (so it seems), the actors have learned their lines; they're all working without scripts now. Timing has improved considerably; low-key jokes play sharper; but above all, nobody capital-A acts. In fact, the actors deliver their lines in such conversational tones, so apparently off-hand, that viewers share a sense of eavesdropping. Persky says to Jane, "Half the time I think you're talking to me. That's the ultimate accolade, isn't it?" In the afternoon, however, some undercurrents of tension begin to sur- face. Jane smokes and chews gum simultaneously, growing meditative, withdrawn. Susan, always "up," becomes positively hyper now, chattering and mugging while the crew repositions cameras and lights. But Bob Randall, at least, is totally relaxed. "Wow, how you cut that last scene," he says to Bill Persky. "That was so clever of you." And indeed it was. "We have idea conferences regularly," Randall says. "Our hardest job is not writing the scripts but getting the ideas for them. The phrase most heard at our meetings: We already did that.' In fewer than five years, more than one hundred variations on a theme!" With relish, he describes the show's evolution. "Merrill [Grant] and Mort [Lachman], Kate & Allie's executive producers, got it off the ground. Then Billy came in, then me. Jane was an uptight Connecticut lady when we began; now she's a tough New York lady." ("Most sitcoms are based on the fact that the characters don't change," Bill Persky has said. "Our show is based on the fact that they do") "We're all familiar, all related," Bob Randall goes on. "We're free to say the most lunatic things to each other. If Billy and I were competitive, we would have eaten each other's hearts out long ago." When the Day Two run-through ends, Randall says breathlessly, "It's wonderful." And oh, how he means it! DAY THREE Bill Persky, in the control room, concentrates now on making "The Band Singer" look good on camera. "Choreograph it to get it faster," he advises the actors. For all the cuts and tightening of the past two days, the show still runs long. Crew members have begun to bite their nails. Persky, who chews gum incessantly, chews it faster now. With only one more day to go, almost nothing seems resolved. "The wardrobe is all too hot," the director complains. "I want it to look as if they just fpund the stuff." Then he turns from the problems of the costumes to the musical segment, the episode's centerpiece. Allison, trying out her pink punk wig, seems in even better voice than yesterday. A feeling in the air persists that we may be witnessing the birth of a new grown-up singing star. Like Freddy Koehier and An Meyers (who does not appear in "The Band Singer" episode), Allison has grown up on Kate & AlUe. "IVs nice to know I'm needed here," she says. "When you're the youngest of six kids in your home, as I was, your sense of your own identity suffers. So now I have a whole other family life, and that's real nice." Twelve-year-old Freddy Koehier, who seems more casiialthan anyone during rehearsals but always performs like a seasoned pro, agrees with Allison—and Billy and Bob—-about the Kate & Allie family feeling. "Jane and Susan are both like my second mothers. But I'm much luckier than other kids," he says, "be- cause my real mother spends the entire day with me, too. She's probably my best friend," he adds gallantly.