Arvin: Arvin Brown, Director.

John: John Rogers, executive producer and writer of this particular episode.

Chris: Chris Downey, executive producer, and this is The Rashomon Job. John?

John: Yeah. Which we played around with a couple different names for it, it’d always been shorthand, The Rashomon Job, and then it just- we wound up keeping it. This was-

Chris: You had another title, though, that you kinda-

John: This was The Five Story Job. 

Chris: The Five Story Job. 

John: The Five Story Job, just cause ‘Two Story’ is a classic. And also House won their Emmy with a three story job. So I figured two more stories would get us our Emmy. 

[Arvin and Chris Laugh]

Arvin: I like Rashomon Job, though.

John: Thank you very much. It’s a classic. And really, it was born- this has been the free pitch that’s been kicking around for ages. This was that high-concept idea I think we even had in the first year, and just, like, all right, you have to know the characters really well for it to make any sense whatsoever and it has to be basically a standalone. And nicely enough, we hit a weird soft spot, a gap in the arc narrative this year. 

Chris: Right. 

John: So we had this free one. And so I took all our notes we had accumulated and basically banged this out in about a week. Which turned out pretty great.

Chris: Yeah, it has to be executed perfectly or it’s a complete disaster. 

[Arvin Laughs]

John: Yeah.

Chris: And you did it in a week.

John: Yeah. [Laughs] Well, no, the boys up on set did it, because this- writing it was a bear, but- oh, “I stole it!”  That was the high concept. The pitch was always, they were watching the news and “I stole it!” And Sophie Soong, who is a recurring character now, she’s the reporter from The Inside Job. Arvin, what’d you think when you got the script?

Arvin: I thought it was impossible. 

[John and Chris Laugh] 

Arvin: I thought this was probably the end of my TV career. 

Chris: [Chuckles] Now Arvin, you have a background in theater. Now- and this one really required an awful lot of entrances and exits. What did you bring from your theater background to approach this?

Arvin: Well actually, y'know, the interesting thing is that a lot of the plays I did, particularly toward the end of my theater career before I made the total transition into television, were very impressionistic plays. Y’know, the- television and the screen has influenced contemporary playwriting more than anyone realizes. So, a lot of times I’d be in situations where I needed to create transitions, and odd appearances, and disappearances. One in particular, for example, there’s a writer, Peter Nichols, British writer. And I did a play of his called Forget-Me-Not-Lane in which people would open closet doors and there would be somebody, and then they’d close the closet door, and open it again and that person was gone. You know, so all that really played into this in fine fettle.

John: This is meant to be, really- you could do this as a play. This episode, if you had like three staging spots on a stage, you could pull this off.

Arvin: Yeah, that’s true.

John: And that was the key, is- our 1st AD, Eric- and this was also- the recurring visuals was really important for editing.

Arvin: Incidentally, doesn’t Gina look gorgeous?

Chris: Oof, wow.

John: Gina looks stunning in that dress. That dress is killer. And it was interesting, Eric, our 1st AD saw this and he said, “You’re mad.” And then as we talked about it, you realize everything really takes place in three spots. Everything else- is just, you talk about it a lot but you’re never actually there.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: You know what I mean? And that’s the key to any of this. Ah, there’s Traber, Traber Burns, he’s a local Portland actor, and did a great job for us as the main villain.

Arvin: And who had incidentally, a wonderful time doing it, and has been in correspondence with me since.

John: Oh, that’s great. No, he was fantastic. Now talk about- sort of the challenge about setting up Tim as the observer character. Because we talked about a couple different ways to establish him, and he was coming up the stairs with Gina there, as the, sort of- y’know, and there he is, he’s popping into frame.

Chris: I guess we call this the “Annie Hall” sort of narrative.

John: Yeah.

Chris: In which people appear in the flashbacks.

Arvin: One of the challenges, though, in this kind of a situation is to keep him active. Because the trap with the observer character, y’know, is that it becomes very, very passive. So that’s one of the reasons I kept finding these ways to sort of have him physically be there, appear, and visit, and suddenly be gone whether it’s in the closet or just-

John: Rather than just hanging about.

Arvin: Yeah, exactly.

John: It has to be startling and notable when he’s there. Also-

Arvin: And that creates its own sense of amusement, so that he’s got a certain color watching all of this stuff.

John: That also is an in-camera effect. The fade out. Dave Connell came up with that, right? The idea that we would have him fade out by bouncing a bright light on him and reflecting in that glass and then just killing the light.

Arvin: Right, yeah.

John: No, it was a really, really lovely effect.

Arvin: Yeah. I was- I loved that. 

John: And this is where we start to get into the bones of it. Oh, that’s Juan, that’s Juan Canopii, who’s playing our minister. And this was- this was the trick, the- I’ll have on my website, you can go find it on kungfumonkey.com, or blogspot.com. There is the flowchart for where everyone is, who everyone is, and what they’re doing at any given time. And it’s three pages long.

Chris: Now, did you do it with- did you do it visually? Did you have the maps of the sets, and you had- and you had three pages, and you kind of-? Is that how you worked?

John: No, it was- I specifically built each person’s story.

Chris: Okay.

John: I figured out, what would Gina’s attack as a grifter be- and that was the fun of it, that was what really gave us the birth of Grifter, Hitter, Hacker, Thief. 

Arvin: Right.

John: And nicely enough, a phrase we threw away in Season 1 became the archetype for the show. 

Arvin: This guy, we should mention quickly, incidentally, is Riley.

John: Oh yeah, of course!

Chris: Riley Smith.

Arvin: Who is best friend of Chris Kane, yeah.

John: They’ve been friends since they were teenagers.

Arvin: Yeah. And he did a great job.

John: Just a great, great job. Really, really flawless. No, it was really- that was the trick, was building out Gina’s- pardon me, Sophie’s story, what everyone else could possibly play within that story, and then after that everyone’s approach to the crime fell out of that.

Chris: Right.

John: You know, why they would need to be there? Why they would need access? etc. etc. etc.

Chris: And then, presumably, the things they interacted with then were kind of things that you could incorporate into the other stories.

John. Yeah.

Chris: The ‘World’s Greatest Grandpa’ mug-

John: Yeah.

Chris: And stuff like that. 

John: And we’ve got- I mean, in the room, I finally came out into the room with a bunch of paper cups and objects and folded notecards, to the writer’s room and said “All right, help me.”

[Chris & Arvin Laugh]

John: “I have- this object has to wind up in this cup. At some point through the iteration.” Cause the trick is, each person needs a perfectly flawless plan. 

Chris: Right.

John: It’s five heists that have to all go wrong not independently, but interdependently. 

Chris: Right.

John: I was drinking fairly heavily by the end of this one.

[Chris and Arvin Laugh]

Arvin: Incidentally, we should note, too, that I have rarely done a script that actors have fallen so completely in love with as this one. Cause of course every single member of the cast gets a phenomenal opportunity.

John: Oh, yeah. And they get ten big pages of playing a character-

Arvin: And every time they got hopelessly confused cause of the way I had to shoot this, and to try to remember desperately which story they were in, I would remind them of how much they loved this script. 

[John & Chris Laugh]

John: “I know you’re really miserable right now at two o’clock in the morning.”

Chris: There’s some actor maintenance advice there from our director.

John: Yup. And John Billingsley, Oh, he’s great in this.

Chris: Now that was your suggestion, wasn’t it, Arvin?

Arvin: Yeah, John I have worked with so often and he is the most versatile, most remarkable character actor. I did a television film with him where he played a just brutal interrogator, prosecuting attorney. So he’s got tremendous dramatic chops.

Chris: But- but you needed him to swing from kind of meek to menacing. And that is- that’s a tough thing to do.

John: Absolutely.

Arvin: And have a certain believability in all of it, and also have a sense of comic timing. Which incidentally, is one of the things that the regular cast has in spades in this episode. Their timing is so good.

John: Yeah. And that was something that- we could not have a weak sister on this character. This character is as strong as the other five in this particular situation. 

Arvin: Absolutely.

John: If you don’t believe that fifth act turn, you’re done.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: Really, yeah, no, it’s Noises Off, but with crime.

Arvin: [Laughs] That’s right! That’s almost- exactly right.

Chris: In a way, it’s almost his story, isn’t it? I mean, you look at it that way?

John: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. 

Chris: If you had to zero in on whose story it is.

John: Absolutely. If the rule is the protagonist is the person who suffers the most, it’s definitely Cosgrove’s story. 

[Arvin & Chris Laugh]

Arvin: Yeah.

John: No, it’s just- also I was delighted by the idea of the sort of cluelessness of hearing what people say and you’re not really paying attention so you assign- I love the fluidity of memory. That’s just one of my favorite things to write about. I’ve written about it a bunch of times.

Arvin: It’s wonderful- it’s a wonderful phrase, too. And I gotta tell you, while we’re looking at Gina, a very quick funny story there. We had one dark moment in prep where we had gone to Gina and she was really hoping to have complete costume and hair changes in every single story.

John: Yes. In each story.

Arvin: And of course, practically speaking that would have been an absolute nightmare.

John: Production-wise.

Arvin: So we had to convince her that she could do it completely from an acting point of view, which of course eventually she got excited about.

John: Yeah, and she does!

Arvin: She does. That’s wonderful.

John: Those are two entirely different- and that was - the hair is different, the difference between the geeky woman in the little jacket, and, you know, Gina in that dress- there’s no comparison, you know?

Arvin: Exactly.

John: And also, that’s tricky, because that was one of the discussions we had about the audience being able to track what the hell is going on. 

Arvin: Yeah.

John: You know, because the entire episode is basically a series of nested flashbacks, and so if she’s wearing something different and she’s too different you lose-

Arvin: Exactly right.

John: Where in the narrative you are. Yeah.

Chris: Mmhm.

John: Also the voices are great. Because at some point in the episode, as her accent deteriorates, I actually wrote in the script, “Sophie:” and then the dialogue block just says “Unintelligible British gibberish.”

[Laughter]

Arvin: Yes! I know. I loved that.

John: And just- Gina, being a fantastic comedic actress, just tee’d off on it. Beth could barely keep herself together.

Chris: That was right, didn’t you- you got to shoot that over and over again, right?

Arvin: Oh yeah, they couldn’t control themselves.

Chris: They kept breaking up.

John: And now, also to say, Arvin, I also wrote this bear and then stranded you. Because I went straight from this into the finale with Chris. 

Chris: Right.

John: So Jeff Thorne, the writer on Inside Job, who had been my writer on Inside Job, the one I directed, babysat this. 

Arvin: Yeah.

John: And since, you know, we’d worked together, he knew what I was going for.

Arvin: And he did a nice job. He really did. And he has the right sense of how to deal with actors.

John: Well, you know, he used to be an actor.

Arvin: Oh, no, I didn’t know that?

John: Yeah that was Jeff-

Chris: [Laughs] We’re outing you on DVD, Jeff!

John: I know- How long was he on In The Heat Of The Night? Five-

Chris: Five seasons.

Arvin: He was on what?

John: He was on- In Heat of the Night for five seasons.

Arvin: Oh my-! I never knew that.

John: And it’s one of those things that he never talks about it in the writer’s room.

Arvin: Nor on set, let me tell you!

Chris: No.

John: And it’s like, when we found out in the writer’s room, it was like we found out he’d been involved in human trafficking. 

[Laughter]

John: We were so filled with rage.

Arvin: One of the things I kind of worked on here with these little framing scenes-

John: Oh yeah, framing devices.

Arvin: Which is very important to me. Had a link with each- one actor would take us to the next area of the set that they would be in.

John: It’s a great use of space, whenever you bounce back, you know what version of the story you’re in. 

Arvin: Yeah, rather than just finding people in different places, there was always a thematic element that took us to the new place.

Chris: Now this is a great little fight, John, and if I may just blow some smoke. I think you do an amazing job, in these episodes, of bringing us in media res in these-

John: Yeah, thank you.

Chris: In these Eliot fights, and they always have a great punchline to them. 

Arvin: Yeah, this was- I love this one.

Chirs: They have a setup, they have a punchline, and it delivers exposition.

John: Uh, I will absolutely tell you that Jackie Chan taught me that. Jackie Chan taught me, because I worked with Jackie briefly, and he was like, you know, each fight is three acts. You know, each fight- and there’s also, if you look at the fights that I write, I wind up- you know, everyone’s got their toolbox, in a lot of scripts, in the Eliot fight, even if it’s not my script, I end up swanning in on it. He also showed me the fight line: the one line that you do the fight along. And everything else is peripheral, but as long as you have one line to shoot on, you can shoot it quickly. And that’s why you’ll notice a lot of times Christian is fighting along one axis.

Arvin: Yeah.

Chris: It’s great.

John: And then you can just throw a lot of stuff at him.

Chris: Yeah, exactly.

John: And this guy is named Gutman, of course because of The Maltese Falcon.

Chris: Oh, that’s great. 

John: There you go.

Arvin: We love that.

John: There you go, this is plainly The Maltese Falcon at this point.

Arvin: We all love that.

John: Yeah.

Arvin: He did a great job.

John: He was fantastic and it’s a very small part.

Chris: And a nice menacing push in there.

John: I know!

Chris: I love a good push in.

[Arvin Laughs]

John: I also love the- love the read Christain found here on like, “You know I have to do this, right?”

Chris: Yeah!

John: “You're aware I have to punch you.”

Chris: And there's our joke.

John: There's the joke. The bit with the knife was fun.

Chris: And we got all the exposition out.

[Arvin Laughs]

John: Yeah. No this- and again, the sort of recurring shot, the reset, this is what kept me sane when writing this, was always knowing I was gonna get to the reset scene.

Chris: Right.

John: And see- and this was also a ton of fun. I actually shot this. This was crazy, I got up there-

Arvin: And I was very grateful that you did.

John: I got up there and I had not had any sleep cause I'd been working on the finale and I swung by the set to say hello. 

Chris: Right.

John: And they were like, “That's great, you can shoot the second unit!” “I don’t- tired!” And Christain, I will give him full credit, Christain really powered us through this.

Chris: It's a long speech here.

John: That's a long speech and it was- we covered the hell out of it. And he nailed it every single time, and we could've been here all night. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: I mean really. But that's the advantage when you're in season 3. You know- this is the longest speech Eliot’s ever said.

Chris: Right. I'd say so, and you know what's nice about it, too, is it gives you a sense- which helps you in the finale, of what his life was like before Leverage. 

John: Yeah.

Chris: There's definitely- you wrote the characters in a different way than they are on the show now.

Arvin: Here’s an example of that fade out that you were talking about.

John: Yeah so you get the- him in reflection next to Christain in the shot.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: It's really a nice piece of work.

Arvin: Incidentally, you know, one quick thing that I should say, which was such a joy, you know, that I didn't do the second season. Of course I did the first season and then came back for this. And the growth in the actors, in the regulars, is really remarkable.

John: No, they own these people now. I mean, to a great degree a lot of our fun in the writing room is knowing if we toss the ball into the pit, how they are gonna play with it. And so it's just coming up with stranger and stranger balls that we can throw.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: And just alright,’’ how about this one’? You know. Yes and- also, this is where we start to put in the dueling flashback attitude.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: This was an awful lot of fun. And- [laughing] oh and the corncob pipe killed me every time!

Arvin: That's great.

Chris: Oh, the corncob pipe! 

John: Kills me every time.

Chris: And the nice comedy wipe right there.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Rhhh!

John: Classic comedy wipe. No the- that's also something we don't get to do, and this is another reason it was one of my favorite episodes not because I wrote it, but because we got to do something we never got to do because we were such a plot heavy show. Show what they're like when they're actually not on a job.

Chris: Right.

John: You know, this is what they're like when they're hanging out in the bar.

Arvin: Yeah, that’s interesting.

John: And Sophie's- something we never get to address that much is Sophie's truculence. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: And just the sort of- she's very hard done by, you know she's very- she's a princess in her head. You know.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: And an actual duchess we find out later in the season.

Chris: Oh, this was so funny.

John: Oh I forget- this, I believe this comes from a friend of mine’s comments about the British spelling of elevator and color. It’s like, isn’t it stupid? The ‘u’ just makes us feel bad!?

Chris: Sea roaches? Oh that's so great.

John: And yes, Eliot’s a thug, but he's not a bad guy here. I mean he's not gonna let somebody let some dude die on the floor.

Arvin: Right.

John: No, this was an enormous amount of fun. And this when you start- honestly, it's not that complicated a story once you figure out who everyone is. Great job here. And now, when you shot this, if I remember correctly, you literally parked the cameras, had them come through, do one version-

Arvin: Yeah!

John: Had them come through to do the other version.

Arvin: That's why I was so grateful that you were outside shooting the night shot. Because it was like organizing the Prussian army, I mean it was-

Chris: Oh boy.

Arvin: And also figuring out which exact lines and moments could be done that way and which couldn't because of either a change in look or a change, you know-

Chris: Or some inconsistency in blocking.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: But that’s-

Arvin: It almost is exactly the same blocking, but not really. Just enough changes.

John: That's where- I will admit, even when we were working on this. That's where the idea that everyone's version is slightly different, I knew was gonna save us.

Arvin: Yeah.

Chris: That’s right.

John: Because otherwise we'd be trying to mirror and we'd have guns in our mouths.

Chris: Right, well of course, because people accept- I mean the whole premise of this episode is recollection is flawed.

John: Yeah. So if everyones standing a little off or a little different places, it’s, you know. There's fine- and then figuring out what you had to shoot- what you had to shoot new and what you would just keep reshooting-

Arvin: Exactly.

John: Sequence of. Cause that was originally our 1st ADs thing, which was, ‘Oh my god, there's a thousand shots in this.’

Arvin: Yeah.

John: It's like no, that’s- that shot.

Chris: Oh.

John: That by the way, a comedy- a locked off comedy frame.

[Laughter]

John: There's nothing better than a locked off comedy frame.

[Laughter]

Arvin: That was-

John: A medium with, like, bullshit happening in the back, there's nothing funnier than that. I wouldn't have staged it that way in a million years, that was inspired, Arvin. 

[Arvin Laughs]

John: That was great. No, love that.

Chris: And now here we see walking down with the flowers and not the gun.

John: Not the gun. Yeah. And then it goes back to a gun for Parker and you see what- yeah. 

[Chris Laughs]

John: See how everyone builds it. In retrospect I might have written that the jackets were different colors. 

Arvin: The jackets?

John: Like, cause that's a little close to Riley- the doctor's outfit. That’s the only thing I can think of looking back on-

Chris: Yeah, but it doesn't throw you. I mean I would say-

John: Yeah it doesn’t throw you. That was the only thing that bothered me.

Arvin: I wouldn't have thought about it, that's interesting.

Chris: Yeah.

John: I was watching it. And still never hit- oh and that is of course a- and that's the reveal of the previous shot. That is, of course, a shout out to the great British comic book writer Warren Ellis on the address label.

Chris: Oh, is that his address?

John: No that is- it’s Warren Road, Ellis County.

Chris: Oh that's great.

John: Just a little something. and this was great cause I told them it's Raiders of the Lost Ark. You just- you know, you're going through the-

[Laughter]

John: We also had an intern, because we had to do multiple takes, hiding behind him to catch the vase. And, you know, Christain’s just whipping that piece back there.

[All Laugh]

John: Just like- he's like ahh! 

Chris: That's true, I imagine we wouldn't have nine vases.

John: No, we do not have nine vases.

Chris: Do they have nine vases on NCIS, Arvin? I bet they do.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: On the network show?

Arvin: Certainly NCIS LA.

[Chris Laughs]

John: On a cable show they had- we had one vase. Take good care of it.

Arvin: That's right, [laughing] it's a rubber vase.

John: No, I love the choice that Gina's making here which is Sophie’s getting more and more drunk as the night is going on.

[Chris Laughs]

Arvin: Yeah.

John: She's getting angrily drunk. Yeah, and the World's Greatest Grandpa mug.

Chris: World's Greatest Grandpa.

John: That was insane. That was the point in the writers room where I just had my head on the table because it was- what is each person trying to accomplish, what do they wind up with, and how does that object wind up in their hands because of the other humans?

Chris: Oh boy.

John: It was not- it was not a fun day.

Chris: Don't try this at home, kids.

[John & Arvin Laugh]

John: This is the one you do after forty of them.

Chris: Don't try this at home.

Arvin: It was very interesting working with Timothy on this episode, because he had to find his inner progression in the piece.

John: Yeah, when he's- cause he’s-

Arvin: Of what he's trying to accomplish.

John: He's playing chess, and the rest of them don't know it. Yeah, Tim-

Arvin: But nevertheless there are also certain things he needs to find out to bring him to the very final point of the script.

John: He's actually interrogating them. Subtly. Which is very clever.

Arvin: That's right, that's right.

John: And then you move to the dartboard, which is nice. It's really important. This was a ton of fun. And calling Apollo and going, “How do we do this?”

[John & Arvin Laugh]

John: And I originally had it with rocks glasses and just- because rocks glasses aren't that transparent but I love the teacups.

Chris: Wait, so this was all practical?

John: This is practical. The way you do it- although Beth has amazing hands, it takes a lot of practice to learn how to do that properly. There is a ball bearing inside the crumpled up bill and there is a magnet on the inside of the teacup.

Chris: Oh, this is great! This is why we do this!

John: Yeah.

Chris: I did not know that, folks!

Arvin: That was so much fun.

Chris: I work on the show!

Arvin: That was so much fun.

John: It was a ton of fun. You never know with Beth, cause she's learned how to do a lot of it, so you never know.

Arvin: And that's also the sort of thing my years at O’Neil [¯\_(ツ)_/¯] didn't really prepare me for.

[All Laugh]

John: Oh really? No? Yes, and this was a lot of fun, was the James Bond. Cause, you know, let's all face it, the female fans are thanking us right now.

Chris: Yeah.

John: They've been waiting to see Aldis in a tux for a while.

Chris: He looks pretty good.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: Yeah, this was a ton of fun and randomly picking a name off the list. Look at the- look what Tim plays there, right there, he plays that he's starting to figure it out.

Arvin: Yeah, that's right.

John: Just at that moment. No, this is lovely. That may be a slight anachronism with the phone, we'll assume he built his own sliding keyboard five years ago. He may have innovated that himself.

Chris: We'll take the emails.

John: I'll take the emails on that one. 

[Chris Laughs]

John: God bless you, God bless you. Now this-

Chris: No, they had that five years ago.

John: Yeah, eh. This was also fun was the- was figuring out why he needed to be there, physical insertion versus remote attack, you know the different stages of hacking.

Arvin: Right.

John: This montage was great. Adorable. There's no reason this should've come out as well as it did.

[Laughter]

John: The only thing - the only thing- yeah and there he's presenting the flowers. It's great. The only thing I miss, and it was ridiculously impractical- oh, I love this shot.

Arvin: I love that. This one was- that was really.

Chris: They're all over each other.

John: Yeah, and taking the picture. And I'm willing to say that's canon. I'm willing to say that happened. Nice wipe, by the way, nice wipe to reveal Tim. Did you have that in your head at the time? 

Arvin: Mhhm.

John: Yeah, to get him back in the shot.

Chris: That's great.

John: The only thing I regret is in that montage, in the script, there's a moment- there is one shot, which was just impossible to shoot, which he's playing chess with an old man.

Chris: Yes! That's right.

John: And [laughing] just the crowd is watching!

Arvin: Yeah.

John: It's like no, there's no way to do it.

Arvin: I couldn't figure out how to do it.

John: Surrounded by honeys.

Arvin: Could not figure out how to do that one.

John: Yeah. And this one was great, because what was also fun was Treber really has to sell this three different ways, also.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: You know, Portland actors. Never let us down. And the freeze frame.

Chris: And the freeze frame!

John: And that's great. This is a common-

Chris: That's when you go beyond the wipe. That's when you just stop the- stop the rolling.

[All Laugh]

Chris: The first one is the wipe, cause it’s like you're trying to wrap your head around it. Then you need to-

Arvin: I think this is almost an encyclopedia of film.

Chris: Yes it is.

John: You had to pull pretty much every trick out of the can on this one.

[Laughter]

John: There you go, and psychopath Eliot! This was a ton of fun to do. And again-

Chris: And the much larger knife.

Arvin: And of course Aldis-

Chris: Cause that's what he would remember!

John: Yes.

Chris: He would remember a much larger knife.

Arvin: This is Aldis’ great strength. He's just unbelievable.

John: Oh yeah, yeah. And by the way, Christain digging in.

Arvin: Oh yeah.

John: He really, there's not a lot- it's like, “Oh, so I'm psychopath?” ‘Yes, yes, you’re terrifying.’

[Laughter]

John: Yeah. He told me this was the most fun bit, this bit.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: Just the creepy bit with the knife.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: Peppermint. we got to use his signature line, ‘it’s a very distinctive smell’. Yeah, trying to figure out why he needed to be in there.

[Laughter]

John: Walk the halls in the dark. Oh yeah. This is- the little half smile, he's genuinely creepy here.

[Laughter]

Arvin: And that reaction. The thumbs up. Inspired.

John: Creepy crazy. And bang in, and where's Nate?

Arvin: He will be there right-

John: There you go.

Arvin: Right behind him.

John: And that's fun. I will tell you the day that a hacker friend of mine told me that he was running OSX- he was running his operating system off a thumb drive is the best thing that happened to us. 

[Chris Laughs]

John: Don't have to lug a god damn laptop around everywhere.

Chris: Now, what was the option other than having Nate appearing in the flashbacks? Were you gonna do a voiceover? What were you playing around with?

John: I was thinking about a voiceover, but-

Chris: It becomes like the voice of god, I guess.

John: Well it's- he's talking to- each character would end up talking to the screen.

Chris: Right.

John: But that breaks the fourth wall so heavily.

Chris: Yeah.

John: You know, it's just not something we do and- yeah.

Arvin: Well you know what else you would have lost, is that part of what tells the audience how to respond to the tone is Nate's attitude.

John: You know, it really- I played with it for like a day and then tossed it. Nate had to be not just asking questions, but in the scene. Which at the point I was like, “Oh god, Arvin, I'm sorry.”

[John & Arvin Laugh]

John: In my head, cause I knew you were directing this one by that point. Which also to a great degree, I’ll tell you, is why I wrote this one in this order. Cause I knew you could, with your theater training, you'd be able to handle it.

Chris: I think that in the House he appears in- if I remember right, that Emmy-winning House, he appears in the flashbacks like that. And it was pretty- it's a bold move to do that.

John: Yeah.

Chris: You know, I mean it's-

Arvin: But I think it's vital, I think that's-

Chris: Yeah, no, it's now that you look at it again, I can't imagine doing it any other way.

Arvin: Almost the single most important element in the entire show.

John: No, you can't. Yeah, I did one version where they talked to the screen and I did one version where it was just clean, and then no, you need some sort of pipe.

Chris: Right.

John: You need exposition cause we still do four really complicated heists in this. You need to explain what the hell they're up to. Yes, and the blocking on that, the whole design of this hallway. Who’s standing where, and what are their sight lines, and how can they see?

Arvin: Oh boy that was- we spent a lot of time on that.

John: Oh my god. But the-

Chris: I mean, and the doors and stuff, this is where you get the great far sell.

John: Yes.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: Yeah, that was intentional.

Chris: Once you got people shoved into doors, and throwing people.

John: Noises Off, exactly. I’ll tell you what was interesting, I had originally envisioned the supply closet closer to the downstairs over on the other side, out of sight line of the antiquities room. Now by the way, Aldis just slapping Eddie Murphy on there, hard.

[Laughter]

Arvin: Yeah.

John: However, putting in the other place gave you the locked off comedy frame to play stuff back and forth across that door.

Arvin: That was the big-

John: Yeah, which really was- I never imagined that.

Arvin: That was the thinking of behind-

John: This, by the way, is the fun of television. You write it, and you actually make it.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: And it winds up being better than you thought.

Arvin: Right, and oddly enough, because you make it at such speed, a lot of ideas kinda crystallize that might not be there, you know, if you were thinking it out over a longer period of time.

John: And each one of them lying, each one of them not- this was- and this was fun. Actually, I'll tell you that was the hardest one to write. Was the hacker’s.

Chris: Oh.

John: Eliot’s was fairly straightforward, cause he needs to get into- because it's true that the most vulnerable place when you're transporting valuable objects is in the transition from storage to transport.

Chris: Right.

John: Figuring out why he needed to be there and what his scam was? Was the hardest one. She was easy.

Chris: Mhhhm.

John: Cause this is almost beat for beat exactly a heist she does in almost every episode. This is her thing, you know?

Chris: Right, right.

John: She's a thief. Once you're in the fourth act, you're in the home stretch, you know.

Chris: Right. And play around with- because for those of you that aren’t aware, the acts have different lengths-

John: Yes.

Chris: We knew that we were gonna end with Nate because Nate’s the one who's gonna give you the true version. But in the other order, did you always think that Parker was gonna go on our fourth act?

John: Yes.

Chris: Cause that's the shortest act?

John: Cause that's the short act. And we actually talked about it being no dialogue.

Chris: Oh.

John: We actually debated- “What, I'm a thief?” And then no explanation, that's what she is.

Chris: Right.

John: And she nailed that. We actually- remember we talked about for a while- this was before, well before we wrote it, Arvin, the idea that we would shoot this in like a really weird black and white expressionistic idea of like-

Chris: Right, right, right, right.

Arvin: Oh really? wow.

John: Yeah.

Chris: It's like the way dogs see the world.

[Arvin Laughs]

John: She just sees like- everyone would be wearing the same clothes, and just like it's just- only the objects that have reality. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: And then we realized that was just from a production standpoint, impossible.

Chris: Yeah

John: Just impossible to do. And as a result, just gives us a lot more fun to play with.

Arvin: I love this little brief moment with Aldis here, cause again with the interconnect.

John: Yeah.

Arvin: And he's stuffing himself with-

John: Yeah, with freebies. This was actually- in Montreal when I was going to McGill University, the strip joints had free buffets.

[Laughter]

John: So and the- I don't know what it does now, but the meal plan at McGill University in the dorms, they are not covered on the weekends. So you would put plastic bags in your pockets and you'd go to the strip joints and fill your pockets from the buffets.

[Chris & Arvin Laugh]

Chris: Wow, pretty impressive.

John: And that's- I love that. I love her frustration. ‘I hate you all.’ She just nailed it.

Chris: There's a great little sequence too, Arvin. Cause the camera was always moving or people were moving. I mean it’s, you know, considering it's a party where somebodys stuffing hors d'oeuvres in their pockets, it had a real dynamism to it.

John: Oh this thing flies. Well Parker’s always moving.

Chris: Yes.

John: That's the key, is if you're following Parker and she's always moving you're just- yeah, you're aces up.

Arvin: And the change in attitude here, of course, was just wonderful.

John: Yes. And that was tricky because one time we talked about this being Sterling. I mean one time we talked about- it couldn't have been Nate. You know, but we talked about it being Sterling and then realized- no, we fell in love with the crush story. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: Also love- this worked out. Look at the way she does that line. She knows somebody else is there.

Arvin: Oh yeah.

John: She just figured it out.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: You know, she does that great. She’s just now pissed she wants to get on the job. It's actually what motivates her to do the job.

Arvin: Right, exactly. And I love the linking of the blackout in each story.

John: That was key.

Chris: It gives you like a timing.

John: Yes.

Arvin: Yeah, and that's right.

Chris: Cause it orients you visually to- ‘Okay, I remember when that happened.’

Arvin: That's right, cause the time is complicated. I mean you go back, you go forward, you go back.

John: No, it's- the- I remember developing it’s like, we need a starting gun. And the blackout became a starting gun for when it just goes to hell.

Arvin: That's a perfect image.

John: Cause everyone’s in the party until the starting gun. And then you’re, you know, and then you're up and running. And there's the two bags cause she's got two bags. It's a ton of fun. Ton of just crazy second unit stuff here. Because there's so many- we have to look at so many plans and diagrams and maps, cause trying to make sure the audience knows where the hell and what we're doing.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: Just crazy. And she grabs the wrong bag.

Chris: Right.

Arvin: And where those bags would be in relation to each other, those are the kind of tiny details you have to figure out in this.

Chris: Oh boy.

John: I don't relish directing this one. [Laughs]

Chris: And look at that! There's a great transition, right?

John: That's the classic highlander transition.

[Arvin Laughs]

Chris: Crane up. Crane up through the floor.

John: If you actually- ordinarily that crane up is through the- it reveals a Scottish village in the 1400s.

[Laughter]

Arvin: [Laughing] That's right! Yeah, right.

John: And catching it before it broke. That was just a lift from Jackie. I love when he has fights when he doesn’t- when he tries to keep stuff from breaking while he's fighting. It just always makes me laugh. And it's not there! Yeah, there was, like, another layer of transport originally, in the original design of the script, and then it just got ridiculously complicated. 

Arvin: Yeah.

John: So. And establishing that. Oh, tons of fun. 

[Silence]

John: God, I can't think.

[All Laugh]

Chris: I know when you watch it- there's so many pieces in it, it’s-

John: A little sick.

Chris: It blows you away.

John: This is the fun bit, this is why you pay Beth Riesgraf whatever the hell she wants. I say this, it will come out after contract negotiations.

[Laughter]

John: I would not have come up with this! In a million years. That little sword fighty bit?

Arvin: Yup!

Chris: Child-like skipping!

Arvin: And this! And the skipping out.

John: She got the shiny thing! 

Chris: Yeah.

John: Love the shiny thing. Also I love the- it’s fun, you could play her episode without dialogue, it totally works without dialogue.

Chris: It does work.

John: Absolutely works.

Arvin: Which is interesting, since there was a silent modern film that was done as a silent film called Thief.

John: Yes! Of course!

Arvin: You remember?

John: Oh yeah, the opening. No, and then we built- how did we do this shot down? Cause we did not- we did not have a ventilation shaft that went 30 feet down. How did we do this?

Arvin: It was-

John: Mirrors? Or did we do it digitally?

Chris: Ohhh! [Laughs] He just gets punched.

Arvin: It wasn't-

John: He's just having a bad day. This is digital.

Chris: That's digital? That's great.

Arvin: That- yes.

Chris: Looks fantastic.

John: That’s digital. But when she comes out of her side, I think we just built a small drop.

Arvin: That's right, that's what we did.

John: No, it was nice. And everyone still digging in on- it’s interesting, they’re each playing this realization differently. It's really lovely.

Chris: Now this was all done over the course of how many days? The-

Arvin: Seven days.

Chris: No, no, but I'm saying the framing device in the bar? How long were you in the bar?

Arvin: In the actual shooting, you mean?

Chris: Yeah.

Arvin: Uh, one day.

John: One day?

Chris: This was all done in one day? All the framing scenes in the bar?

Arvin: Yeah. All the framing scenes were done in one day.

Chris: Wow, that was a lot of pages.

Arvin: That's why I had worked out the movement pattern so clearly in my mind beforehand, so that it would be very clear what brought each person to the next area.

Chris: Right.

John: And you didn't double set ups.

Arvin: Yeah, right.

John: See that’s why it’s- interesting thing, for those of you listening for film school, you don't measure television shows when you're shooting in pages, you measure them in set ups. 

Arvin: That’s correct.

John: Cause each time you set up the camera it takes about 20 minutes.

Arvin: That's right.

John: So that's your shot count. That's your shot list. That clock is- and it's amazing, no matter how complicated or not complicated the shot is, it's always 20 goddamn minutes.

Arvin: Oh yeah.

John: You know, at least.

Arvin: Well, never less!

John: Never less.

Arvin: Certainly a lot of times, more.

John: But if you can light a set- you know, like the bar where you don't have to light it like a freakin’ miracle. Then you just know- you just know what your coverage is, you know your coverage, you know how long you'll be there.

Arvin: Now an interesting thing here is the difference in Timothy's attitude when he's actually now in the story.

John: Yeah.

Arvin: Compared to what it's been throughout up to now. Cause now he's coming in with a chip on his shoulder because he's already suspicious of-

John: Also, this is our way to remind the audience he was a prick back then!

[Laughter]

Arvin: Exactly! And that was a big factor too.

John: Tim Hutton's character is not a nice- you know, Nathan Ford, not a nice guy back then. You know?

Arvin: Yeah.

John: This is- he was a lot more like Sterling than he cares to admit. So, yeah. This was- this meet cute, I love this meet cute. So, you know, that was kinda fun. It allowed him to- we kinda missed that guy.

Chris: Yeah.

John: The flashbacks, you don't really flashback to those days anymore and since we're kinda moved on past that in the character, because he's playing the thief not the ex-insurance guy.

Chris: Yeah.

John: It's always fun to watch Tim play Nate from five years ago.

Chris: Yeah.

John: You know. And he's got- John's so amazing in this.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: And just- what were the character beats? I mean the dialogue had changed, but you know, what- I mean was- I see the glasses, and his hair is done differently. And just any sort of difference, you know-

Arvin: It's a really different attitude.

John: Yeah.

Arvin: It’s what he's able to do internally that makes the-

John: I love the giving- and she's giving him the big knife in this one, kinda like Excalibur. It's just a subtle difference in each version of the story.

Chris: Yeah, and what's nice about Nate being the prick also is that, you know, usually the final version is the true version- the reason it has credibility in the audience, is because he didn't make himself out to be a great guy.

John: Yeah.

Chris: In other words, like, if he had made himself out to be the hero, you're suspicious, but the fact that he makes himself out to be kind of a hard ass jerk, and the character reveal is that Cosgrove is the sympathetic person.

John: Yeah, absolutely.

Chris: It really - I mean that really is what tells you not just that it’s the fifth act.

Arvin: And I think of all of the aspects of John's performance that are so tremendous, the fact that he achieved a real vulnerability.

Chris: Yes.

Arvin: Not a play- not just a kind of casper milktoast quality.

Chris: Right.

Arvin: But a real caring about Gina.

John: Also, we had stripped him of one of an actor's most valuable tools, which is different dialogue.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: This- it’s gotta play- he's gotta say the same words.

Arvin: Same thing, that's right.

John: Or as close to the same thing as he can and still get it. You know, there's a great Hal Hartley movie that's gone completely out of my head. I think called Flirt. I have seen that my wife is a giant Hal Hartley fan and I will say that is- and this is totally Noises Off, by the way. This bit right here with the door.

Chris: Mhhm.

Arvin: And one of the rare moments we were able to use actually the same footage.

John: Yeah.

[Laughter]

John: That is three twenty minute movies, each one using exactly the same dialogue. Not necessarily spoken by the same characters. But exactly the same dialogue. In each of the twenty minutes.

Arvin: Oh, wow.

Chris: But did with different inflections that gave it a completely different meaning.

John: With different characters, different settings, different places.

Chris: Oh, that's great.

John: And it's fantastic. And that really is one of the birthplaces of this episode. Is the idea that each person can remember even the words differently.

Chris: I'm guessing Martin Donovan was in it.

John: Martin Donovan may have been in it. You cannot-

[Chris Laughs]

Chris: Isn’t Martin Donovan in every Hal Hartley movie?

John: I'm sure at this point you can IMDb on your Google TV right off to the right hand side while you're listening to this, but yeah. Oh and he's so sweet here!

[Laughter]

Arvin: I know!

John: Everyone's such a bastard to him, I feel really- I feel so bad for him.

Arvin: Although you have to say, not cut out for security work.

[Laughter]

John: No, but you know what-

Chris: He's a little lovesick. Right?

John: But, you know, Gina's worth falling in love with! I mean that character- you know. That- you're not not gonna fall in love with her. And then the reveal the person who ran by was Eliot. A ton of fun. Yeah, we should have slicked back his hair, I missed that.

Chris: Yeah, but you know-

John: Yeah.

Chris: That’s okay. Still works.

John: And the reveal of the roses.

Arvin: There was a discussion- that was strictly a time issue, as I remember.

John: Yeah cause he would have remembered to do it.

Arvin: No, we had discussed it.

John: Oh, yeah a time production issue. The ability to just throw that suit and tie on him and walk him through those sets was a big deal.

Arvin: Yeah. And the museum stuff of course had its own issues connected with it, in terms of the time sequence.

John: Yeah. Cause this is set. The upstairs, the gallery is at the museum where we shot.

Arvin: Is actually at the museum.

John: Yeah, so we had limited time there. I mean we could- you know, this was our bank vault slash mine slash, you know.

Chris: Mhhhm.

John: Becca and the production design people do an amazing job as usual. Oh he's so wrecked up here.

[Laughter]

John: That's a great performance. And Aldis kinda- like I love also the Aldis choice here of like, just, ‘Are you ok?’ Is just-

Arvin: [Laughing] right!

John: He's not a bad guy! He just, you know. 

Arvin: No, right.

John: This is a little disturbing.

[Laughter]

John: Now that I'm thinking about it.

Chris: Right, what happened to him?

John: Yeah. Again, Eliot was not a nice guy. 

[Arvin Laughs]

John: By this point, I mean, this was the trick, too, was designing it so you could do shorter and shorter takes.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: Because Gina’s has to be the longest and the most narrative, and each one is a sort of a collapsing set of information.

Arvin: And I used Gina’s to really teach everybody what the shape of the thing was.

John: Yeah. Oh look at those ropes! He's so nice! I should write them a nice letter! He's just great. Also that was a big part of it, was writing down everyone's equipment. Was figuring out who would need what when. You know, why and how they can- how you can wind up screwing them.

Chris: Wow.

John: Yeah. no I was pretty much just locked in our office [laughs] for that week. 

Chris: Wow.

John: Like, ‘Where’s John?’ ‘He’s in there, don’t bother him.’

Arvin: Oh this is good- there's a funny thing about this.

John: Oh this was great! Tell them what happened on set. And then boom. And he’s- oh look! He finds a strange girl in the shaft and he's still concerned about her. And the drop. And- this is not digital. We literally dropped this.

Arvin: We literally dropped it. Here's the story: this was the real thing. This was really quite heavy. And we had a rubber one, an exact duplicate which we wanted to- intended to use because we were afraid that Timothy would get hurt.

Chris: Yeah.

Arvin: It's not so easy to catch, with the momentum, something like that.

Chris: Yeah.

Arvin: To take the chance of catching it, and he insisted, god love him, you know, the actor till the end.

John: Yeah.

Arvin: He was gonna work it out that he could catch the real thing. And he tried it a couple of times and it didn't work-

John: Yeah.

Arvin: And then finally, man, the catch was perfect.

Chris: Oh it’s perfect.

John: Oh, well I remember it didn't- cause I was actually on set for that day, cause we were prepping the finale. It didn't work in the rehearsals, but he got it on the first shot.

Arvin: That's right! That's it. Yeah.

John: The first time the camera’s rolling he caught it. 

Arvin: Yeah, that’s absolutely right.

John: He might've been hamming it up a little during rehearsals. Just “Oh, I don't know!” Yeah.

Arvin: Yeah, yeah.

John: No this is- and Traber’s just lovely here as the guy who never really believes he's caught.

Chris: And everything ties up here. I mean there's the, I mean-

Arvin: Yeah.

John: Why is he there?

Chris: Every thread, why is he there, what his plan is, that wraps everyone else's story up-

John: Oh my god! That was the insane thing. The insane thing is we had broken all of these great crimes to keep everyone from stealing the dagger, and then realized we still needed the crime story in the news to say it had been stolen.

Chris: Right! Right.

John: That was a bad day.

[Laughter]

John: That was- that was a bad day to realize when we pretty much finished breaking this that-

Arvin: Oh, but the logic of it came through perfectly. I mean, when you created that scene, I mean it's totally believable. 

John: Yeah, that was kinda the- that was- and I'll fully admit, by the way, that's just one of those ones where you can't logic yourself out of it. That was a good four glasses of Irish whiskey.

[Laughter]

John: In the writers room.

Chris: And the-

John: And just like, ‘You know what? Here's what he did.’

Chris: And the Gutman thing ties up, too.

John: Yes.

Chris: And was that- was that after the fact when you realized-

John: No, ironically he was the easy one. 

Chris: So the fact that he was responsible for the Gutman thing-

John: Yeah, it was originally all gonna be Gutman.

Chris: Okay.

John: And then it was like, wait, Gutman never owned it, so why would it matter if it was stolen or not, how would that lead to the news thing?

Chris: Okay, right.

John: Nice blocking there, by the way, moving John over to next to him. It's the- in my head, although he is unlucky in love, he gets full credit for this.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: And so we- you know, the Leverage team never hurts the bystanders. We do what we can to avoid it.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: Unless you've taken a job with a security firm, in which case you know what you're getting into. Maybe you didn't expect to get choked out quite so often on the job.

[Laughter]

John: Stripped down to your underwear, but you know.

Arvin: Now you know what I love here, is that the end- that you manage to find in the ending, John, something a little bit underlying the whole thing, which is the idea that it’s better for them to work as a team than separately. Which I think is such a wonderful-

John: Well you have to do it or else this is masturbatory. Honestly? Otherwise it's a magic trick.

Arvin: Yeah.

John: You know, it's- oh nice bit of plotting but what was the illustrative character point? And this is the illustrative character point. You know, and we really felt this way - is they’re a family now.

Chris: Right.

John: You know, the show is a family now, that's kinda the point of it. You know?

Chris: I mean, and there’s an inherent desire, I think, in the audience wanting to believe that they ran into each other. I mean that's the star-crossed lovers-

John: Yeah.

Chris: Fantasy is that we met-

John: Destiny meant for them to be together.

Chris: We met as children, you know? And I think that's something that- that’s what drove you- why we're drawn to this story.

John: And to a great degree, he is the best British asshole on Earth.

[Laughter]

John: Man, is he good at this! And what's great is we just took the stuff the guy from BP oil actually said.

Arvin: Actually- I know! I love it!

John: And it was so dickish! There was really no way to there's no way to improve it.

Chris: He’s great, look at his face.

John: Look at his face. God, you just wanna burn parliament down.

[Laughter]

John: Ugh. And they're off! And yeah that's great there's never any doubt.

Arvin: Now I gotta tell you, one of my- here’s a favorite actor moment. Watch how Timothy gets out when he decides to join them. This is a pure little actor- this is the kinda thing Timothy comes up with-

John: Yeah.

Arvin: That is somehow so unexpected to go over the bar like that.

John: Yup. And turn out the lights. If this was the last episode of the show, I would've been perfectly happy.

Chris: Yeah, no!

John: Honestly if we had never done another episode.

Chris: It's got that vibe, doesn't it?

John: Yeah, if we had never done another episode I'd be perfectly happy. Oh my god, that was a ton of fun!

Arvin: It was a joy for me, I'll tell you.

Chris: As I said when I read it John, instant classic. 

John: Thank you.

Chris: And Arvin, script- we were amazed and executed to-

John: Arvin, incredible job. Incredible.

Chris: Wow.

John: Just on an impossible- and by the way, big shout out again to Bekka Melino who- Melina, pardon me, who just killed it on production design on this.

Chris: Yes.

John: The museum, the downstairs building, the set, making it- you know.

Arvin: That closet with everything- Yeah.

John: The closet, everything, yeah. 

Arvin: Absolutely.

Marc: Hi I'm Marc Roskin, director of the season finale.

John: John Rogers, executive producer and co-writer of this part of the season finale.

Scott: Scott Veach, the co-writer of this part of the season finale.

Aldis: Aldis Hodge, actor, Hardison, yeah that guy.

Christian: I'm Christian Kane, I play Eliot Spencer.

Chris: Chris Downey, executive producer. And this is part two of our season three season finale, The San Lorenzo Job.

John: Starting with the brief flashforward, which I think has become the kind of signature of the season finale.

Christian: I like it.

John: The little jump forward, the little ‘this is what you're gonna see.’

Aldis: Yup, yup.

John: And this is the reset scene, this is the last time you guys are in the bar for the year.

Christian: Yup.

John: And just to remind everyone - cause we didn't know if they were gonna show them back to back - exactly what we're doing, what the stakes are, and why they're going.

Chris: Now the origin of this one was Scott, you came in with the one liner, where they steal a country?

John: Well it was two, because I had that saint story, remember when I was a kid?

Chris: Oh, right.

John: And Scott had come in nicely enough with the exact same he wanted to do, which was-?

Scott: Yeah, when I was a computer scientist, I had a friend from Nigeria, who told me that in Nigeria, when they were kids, one of the things they do is they sit around and argue about who could coup the country if it came to it.

[Laughter]

Scott: And they used twinkies, and they'd put twinkies down and argue over what the right pathways are. And I was telling John this and we were saying it would be great for Leverage to coup a country, and that dovetailed with something you'd already been thinking of.

John: That dovetailed with the saint story, the Simon Tepler story about The Revolution Racket, which I read when I was 12. And the whole idea of somebody taking over a country just because somebody pissed them off just stuck with me for 30 years.

Christian: Right, yeah.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: And so that was- alright, well that's insanely ambitious and impossible to write, let’s bang that out in a week.

[Laughter]

Marc: And you believe it!

Christian: Yeah, you do.

John: And that's the fun of having, you know, Scott is experienced in computer science and technology and I'm a conspiracy geek, you know there’s- we don't do anything in this episode that you couldn't really do.

Christian: So let me ask you a question, you're saying that someone actually stole a country before?

[Laughter]

John: It’s come close.

Christian: There you go, exactly that’s what I'm- yeah.

John: And then- it was picking the country, making sure we found it. What was great was we found- like, don't want to go Africa, can't shoot in Africa, can’t duplicate it. Can't go to Latin America, can't shoot the geography. So finding a European country, and it turns out I knew somebody who specialized in journalism of small countries. She had written about the smallest countries in the world, and so I knew there were some countries kicking around that were this small.

[Ice rattling in a glass]

Chris: And there was another source- piece of source material for this that was very helpful, which was a documentary called Our Brand Is Crisis. Which was a great- if you get a chance, a great documentary about how James Carville's team went down to Bolivia, I guess in 2002?

John: I think so.

Chris: And basically won the Bolivian election for an ousted president, and there were kind of horrible consequences that followed from it.

Scott: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Chris: And we got a lot of great stuff from that.

John: Yeah. And that's the trick is to just, you know, you don't really have to make stuff up, the real stuff out there, you just gotta dig deep enough. This actually is great- this is digitally treated, you just shot the footage.

Marc: Yeah. I mean every time you're in this room and you see these screens, it’s always green screen, so the visual effects department having to labor.

Christian: But it's great, it really shows the distance between us and him right there, you know.

Aldis: Yeah.

Marc: Yeah, we gave it that glitchy techno feel.

John: It was also nice how you dropped in, “At ease.”

Christian: Yeah.

John: That was I just-

Christian: Thanks man.

John: No, I noticed that, my brother would do that when-

Christian: You know, I used- I was talking to you, I used kinda a little bit of George Clooney in The Peacemaker for this scene. I just kinda-

John: You know what? Underrated movie, by the way.

Scott: Very true, very true.

Chris: That is, it’s true, it’s a really good movie.

Christian: Absolutely, absolutely, it's one of my all time favorites.

John: I love that flick.

Christian: And I just used the fact that it doesn't make any sense to- anyway.

Chris: It’s one of the first times we saw somebody from Eliot's past, and I thought- and we’ll get to it later-

John: Who's not dead.

Christian: Right.

[Laughter]

Chris: But the camaraderie, it was like it opened up the character in a lot of ways. I thought it was great.

John: Yeah, this guy met bad guys and good guys. It’s interesting, cause we wanted to crack open Eliot for this season, but the character doesn't lend himself to long bits of exposition.

Christian: Right.

John: So we had to do it through indirect means. And then we find out Hardison was a ninja next season.

[Laughter]

Christian: That's right.

Aldis: Yes we do.

John: Raised by his nana, his nana was like a shogun. No, that was all a nice beat. And considering you guys were all acting to a green screen that was very emotional, very nicely done. This staging was a bitch, by the way, cause you had three and two.

Marc: Three and two, and a lot of page count.

John: Yeah.

Marc: A lot of page count.

John: And it's tough because page count- shooting a lot of pages in here means it's not a place you have to go to that you have to light, that you have to shoot in a different way than you're used to, you know the set. But this set requires you to have five humans in it.

Marc: Right.

John: And so there's this sort of cancellation of the advantages. No, nice beat by Tim there, just “Oh, we fucked up.”

Christian: And by the way, Goran was nice enough to come in that day and sit over to the side; he's actually in the room with us reading.

John: That was his first day!

Chris: Yeah, I think that was his first day.

Marc: It was his first day during his wardrobe fitting.

Christian: Yeah.

John: Yeah, and we had not met him, and he came in and sat off to this side and did the mocking speech, and I remember thinking, “Ah that’s it! That’s it right there!”

[Laughter]

Christian: No, it was perfect.

John: You could actually see the whole cast like, “Oh, I get who this guy is.”

Aldis: Ahhh.

John: No, he's fantastic in this.

Scott: Yeah, he looks the part.

John: Absolutely you could do him with Saint.

Scott: Oh yeah.

John: Yeah, you could [unintelligible mumbling] absolutely.

Chris: Yeah, he hasn't really played bad guys. I mean the most-

John: No, this was his first real bad guy.

Chris: First real bad guy.

John: He said it was why he took it, so he could get a chance to do it. It's also nice why he said, “You used to,” to Eliot, just a reminder again to the audience of some history there, some past there. And, you know, kind of a center of gravity of emotion there.

Christian: Yeah. This was actually really tough.

John: Yeah, cause he’s not- he’s holding it in.

Marc: Yeah, cause you feel at fault.

John: No, it was a- Hardison kind of playing straight ahead, Parker not dealing with emotion well, and then straight to the “ciao.” And then the hatred. The hatred.

Chris: And we did it a bunch of times, too, cause I remember we did it a number of times.

Christian: Yeah, it was tough.

Marc: Beautiful San Lorenzo.

Christian: I didn’t want to screw it up.

John: Beautiful scenic San Lorenzo.

Christian: That was actually before the first episode- that was one of the first scenes up, it was like we just had-

Chris: Yeah.

John: It was a cold start.

Marc: See the digital background there, beautiful stuff.

Chris: And great music here, that we’re not listening to.

John: Yes.

Marc: Oh yeah.

Chris: But I've been hearing it in my head from Joe LoDuca.

John: What was really fun was that Joe LoDuca, because I said this was the Mission Impossible episode I always wanted to write-

Chris: Yeah.

John: He put a little Schiffer in the score here. It was really- he put a little 1960’s Mission Impossible in the score.

Scott: Yeah.

Christian: I gotta be honest with you though, her in that dress, I don't think people are gonna be listening to the music.

[Laughter]

John: You know the people who care are. And this is the Schnitzer Theater.

Marc: Schnitzer Auditorium.

Aldis: Yeah.

Marc: Downtown Portland.

Chris: Oh boy, does that look great.

John: And this was the location that kept on giving.

Christian: Yup.

John: We walked in here on scout and at this point the finale- this part of the finale was not yet written, because I knew- we'd done the rough draft, but I was up in Portland scouting locations. And I knew we had to do it- we had to rewrite based on what we could get, and that was the layout of the original script.

Scott: Yeah.

John: We were just so lucky to get that auditorium. And this was great, James Draper from Mad Men, kind of the vibe there, that was the name check.

Chris: Sure, and the suit is very much Our Man In Havana.

Scott: Yes, it really sells it.

John: Our Man In Havana is definitely- that's one of the movies we talk about that nobody ever has seen. Alec Guinness, Our Man In Havana is a great flick.

Christian: Again Nadien Haders, but I gotta believe Tim had a lot to do with this as well.

John: Yeah, Tim likes a hat.

Scott: He does.

Aldis: Likes a hat.

Marc: And this guy was great. Humberto.

Scott: He was amazing.

Aldis: Yeah, he was.

Marc: He was just fantastic. Again another tall guy between Alistar, Humberto, and Goran, Nadine went through every extra large dress shirt and coat in Portland.

Christian: Big and tall.

Aldis: Big and tall store.

John: About two days in I was like “Humberto, with 8 months and 2 million dollars, I could make you governor of Oregon.”

Christian: Yeah, right, exactly.

[Laughter]

John: He's got that- and he's a local Portland actor, he showed up for auditions it’s like, wow this guy has got it!

Chris: Well I think Lana had been sitting on him for a while, she was waiting for the right part.

John: And this was a ton of fun, this is of course, all the people who work on the show we’re taking photos of.

Aldis: Yup.

John: And also again, the two of them as peers, you know, planning it. We don’t show you what's on the screen, it’s horrible. Assume it involves half of a clown outfit.

[Laughter]

Chris: The wrong half.

John: What's the right half? 

[Laughter]

John: And this was great cause when we were shooting this Tim was like, “What is this?” And we said “The Music Man” and he said, “Ahh, The Music Man.” And he got it, he really laid into exactly how to play this. Because it’s not mocking, he’s not joking.

Christian: Right, right.

John: He's gotta sell this guy on this.

Chris: Come along with me, I'm gonna take you.

John: Absolutely The Music Man in this scene, and Girl Friday in the later one.

Chris: Yeah.

John: When they're trying to get rid of Ralph Bellamy.

Scott: And it’s this guy's reaction that really sells it, too. He believes it so we believe it.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: No, and then the sort of pitying looks from Aldis and Gina are lovely.

Aldis: The sparkle in his eye.

John: There you go, now we make a dream in order to betray people. This is the most deeply cynical episode we've ever done.

[Laughter]

John: Even I was morally troubled by this episode.

[Laughter]

John: Because I realized about three quarters of the way through, I said, “Wait, we took the only decent man in the country and we corrupted him in order to get- to win this election.”

Christian: Right, right.

Chris: Watch the documentary, man.

[Laughter]

Christian: You know what, don't forget, though, we're still criminals. That's the whole thing.

Aldis: We do.

John: I know. I'm always the first to say the Leverage crew are not good guys, they are protagonists. But there are times even I am like, “Wow, I found this amusing, there's something wrong with me.”

Christian: Yeah. [Laughs]

Marc: This is the lovely library room in the Governor Hotel.

Aldis: Yup.

John: Beautiful ceiling.

Marc: Beautiful ceiling.

John: Comes dressed with books, nice.

Marc: And Alastair Duncan is just fantastic.

John: Oh man, and that was- we were really lucky, cause we were so focused on Vittori, and so focused on Moreau. This isn't a big character role, and he anchors it, he really nails it.

Chris: And I always love the “Just sign it.” That’s my favorite bit.

Scott: Oh yeah.

Marc: This was- if you remember John, this was a ten page day.

John: Yes.

Scott: Oh my god.

John: Yes, this was a ten page day. Other shows do not shoot ten pages. Movies shoot three.

Christian: Yeah.

John: But average on other shows is five, six?

Marc: This was just a bear. But these guys were all just so prepared.

Christian: You know, it was just one of those things where we said, “Ok look, we got the two scripts came together, we got the first- the first and second part of the season finale,” and everyone said, “Let’s just buckle down and knock this out of the park.” And everyone ran full speed ahead the whole time, nobody fell, nobody slowed up. For three weeks straight.

John: You guys absolutely proved yourself. And that's the thing the boys, Goran, Tim, and Alastair showed up with the blocking kind of in their heads, cause we had that room-

Marc: When you get to that moment I said, “How do you want to do this? Tim, do you want to do this in pieces?” And he said, “Let's do all five pages.”

John: Yeah, so we shot like a play.

Christian: Yeah.

Marc: Yeah, so each take was five pages.

John: And just shot from different coverage. Yeah, incredible.

Marc: It was brilliant.

John: No, great local actors. By the way, I like to say, this is some of the best extra acting work I've seen in a television show.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: All the extras are fantastic.

Chris: And here's a pairing I always enjoy.

John: You love a good Parker and Eliot.

Chris: You guys together.

Christian: Yeah, it's fun.

Marc: Another high angle on the tombs, another great set that we built.

Christian: Like Hardison just makes me mad, but she actually, like, annoys me.

[Laughter]

Marc: This is the Frankenstein set reconstructed.

Aldis: Oh, yeah.

John: And she enjoys annoying him. Actively.

Christian: Yeah, that's it.

John: Hardison doesn’t, Hardison doesn't realize what he's doing to piss you off, she actively enjoys annoying you.

[Laughter]

Chris: And you'll tease her, that's what I like, too.

John: And the funny thing is the off screen thing is reversed. No one makes Beth crack up like you do, because I was there when you shot that god damn fashion thing.

Christian: It’s true, it’s tough for us to do a scene together, we always end up laughing.

John: And that was the little frustration bit where she doesn't understand humans can't crawl through steam.

Christian: Right, right.

John: Very nice beat. I forget where the bit that she can tell how deep she is by echo came from, but-

Scott: Right here, oh yeah.

John: It's one of those bits that I think we threw as a joke in the room and then it wouldn't go away.

[Laughter]

John: Like no, no, that's how she works. She's not totally human. She's got some manticore DNA in there. Exactly.

Scott: Echolocation.

John: She's got some echolocation going on.

Marc: This is a great scene. I loved how you guys wrote Sophie just getting more involved and involved in playing a part.

John: Watching someone-

Christian: Sophie always gets over involved in everything!

John: But this is unique in- we talked about when we were plotting out the scene, it wasn't just the rescue. It was the idea that this actor and this character had to be super sympathetic, but also when you're someone who can win strangers over, watching someone do it this badly is like watching someone play solitaire and not seeing the red ten.

Christian: Right.

John: You know, it's like how can anyone suck this much, and that’s what really sucks her in.

Christian: Right, and that's why everyone loves Sophie, is the simple fact-

Aldis: She has a heart.

Christian: That like- it's like Angel, it’s the vampire with a heart. She's the world's best grifter, you can't be a grifter and have any sort of a heart, and she has a heart. And it's a beautiful character.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: Goran plays this perfectly. This is a great pairing, Alastair doing the comedic sort of classic British character actor thing.

Marc: Right.

John: And Goran starting to play the chess game. Starting to realize something’s wrong. This was lovely. Just this little- and we tried to figure out what would she do that isn't overly intimate, that's just right?

Marc: Enough to give you a sense.

Chris: And they have really nice chemistry together.

John: They have great chemistry together, great chemistry. When he calls her “dear” later in the script you totally buy it, that he’s just sucked into the con.

Chris: Yeah.

Marc: And this is, of course, Moreau-

John: Nice crane up there.

Marc: Yeah, realizing that something’s up.

John: And it's interesting, cause we'd originally put them way farther back in the room, remember? So you had to pick them out. But that close up actually works better, cause it just announces to the audience that the game is on. And this again, this is our fable, okay? This is us taking every element of real elections that we don't like and exaggerating them that little bit more. But the idea that they would fixate on the beautiful girl touching him? Absolutely believable.

Christian: Right.

Chris: Oh, yeah.

John: And the fact that you could sweep up a media by announcing, sort of, a glorious engagement? Absolutely believable.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: You know, it’s all about controlling news cycles.

Marc: That’s my first toilet shot.

[Laughter]

Christian: Nice.

John: First one?

Marc: Yeah, very clean toilet.

Aldis: Is that a first for Leverage as well?

Marc: Yeah, I think so.

Aldis: Congratulations, Roskin. Boom.

John: That was also a lot of fun, is we designed the tombs, and then realized we hadn't figured out any way to get stuff back and forth.

Christian: Right.

John: So yeah. But that's always the better way to start, write backwards. He's great, by the way, absolutely fantastic.

Christian: He's great.

John: And believable as a military man, and somebody that he could have known.

Marc: There's just a subtle moment here that's just so great. You know, when the general says, “Would you leave your people behind?” And this exchange between you and Beth, it just- my eyes always well up, right here. Just, she has no idea what's being said, but it’s just so effective.

Christian: Wow.

John: Yeah, you should do this for a living.

[Laughter]

Christian: I know.

Aldis: You awed yourself, didn't you?

Christian: I did, a little bit, yeah.

Aldis: Do it again, dammit.

Christian: I hadn't seen this yet, and then she comes in.

John: And also you've forgotten. I mean that’s the thing, these things ran at ten pages a day, sixteen hours, it's blinding.

Christian: Yeah, that's exactly it.

John: And her play there, that- the little scene out on her, just she’s bugged.

Christian: Yeah.

John: That is not the Parker from first season.

Christian: No, it’s not.

John: Beth’s done a really great job of modulating Parker forward through all three years.

Scott: Without losing the core, which is always tricky.

Aldis: She has some of the best facial reactions, too, to express her character.

John: Yeah. It's never not Parker, but you can see Parker evolving. 

Scott: Evolving, yeah.

John: This is fantastic, he's so hapless.

Marc: And Gina did a great job here.

John: With the accent and just dropping it in.

Marc: Yeah. “We're getting married!”

John: And look how delighted-

[Laughter]

John: And the extras sell it. They really do, like, “Everyone loves a wedding!”

Christian: That's so great.

John: “It’s so delightful, that nice boy is getting married.” You know, it absolutely works. Love the smiles, love those people.

Marc: What I love about a lot of this episode is the pairing between Tim and Aldis, and not having him in a van.

Aldis: Thank god!

Christian: Yeah, absolutely.

Chris: Yeah, there was no van here.

Aldis: Thank god.

Marc: There are so many great moments-

John: You're in a suit looking fine.

Scott: Yeah, yeah.

Aldis: That van, boy.

Scott: An expensive suit.

Aldis: Rented it out for the day.

John: And this was a lot of fun, too, was the controlling information through the phones, through the screens people got their information from.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: And it actually was started because Bill Cosby had been announced dead on Twitter for like the third time. And for, like, four hours I was going, “Oh god, Bill Cosby's dead!” 

[Laughter]

John: And I realized like, “Wait no, Bill Cosby’s not dead.”

Christian: Right.

John: But he is actually, for all intents and purposes, dead to everyone who's reading those.

Scott: For those four hours.

Christian: Yeah, wow.

John: For those four hours, until he makes the announcement.

Christian: Wow.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: And that's really what bore part of- the birth of part of this episode.

Scott: Well he even has that line: “I only need them to believe it for a few hours,” or something.

John: Yeah, exactly, that's why we threw it in. We only need it for ten minutes. And this speech is fantastic, and this is- Goran did a lot of work on this speech.

Marc: Yes.

John: And this is also one of the reasons I love you guys is, this is not fancy directing. This is just park on the actors, and let them work.

Marc: But of course we had to have a crane to reach them.

[Laughter]

John: Well, that's not my problem.

Aldis: Oh that's right, you guys were downstairs while we’re upstairs.

Chris: Well there's the crane, that's right, that’s right.

John: Yeah, because you had the crane up from that shot up to him, and then you shot it with that, oh wow.

Marc: We got it.

John: And just Nate running an enormous bluff here.

Marc: Yes.

Chris: And also, this is a rare episode because it’s two adversaries in the show; usually we’re in the shadows, we’re undercover, we’re playing somebody. Here it's just out in the open a chess match.

Marc: Yup

Chris: Between these two people. Which is not something we’d done before.

John: Yeah, the first one, they stayed under until they could get the Davids. The second one, he got busted by Shepard, but he was playing from an underhand.

Chris: Right.

John: Yeah, this is the first time it’s like, yeah this guy could serve us our lunch.

Christian: That's what I was saying; it was very strange for me, because I came up to John I was like, “Dude, what am I gonna- how do I play it?” Cause he knows Eliot’s in town. He knows what I do ‘cause I used to do it for him. He's gotta be scared a little bit, and that's what- Goran was and his character was not. And he knows we’re there, and it's very much out in the open and we've never done that before.

Scott: And we always called it a chess match, but what's kinda cool about it is that when it's out in the open it kinda has the flavor of a slug fest, too.

Christian: It does, exactly.

Scott: Toe to toe, just taking swings.

Christian: That’s exactly what it is, a street fight.

Chris: But the great thing is we had a political campaign. So we had rules, we had a clock, I mean, it gave us a structure for the whole con.

John: Yeah, I love that acting beat there. Just the little look away, the down- also I like that hat a lot, I'm not gonna lie.

Christian: Yeah.

Marc: And the campaign’s growing, we have more posters and people.

John: We had a very specific timeline on the campaign room. We had three phases: the despair phase, the growing phase, and the triumph phase. And we had to make sure- because we have ADs, first ADs work hard. They have to pack that room to make it look different each time. Yes, and this is Girl Friday. He's Ralph Bellamy, and he's just gonna be pushed around and manipulated.

Chris: That's a great line.

Christian: Wow.

John: And again, the campaign promise: “How is a campaign promise not like a lie?” “It's complicated!”

Aldis: Yeah.

[Laughter]

John: Deeply cynical, deeply cynical stuff.

Chris: Great comic timing on that.

John: Yeah well, Tim’s a funny guy, That’s why we’re very blessed, all you guys can land a joke. You know, that's- you don't get that lucky all the time. And then the little snarky look from her. And again, that attitude that character would not have had first or second year. Really both the characters, and the actors have driven the characters. This is what- by the way, what he's- the rough estimation he’s doing is called the Fermi Problem, something that I was taught back in my physics days, is you just do order of magnitude guesses.

Scott: Right.

John: And it allows you to just make good, order of magnitude guesses without having to grind out the actual math and boring the audience. Like I am right- now!

[Laughter]

Marc: Yeah, exactly.

Chris: And now you've hit stop, and now you're back in it.

John: There's some physicists out there in their underwear just freaking out because I said Fermi Problem.

[Laughter]

John: This was a ton of fun. That was a street in Portland!

Marc: This is all exterior Portland, yes.

John: Yeah that's done on Ankeny. That's fantastic! That's done on cobblestone! That's fantastic, yeah. And just putting up posters. And we got a lot of photos of the Italian elections actually, and used those as the models for the poster style and density and stuff. And this was Aldis working hard, second unit.

Aldis: Yes, indeed.

John: “Now loosen the tie, it's later!”

Aldis: Yeah, small little room, dig it. 

Chris: And there's his- what's in his cabinet? Incoming cabinet?

Marc: Yes, incoming cabinet.

John: Yup, doing the JFK short sleeve thing. It was great, it was a ton of fun.

Christian: Was that supposed to be me putting that poster up?

John: No, no, no, that is the locals who are so filled with joy at the chance to be liberated.

[Laughter]

John: It also had a really pretty light cause we ran out of light and blew it out from the side.

Marc: This is a great graphic that Derek built for-

[Laughter]

Marc: For the campaign.

Aldis: Light it on fire!

John: What's crazy is it should be over the top, but if you looked at this year's election, it wasn't!

Scott: Yeah!

Marc: It wasn't as bad!

Chris: No, not at all.

Christian: I was just gonna say it's totally, exactly what's going on.

Scott: Not even this year’s election-

Chris: This is very restrained.

Scott: Yeah, like even the 60’s there were the nuke- the kid- the little girl with the flower ad.

John: The daisy ad, only aired once.

Scott: Yeah, and then the nuclear bomb explodes, it’s crazy.

Chris: Oh, and child labor!

John: By the way, that was great casting, that kid. “Alright now look sad, now look like they beat you! Alright, that's perfect.”

[Laughter]

John: No, we're not gonna beat him, no, sorry.

Christian: Such a beautiful shot, by the way, Roskin.

Marc: Thank you.

Christian: And again were back in that-

Chris: Oh, that made me laugh.

John: That's a great joke.

Chris: That made me laugh very hard.

Aldis: That kid had fun that day.

John: That's a lovely joke.

Marc: And Alastair plays that well.

John: And this was a ton of fun, figuring out exactly what Parker and Eliot were up to, their two cons.

Christian: Yeah.

John: And I'll give Chris- Chris was the one who came up with the scandal, this scandal right here. Cause we couldn't figure out what this scandal could be.

Scott: Yeah.

John: The conversation between Vittori and Nate is basically the conversation we had in the room. And then Chris said, “I got what’s worse than sex.”

Chris: What’s worse than money or sex?

John: Yeah, the only thing that America can't forgive.

[Laughter]

Scott: That's right.

John: And this puppy was found on the street, right?

Christian: Yup, yup,

John: And then was - rubber glass by the way - and then was adopted-

[Laughter]

Chris: You don't see it bouncing.

John: Yeah, you don't- yeah.

Christian: Yeah.

John: This is a great scene. Goran is- what I love is Goran-

Marc: The Canadian accent is really nice.

John: [Doing a Canadian accent] It was really nice, oh jeez.

Scott: This got a huge reaction in the screening.

Christian: Did it really?

John: Yes.

Marc: Huge.

John: Well because it’s-

Christian: Such a good little puppy!

[Laughter]

John: Just the boldness of it, just the sheer stones of it, yeah.

Marc: And the reactions of either of the guys playing on the other side.

Chris: When you put the glasses on, I always have fun playing with the glasses.

John: Well, what I love is Goran is playing it actually kind of amused at the move that's being made.

Christian: Yeah, cause he's well he's looking at Eliot!

John: While Alastair is freaking out. Yeah, he's like this is actually-

[Laughter]

Scott: This is great, that's great.

John: Yeah. “I think I hate you.” “I'm ok with that.” No Nate is- Nate Ford is not a good man. We've said this. And this was actually Goran’s favorite piece.

Marc: Yeah, this was like great. This was like ok, it's a game of chess match, but here are the questions to all the- yeah, this was great.

Christian: You gotta feel like he’s- you gotta feel like Moreau’s like, “Wow, after all these years, an adversary that's worth the fight.”

Scott: Yeah.

John: That’s kind of it, you know.

Christian: You know, like how many times he's just run over people, all of sudden: hey, we get to fight.

John: That's what he says to Nate, he says, “Make it interesting.” He's kinda looking for this.

Christian: Yeah, yeah.

John: It's not until it starts to go against him.

Christian: Out of sheer boredom of the other people he's just rolled over.

John: I adore this scene.

Chris: I love this scene between these two so much.

John: They play it so well. You could do a series with these two, absolutely.

Marc: Yes.

John: You could do a series of the American con woman who helps the guy get elected and then helps him run his tiny European country.

Scott: Oh yeah, let's go sell that!

John: We’ll sell that, done!

Chris: And John where did the whole handshake bit come from? Cause I know I had written it a bit differently, that opening- but the handshake paid off so well. Where'd you come up with that? The western gesture and all that.

John: I had read a book by an FBI- this is what you do on Leverage. I had read a book by an FBI profiler, and he also did some hostage negotiation. And it- in the book it talks about always gesturing with an open right hand. Because you just trust it, you know, and it always just stuck with me.

Chris: It plays so well here as a, you know, getting the guy up scene. And it paid off so well at the end.

John: Yeah, it really- big applause when he does it at the end. We did a live screening, which is when we talk about applause.

Chris: And this obviously is our homage to the Kennedy-Nixon debate of 1960.

[Laughter]

Scott: Yeah, right.

Chris: Which was famous.

John: If we could've had him sweat, we would've.

Marc: Again in the Schnitzer Auditorium, same building.

Christian: Yup, late night.

John: Yeah that was the last night of shooting, right?

Aldis: Yeah, it was.

Marc: And Alastair again, is just fantastic with this.

John: Bailing this.

Marc: And so is Humberto. But him playing the- taking the effect of the nicotine cream was just classic.

John: And the list of ways to kill people, don't do that. If you ever think about doing that, the nicotine thing, don't. That’s very dangerous.

Christian: Yeah, very dangerous.

John: Leave it up to people who are very good at almost killing people like Eliot Spencer.

Chris: Would it kill you?

Christian: Oh god, yeah.

Chris: Too much- the nicotine?

John: Oh yeah, fuck yeah.

Aldis: Oh, yeah.

Chris: Wow.

John: Absolutely. This- we probably should have changed this a little more.

[Laughter]

John: We usually change it in the show. This one we were kinda moving kinda fast, we should've done-

Marc: Look at that crowd there.

John: How many people are in that crowd?

Marc: About 80.

[Laughter]

John: And we turned them into 2,000; that’s Mark Franco, doing visual effects.

Marc: Doing some tiling.

Christian: That's not our biggest one, our biggest one was the baseball game.

John: Yup. Biggest one, we filled it with like 30,000 people.

Aldis: Oh, yeah.

Christian: Baseball game in season two.

Marc: “Vote for me!”

[Laughter]

John: So delightfully cheesy.

Christian: Parker.

John: And then the match cut over, that’s nice.

Marc: Yeah.

Aldis: Eliot almost killing a guy with nicotine.

Marc: He's got rubber gloves on, though.

John: He does, because he's careful.

Chris: That's right.

Marc: This is my favorite look.

Scott: He plays this perfectly.

John: And again it's one of those, one of the reasons doing the television is, you're moving so fast the actors have to create a lot, and there you go!

[Laughter]

Chris: “Wait who's that? I wanna talk to you later.”

Christian: Hey c'mon man, that's my move!

John: He’s charming, you know, but that’s- having a charming bad guy, ‘cause you need to like him for the end.

Christian: Oh, yeah.

John: No the- and this local, again local- almost all local actors in this one.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: That’s fantastic.

Chris: And they had to make up an accent for a non-existent country. Which folks, for an actor, is not the easiest thing in the world.

John: Yeah we actually wound up- I'll say it, we wound up basing it on Malta, which was a British colony until the 60’s, and really filled- the government structure filled a lot of requirements for us. But we made it Italian, because it's kind of a good European accent. So we made it close to Italy.

Chris: Oh, this is great.

John: Yeah, this is great. Huge- tell me you couldn't make that guy governor.

Christian: Oh absolutely.

John: Absolutely, maybe that'll be my hiatus project.

[Laughter]

Scott: Why do I think you're not kidding?

Christian: “Listen, we've got another job for you.”

John: No, this- and him storming over. Now it’s not fun anymore, now he's gonna kill you people.

Marc: Yes.

Aldis: Ah, he's breaking the rules

Scott: Yup.

John: And wow, without that staircase? What a great set.

Aldis: It was all right there.

Marc: Chandelier, staircase.

John: That looks like Europe. And then it had the matching mini balconies here to shoot across, it was great.

Marc: Yeah, it just gave us so much. This was just the- I love this, just the unspoken-

John: He's not gonna threaten them.

Marc: Just “I'm here.”

John: Just- and that's what also is kinda fun is when we talk about Hardison wanting to run his own crew sometimes, he's still being schooled; these are the rules we play by.

Christian: “Hey, how's it going.”

John: “How's it going? Sup!” Now these are the rules you play under. Nate is trying to tell him if you're gonna run a crew, these are the stakes.

Aldis: Yeah.

Christian: Look at how beautiful that is.

Aldis: That is. Where are those actually captured from?

John: I dunno, that's stock- from Stocksylvania.

[Laughter]

Scott: Stocktopia.

John: Sanstockington. Yeah, no, and this was a ton of fun. And of course the UN is always this effective when they monitor elections. They are pretty tight, actually, when they do it; they're pretty effective.

Marc: Yeah.

John: And this sort of walk by. Yeah, that's not a friendly look.

Aldis: “I'm still gonna kill you.”

Marc: Campaign’s growing.

John: Yeah, phase three, this was great. And this was also kinda the- we had to show that Sophie was genuinely interested, she wasn't just game invested.

Scott: Right, yeah.

John: She's actually come to like the country and really believe in this guy. Cause he- and we lucked out, the actor was really super charming; Humberto was fantastic.

Scott: And this fits perfectly with her ambition; she easily could've been a princess of a country in an alternate life.

John: And then we establish in the backstory.

Chris: Well we play her, we play aliases of her as princesses, so yeah.

John: Backstory explained she was married to royalty at one point; she knows this world better than he certainly did. That's the first time you see Moreau pissed off. And the president actually, he's a results-oriented guy.

Chris: Oh I love this shot. This is just great, the two of them, the expanse of the office.

John: This looks like West Wing.

Scott: Yeah, it really does.

John: It's gorgeous.

Christian: People have to understand- and this is the scariest moment because if he starts losing it, he starts pulling triggers. It’s a very, you know, Moreau doesn't lose it. He's losing it.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: And that's when he realizes, “Oh, I know how to handle this.”

Marc: Dave Connell did this beautifully.

John: Yeah, the- and this was a lot of fun. Also tracking exactly what information Hardison leaked at any given time. We had a whole timeline of who knew what, and when the people of San Lorenzo knew, when Nate knew it. Not quite as complicated as some of the other ones, but pretty brutal. And here we go, I love the starting gun.

Marc: That's a oner! Pressed for time.

John: Just the- we stuff on the TV, we see the reaction, and then Nate steps in the foreground.

Marc: Boom, we told that story.

John: Yup, that's all the information you need to know. And peek around, and just- and again, it was important in the writing - reset to the audience what every character's goal is, and where you see them next so you don't have to do the math.

Christian: Right.

John: And “age of the geek.”

Chris: In the story development process, at one time they won the election, and part of the episode was them governing. And John, I think what you struggled with in kinda figuring it out, was making the election the ultimate end.

John: Yeah, the election was a big enough story and that's something we hit every now and then in the writers room. You don't know how big the story actually is until you actually outline it. And then you have eight acts worth of cards up there and then you go, “Oh, alright.” The story has told you how long it needs to be. This was a ton of fun, the idea that he'd be doing press conferences from in prison - that delighted me to no end.

Marc: Right.

Chris: And very Mission Impossible.

John: Very Mission Impossible.

Chris: All the scenes with him, every time I see that, it takes me back to Mission Impossible.

John: I'm not gonna lie, this is our Mission Impossible episode, absolutely. And yeah, he's venal, this- Alastair is great.

Marc: Alastair, yeah, this is the bad side of Alastair, really bad, you know, take them all out.

John: And this was part of the fun was figuring out how the ending unrolled, was the chess match of what would a bad guy do to control information? And how would you use control of information against them? Using your opponent's strength against them is great. And by the way, big ups to these actors who were working background here, because the little look he throws, just a reminder this is not a good thing. It's a nice choice, nice choice picking up the single on that. 

Marc: Yeah.

John: Oh and this was a ton of fun. Whenever you have- I think a lot of the Leverage audience knows at this point, whenever you see people and you can't see their faces? We’re in there somewhere.

Scott: I think we need to do a double reverse reverse, just to reset the clock.

Chris: We may need to go the other way on it.

John: Yeah, maybe in season four.

Chris: Oh and once he brings Nate in here, this- the scenes with the three of them coming up are some of my favorites in the whole two part finale.

John: Well again, that was right there when he says, “We're not gonna release the results.” You have to set up each time, you know, exactly how the mechanism of the con is gonna work.

Marc: Here Sophie's first instinct is to call for Eliot for help.

Aldis: Boom, ting!

[Laughter]

John: There you go, I've actually seen somebody knock the top champagne glass off a stack of champagne glasses with the champagne like that.

Christian: Oh, yeah.

Aldis: Wow.

John: And we had a big discussion that day of exactly how this would happen, exactly how she would do it. And we were like, “We'll just put the cork in the dude's eye and swing to him.” And it looks great!

Christian: It does look great, absolutely.

John: And then she just brains the dude, no elegance on the second one.

Marc: And now we're back to our opening scene.

John: Yup, which is- you know, there was a time we talked about doing every episode like that.

Chris: I- you know I like it when it’s the finale, I like when we make it special.

John: Yeah, for a while we kinda did that jump.

Chris: You see it a lot, it's in The Hangover, it’s in, you know what I mean? It's done a lot now.

John: Yeah, but you know there is something for promises.

Christian: I enjoy it, like John says, it’s become a signature for the finale.

Chris: Yeah, I think so too.

Marc: This was a great speech. The writing on this was great, and she really delivered it.

John: That was Scott, that was the writing- he was the one who really dug in on who her character was, you know, while I was mucking around with plotting.

Scott: And taking over Oregon?

John: Oh, yes.

Scott: I mean San Lorenzo.

John: San Lorenzo. While I was doing my how you would actually take over a government thing. He was doing the- well you were the one who came up with the whole idea of she's Avita.

Scott: Yeah, right.

John: And that's exactly how she would go about winning their hearts, and what speeches she should make.

Scott: Yeah, cause having the chance to be Avita, that seems like the one thing that would be a true draw for her.

John: The one thing she wouldn't be able to resist.

Scott: Yeah, right.

John: And this is- now of course the audience knows she's not dead, but the fun of it is playing it out.

Marc: And these three just killed this scene.

Chris: So you said- you did all- all of this- all five pages?

John: We pretty much did the entire half act in one take, every setup.

Marc: Every set up. They went through five pages of dialogue each take.

Chris: Wow.

Scott: That’s crazy.

John: Just- and that's why you have such great coverage of this. You just kept parking the camera, moving it around and parking it. And they found this, I mean we got in there at lunch that day, and just walked the scene.

Christian: Oh this is the one you were talking about where they had their blocking down when you got there?

John: Well they had a good idea, and then they saw the room.

Marc: But it was really- you know, instead of- we do so many bits where we break things up in our show, cause we’re always cutting away to somewhere else, but you know, Tim said, Let's go through all five,” and these guys were like, “Alright, I'm in.” And they just fell into stride.

John: That was kinda those great actor- cause actors are all a little competitive. So when Tim said, “Let's do all five pages,” you saw Goran and Alastair look at each other like, “Alright yeah, yeah, we’ll do all five pages, yeah we’re prepped.”

[Laughter]

John: “We don't need sides, I'll see your five.” It’s great, and it really comes across in this scene. And that little smile.

Scott: Isn't that the speech that got a huge spontaneous applause in the screening?

Marc: Yes.

Scott: Yeah, that was awesome.

John: The- oh no it's coming up, the “I have the guns, I have the government, I have the-”

Scott: No, “I bought an election.” Isn't that coming up?

Marc: Yeah.

John: The- yeah, the “I have the guns, I have the government.”

Marc: Right here.

John: It’s like “No, no, I have a 24 year old genius with a smartphone and a problem with authority.”

Scott: That’s it! That’s it.

John: That got a giant applause break.

Aldis: That guy! This guy!

Scott: Who is that? Oh it's you.

Christian: Nice.

John: And I'll say actually, it's heavily influenced by Cory Doctorow's book, Little Brother. 

Aldis: Oh.

John: About teenagers in a near future America who are oppressed by Homeland Security and strike back by using teenage geek culture and technology.

Christian: Wow.

Marc: It’s like our own little book club here.

[Laughter]

John: What do you guys think I do?

Chris: Read books.

John: What do you guys think I do? While you’re off touring the fucking world with your guitar, meeting beatiful girls. And you’re off doing your own thing?

Christian: Yeah, I get real quiet when all that stuff comes up.

John: I fucking read all the time, that’s my job.

[Laughter]

John: Some of us have homework forever, that's our job, that's our life.

Christian: I read two books, which is Call Of The Wild by Jack London and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.

[Laughter]

John: That was it.

Aldis: Everybody’s read The Alchemist, it's a great book.

John: Well there you go, there's your books from them.

Aldis: I'm rereading it for like the third time!

Scott: Marc, what did you think of The Alchemist?

Marc: I loved it.

John: No, this was a ton of fun.

Aldis: Age of the geek!

John: Age of the geek. You know, as we established, there's only, you know, X number of people in the country; it's not that hard to email all of them.

Chris: Right.

Aldis: Yeah, no.

John: Particularly since these small countries have controlled ISPs. Or governmental ISPs. This is a great show down. And sitting Tim here is actually great staging, cause it gives you three levels, three eye lines. Playing with information, playing with access to information is a crucial part of this. Alastair’s turn here, by the way, as he starts to slowly panic is kind of what anchors the scene.

Christian: Yes, he did such a great job.

Marc: Now it's like, “Where the hell did he come from?”

John: Yeah “Oh hey, yeah I fucked you.”

Marc: “Oh, and we stole your security.”

John: Now this was tricky, cause this was a series of nested flashbacks, and the first time we did post, we put the flashback process on the big Guillermo scene.

Christian: Oh yeah?

John: When he does the speech after Sophie’s been assassinated.

Christian: Oh, right.

John: But it made- it took all the emotional weight out of it.

Chris: Right, cause it felt like it already happened.

John: So it's actually one of the few times we do a flashback without this filter on it.

Chris: Yeah, that's true. And it works.

John: Yeah, it absolutely works. And also the line from season one: “We be the cavalry.” You're giving it, like, an Eliot signature here.

Christian: Yeah, yeah.

John: Something that Eliot says all the time. That's the fun of season three is you get to start to fill out the previous lives of these guys that they've had in the past.

Chris: And down.

Christian: That’s awesome.

Aldis: If you're asking, we hit them really hard.

Christian: Yeah, we did, we hit them really hard.

John: Yeah, you beat the hell out of the stunties.

Chris: You hit them hard?

Christian: We hit them hard.

John: Well they were wearing those things!

Christian: They were wearing helmets, and if you hit them softly you couldn't see the movement. So I said alright- they can't see it coming, so I was like, “I'm gonna have to hit ya.” And they were like, “Alright.”

John: Oh and this is Gina, by the way, wearing the pack.

Christian: Yeah.

John: Gina took the squibs.

Scott: Oh really?

John: Yeah, that's why she has the dress on, and that's why we could do it in closeup. Cause if it was a stuntie, we could do it with just the dress, but with Gina we could put the packs under the sweater, and we just ruin the sweater.

Christian: Yeah, she did the stunt, I was very very proud of her.

Scott: And those hurt, right?

Christian: Oh yeah.

John: Yeah those things are scary.

Marc: This was a great speech.

Christian: You turn them around, you’re dead. People don't realize that, that's actually a bullet coming out.

John: No, Gina was a fucking trooper. Yeah, this was a great speech, he nailed it. The slow push in on him. We were joking the night we were shooting this, like, “This scene will be recreated on San Lorenzo television, like, 20 years from now.”

[Laughter]

John: With actors when they do the documentary. And there will be people like, “You know Rebecca Ibanez wasn't alive.” “Oh you're one of those people are you?” “She wasn't a real person!”

Chris: This guy has a real arc in this show.

John: Yeah, he does.

Chris: This is not something we typically do.

John: This was the thing, it's like and now he is complicit in our crime. We’ve taken the only-

Chris: No, no, but it takes the fact that he has this arc, that he's become worthy of the office that we've manipulated. I think it really takes away from the fact that the mark in this episode are the people of San Lorenzo. That's the difference!

[Laughter]

John: But we’re doing it for them!

Chris: It's not right, but we've given them a worthy leader.

John: We were actually joking about the fact that after he did that scene, I said, “Michael Vittori’s reign of genocide began that night.”

[Laughter]

John: “Oh, oh we didn't think this out at all.”

[Laughter]

John: “20 years of terror.” “Oh, that was a bad move on our part.”

Chris: Well, watch the documentary.

Scott: Yeah, exactly.

John: This is great, this was the chess match.

Marc: Yeah.

John: Where it literally became Alastair is the chessboard, and the two of them squaring up on him.

Scott: Yeah.

John: And the two windows behind them.

Chris: And there you go! there’s the shot, what's he gonna do? Who’s he gonna go with?

Scott: Bachelor number one or bachelor number two?

[Laughter]

Marc: “How big of an estate?”

John: “How big of an estate?” No really, I've been watching a lot of noir lately and he's just doing it perfectly, he's just doing a throwback to a 40’s character actor here. Just playing- really underplaying it.

Chris: Yeah the, “I'm shocked! Shocked that there's gambling in this going on here!”

John: “Gambling in this establishment!” He's absolutely playing Casablanca.

[Laughter]

John: He could not be more Claude Rains at this moment. No, and then the flashback to the very beginning of the episode to set it up. This law was in place in the United States up until the 1830s, by the way.

Marc: There you have it.

John: James Madison actually considered using it at one point. Seizing the assets of his political opponents.

Scott: Really?

John: Yes, absolutely.

Scott: Very useful law.

John: Not one we have now, thank goodness. Very useful law for us.

[Laughter]

John: And that moment kinda blows by, actually.

Christian: Yeah, wow.

John: “The guys coming in are honest, so I need a corrupt man.” The entire plan depends on using the most corrupt man.

Marc: Bye!

Chris: Waving goodbye.

John: This is great. And what I love also here is they're playing it like, “We will gun your ass down if you don't give up the desk.”

Christian: Yup, it’s strong arm, it is.

John: What I also love here is the moment, like, “Wait, did we just spring a war criminal in order to win?”

[Laughter]

John: Yeah, kinda. But he's our war criminal.

Scott: Yeah, he's a good war criminal.

John: Yeah, exactly. The blood on the shirt is a nice touch. Nadine really killed that.

Marc: Yeah.

John: And the reveal. And now the gloat, the crucial gloat.

Marc: Bad guy has to suffer.

John: Bad guy must suffer, our guys must gloat, we must see the victims rewarded. She looks great in that shot, that’s again, very classic 1960’s.

Aldis: When does she not look great?

Scott: I was about to say, unlike usually?

John: Well just, you know, she looks very exactly that 60’s spy vibe there, you know.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: Also fun, we stumbled across that last line of, “Damien Moreau will never leave San Lorenzo.” I think we actually wrote it on the set.

Chris: Well she says it in the garage.

John: Yeah she says it earlier, and I think we were on set going, “Oh wait.” And we tossed it out, yeah.

Marc: This is our first scene we shot with Goran, and that's what we see.

John: We locked him in a cell.

Christian: For some reason I'm just unconvinced that a little cage like that is gonna hold Damien Moreau, I'm just saying.

Chris: Nooo.

John: What? No. By the way, this- I love this. This is just so over the top and perfect and right.

[Laughter]

John: I was actually in New York when Princess Di died, and I remember going-

Chris: But look how much information you pack in one shot here.

John: Yeah, exactly. You know she's been sainted.

Chris: You have a shrine to her, everyone knows she's dead, you have what's happening in San Lorenzo, we pan up and-

Aldis: Yet again, she's at her own funeral.

Scott: Yeah that's a great one.

Chris: And we begin our scene. I mean that is a great shot.

John: That is a great shot.

[Laughter]

John: And there she is, in the ridiculous hat.

Christian: Wow.

[Laughter]

Christian: Really a great shot.

John: That’s- well that's the trick, we expect the audience to keep up on these episodes.

Aldis: Yeah.

Christian: She has a habit of showing up at her own funerals, doesn’t she?

Aldis: Yeah she does, bad habit.

John: It’s a character trait now; it's a feature, not a bug. No, and it's a lovely speech.

Christian: It's the actress, it's the old off broadway actors. “Do they like me? Do they love me? Who showed up?”

John: Exactly. This was great, by the way, was finally take the sting out of the relationship, only to utterly subvert it 30 seconds later. But the two of them are such good friends, and the characters had come to a new parity this season, they really acted the hell out of this. She's wonderful in this.

Aldis: By the way, in case you haven’t noticed, there goes Tim's hat again. Another hat.

Marc: And again a oner.

John: And a oner.

Scott: Yeah, that's right.

Marc: Gary Camp walking backwards.

Aldis: Yeah, the work that Gary Camp actually does.

John: Yeah, we should pay him more than you, is that what you're saying?

Aldis: Nah, I'm saying the audience-

Christian: I'm pretty sure he does.

Marc: This is a great line.

John: The “I don't travel with luggage.”

Marc: “I don't travel with luggage.”

John: All right-thinking men don't travel with luggage. Luggage is for women. Men buy shit when they get there, I'm just saying.

Christian: Oh Parker does.

John: Yeah this was a ton of fun, figuring out what everyone's tie up for the season was.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: Of course Parker stole shit, she's Parker! Not gonna leave the country and not-

Aldis: Kinda a shame that Hardison didn't steal gold bars.

John: Actually in the original version of this we were at the estate.

Chris: Yeah.

John: When we originally broke it, we wound up going to the estate, and then we realized we couldn't find an Italian estate in Portland, that was a little tricky. Ton of fun, was this just a random room? This was a meeting room we made a bedroom.

Marc: Yes.

John: And at one point we had Gina outside the window.

Marc: Yeah.

John: That was not such a good idea.

Marc: Well.

John: Well there's a tiny ledge out there.

Aldis: Ahaha, and wait for it, wait for it!

Chris: Oh this is a classic.

Aldis: Boom! Knocking the boots! [Sing-songy] Bow chicka bow bow.

John: The little zoom in there you go.

Christian: Bwooooo!

Aldis: Bwooo!

[Laughter]

John: And fans across America scream.

Scott: Yeah.

John: That’s great. No, they didn’t have sex, they just cuddled.

Christian: Right.

Aldis: Oh yeah, for sure, for sure.

Scott: Didn't you tell me she read that and she thought it was a joke, she didn't think it was real?

John: Yeah she thought we were giving her a fake ending.

Chris: Oh c’mon.

John: Like nope, you guys did it!

Aldis: You did it!

Chris: Season three, we’re moving on.

Christian: Season three! Thank you so much guys, some of the best writing, the best directing I've ever had man, it's just unbelievable.

Aldis: Thank y’all for staying until the finish.

John: Marc, you directed the hell out of those, that was fantastic.

Chris: Yeah, these are-

Christian: Awesome!

Marc: Had a lot of help.

Aldis: Roskooni!

Chris: These are -

John: Alright, season four coming up.

Christian: Come on!

Aldis: Peace, people!!

Marc: Hi, I'm Marc Roskin, Director of The Underground Job.

John: I'm John Rogers, Executive Producer.

Chris: I'm Chris Downey, Executive Producer. And I guess standing in for our two writers.

John: Yes, Melissa Glenn and Jessica Rieder are unfortunately unable to do the commentary. However Chris developed this episode with them so he will catch-

Chris: I'm gonna be both of them.

John: He's gonna be both of them. He's wearing a pretty little smock dress just to commemorate that. Great episode, a ton of fun, and very relevant. Of course it is inspired by the- one of the many disasters, mine disasters in America.

Chris: Yes.

John: And it was a little shocking when we started doing research on how easily safety- you can flaunt the safety regulations in this industry.

Chris: Yeah, I- you know, Jessica and Melissa are great at really digging in on a subject.

John: Yup.

Chris: It all started season one when they did the Two Horse Job, and we sent them into the world of horse racing, they befriended a jockey.

John: They went and lived at the- yeah at the stables for a week. Right.

Chris: And I believe they befriended a coal miner for this one.

John: Yes, they called the coal miner and got- all that banter from the opening scene is directly from him. Marc, how the hell did you do that?

Marc: We dug a hole in the side. We had a black up- a black in the back so it's just the entrance, just the side of a hill.

John: So the entrance was built on the side of a hill?

Marc: Yeah, it’s all fake. We had a CG explosion there, we did have a little propane mortar just to give us something to start with.

John: Well that's actually a good point, is what do you need- I know you guys do that all the time is to have like a little starter explosion. Is that to map the light? or what is that for?

Marc: Yeah, it’s to give the artist something to start with. And this time, you know, Dean just wanted it bigger, bigger, bigger. It's also a little more costly to use gas when you do explosions. You know, it’s more permitting,, so we used propane and then we just enhance it. But unfortunately that day we had a nice rainy day to open with.

Chris: Yeah, it sure gave nice atmosphere.

Marc: Nice, yeah.

John: Yeah.

Marc: Yeah, and they gave us full use of all the mining equipment like the skids and dump trucks; it was great.

Chris: Now Marc, did you look at- were there any movies, or any influences that you had when you were going into this episode and knew you were gonna do coal mining? Anything sort of interior?

Marc: Yeah, it was- well at first it was just looking at pictures, you know, with our production designer. And just going through what type of coal mines do exist, and how are we gonna create one with our frankenstein set which is used in numerous episodes?

Chris: Right.

John: That is over on- if you've been on the tour seen Con Con on the DVD you know that's over on studio E; that’s our other sound stage and it has been a hospital, it has been FBI offices, it’s been-

Chris: The vaults.

Marc: Antiquities rooms.

John: Antiquities vaults. 

Marc: You name it.

John: Yes exactly and this time we turned it into a mine for this one.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Because apparently you can't bring equipment down into a real mine.

[Laughter]

Chris: And I have to say Marc, I know I said this before, but this to me is my favorite of your episodes. I thought this was a really cinematic-

Marc: Oh, thank you.

John: Really? Oh interesting.

Chris: Yeah, I mean, you know. I liked this even more than Tap Out and that’s saying a hell of a lot. I thought this came out fantastic.

Marc: What I loved about this, you know, after shooting and editing it, there’s no fat to this episode.

John: Yeah.

Marc: I mean the girls did such a great job writing it, we had such a good production quality, and our guest stars were fantastic.

John: Yeah. There is an acting moment Bruce Davison does later which is generally one of my favorite acting moments in the whole series, all three seasons up to this point.

Marc: And Annie Fitzgerald playing Deborah Pierce. Everything just clicked, and you just never felt like “is this scene gonna make it?”

John: Yeah.

Chris: Right.

Marc: Because every scene was important, and there was a little bit of everything for everybody. 

John: No, good- a couple good con elements. And this actually was also born of- you finally got your Mission Impossible episode. Like you're ‘trapped in a subway’ episode.

Chris: Well we did a little bit, and the other thing is, you know, we talk about classic cons and you know, now that we're done season three, one of the all time classic cons in history is salting a mine. And it, you know, typically was done during the gold rush where, you know, people would put gold dust in a, you know, a prospectors pan and sell the worthless land. 

John: With- with a shotgun.

Chris: Or salt the, you know, an empty hole, yeah with a shotgun. And the challenge here was how do we contemporize it? And more importantly, since we were starting with the premise of a mine owner, how do you find a way to sell a mine owner his own mine? How do you salt a mine he already owns?

Marc: Right.

Chris: So that became, you know, a big challenge. But I love that we’re able to do one of these classic cons that we've never done before.

Marc: Yeah. Well what's also great about this, and you'll see as the episode goes on, every cast member has something to do in the con, and no one is just sitting in a control room.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Right.

Marc: You see Gina and Aldis get to play a part here. You know, Tim follows right in. Christian with the relationship with the boy who lost his father. And Beth as well, when she has to befriend Deborah Pierce.

John: Two bad guys. Two bad guys always give you a lot to do- 

Marc: Yeah.

John: But plotting it's a nightmare.

[Laughter]

Marc: Right.

John: Because, you know, you have to come up- these episodes already burn two or three cons or heists an episode, you have to double that when you have two bad guys.

Chris: And you have to make them really distinctive and different. 

John: Yeah.

Chris: I mean this may sound-

John: We actually struggled with this; we didn't originally have two in this.

Chris: We didn't really have two, yeah. But I think that one of the real research stories we had, there was some element to the two.

Marc: Yeah.

John: Well, yeah the idea that the way that these mine guys dodge having to pay for all these improvements is just keeping stuff tied up in the appeals process. 

Chris: Right.

John: And that led us to, you know, who could help him in that situation? And Citizens United had just gone through, so the whole idea that you could, through a shell company, donate pretty much anything you wanted through a PAC- 

Chris: Right.

John: -to a candidate without worry about the individual donation limit was just- that was great. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: And some people said we got a little wrong. We don’t- we didn't quite explain what this guy was doing properly, which was putting it through a PAC.

Marc: Right.

John: And we actually had a fairly- we won't say who it was, but we had a guy who could viably run for president’s lawyer on the phone, and he-

Chris: During the research for episode one.

John: Episode one, exactly.

Chris: 301.

John: And he took us through the whole difference between campaign fund and PAC. And took us through the rigorous ways the government makes sure you cannot cheat in a campaign fund, and how PACs are basically giant slush funds.

[Laughter]

John: That you can do anything with. This was a lovely sequence, by the way.

Marc: Yeah, these are nice moments when Sophie gets to coach Parker. 

Chris: And then look, I love the con character that Parker came up with here. It was sort of a very nice, specific sort of southern belle.

Marc: Right.

Chris: Eager intern, who didn't need the money but just was willing to do whatever it took to work for the candidate.

John: I mean yeah, some of that was in the script, but a lot of it was Beth landing it. 

Chris: Yes.

John: Landing that. You know, finding that voice and- yeah. And also, nobody quite writes Parker like the wonder twins. I mean, they really nailed the whole not quite understanding-

Marc: They really do.

John: Parker not quite understanding the goal of the grift, and why she's bad at it.

Marc: And the other thing that the wonder twins are great at, and sometimes it's complicated when you're shooting, but when you see the finished product, their flashbacks are very intricate.

John: Yeah.

Marc: But they really hit home during the story. And all of their episodes are really gifted with the flashbacks.

John: Yeah. No, they've done- yeah this one- they all fly, what are we saying. 

[Laughter]

John: They are all bears to break, they've all got four plot lines and- yeah. It's not exactly just find a body in Central Park and then move on and figure out who killed them.

Marc: But it was great, that little notepad that she had as Sophie plays here and pays off at the end.

John: Yeah, exactly. And introducing her in the mirror, nice idea. Whose idea- did you come up with that?

Marc: Well yeah, I mean- it was scripted that she's rehearsing in a mirror, so we just played into that a bit.

John: Oh, I did not remember that. No, coming up with that shot, that was nice.

Marc: And this is the building that was used on many times, the city hall building in downtown Portland.

Chris: Oh, yes.

John: Portland always doing their best to make us feel welcome. We actually kick the mayor out for this. Is that- wait this is the mayor's office from the season finale!

Marc: Exactly, it was Richard Klein’s office.

John: Season 2 finale.

Chris: Oh it is, boy that's pretty good. 

John: Yeah.

Chris: People are paying attention at home.

John: We stared at that for a long time. I recognized that bookshelf.

Marc: This was a fun scene.

John: No, she does a great job. And it's kinda- been kinda fun, I mean it's tricky because Beth is such a charming person.

Marc: Right.

John: It's been fun having her play Parker as someone who's bad at it. But you can look at the arc of her grifting abilities, and she'll never be good at it, but she's gotten better. You know what I mean? She's worked through it, yeah.

Chris: Yeah, there's totally an arc to it. And, you know, as the show goes into season 3 and 4 and beyond, I mean, it's credible to the audience that she will get better and better in her limited way.

John: She'll always have a fatal flaw, you know. 

Chris: Yes.

Marc: Yeah.

John: She always never has some little thing. But this was great, shooting- now how'd you light this? How'd you get the spotlight to do the lighting there?

Marc: This was Dave, Dave Connell and Neil. They gave the rocks an overall blue feeling, and then we just wanted to have as many, you know, source lights with headlamps, or hanging lamps, or oil lanterns, just to break it up a bit. And this young kid, Colton Lasater, did such a great job, and this arc really, really pays off.

Chris: Yeah, I mean-

Marc: Gives some weight to the episode.

Chris: Yeah in the story breaking process, you know, we’re always looking at which character in the con gets over invested in it. And sometimes that plays out comedically, and sometimes it plays out dramatically.

John: Yeah.

Chris: And you know, seemed to make sense that the one character that would have a personal connection to mining would be Eliot. And you know, we sort of established his protective nature of young people in the show.

John: Around kids, yeah. No, this is nice also the- and the frustrated look, thats-

Marc: Right.

John: This was nice, this was a nice- and they did make a lot of progress this year but it was good to kinda reset that they’ll never be really comfortable with them no matter how long they work together.

Marc: Right.

John: Too much talking!

[Laughter]

John: And a kicky little wrap on Hardison there, that's a nice scarf. Yeah, I'm trying to remember how we came up with what was in the mine? Was that just- that was the girls?

Chris: Which one?

Marc: The coltan? The girls came up with the coltan?

Chris: No, I’ll take a little credit. We actually- Alana Binker, our casting agent, is very good friends with a woman who’s an activist who wrote a book about the Congo. And I wish I remembered the name of her- her name and the name of the book, but it's a book that's out right now. And we were talking about what's going on in the Congo, and the- not just conflict diamonds but there's conflict minerals that are tied up in these horrible abuses. And one of them is coltan, which is this element that- a metal that is used in every microchip cell phone in the world.

Marc: Right.

Chris: And it sorta made sense that if you were going to try and con a coal miner into believing that there was something valuable in his mine, you would want to take him out of his comfort zone.

John: Yes.

Chris: So his comfort zone is coal.

Marc: Right.

Chris: So let’s convince him that there's this thing that's valuable that's sort of exotic. And that's where coltan came in and it also makes sense that if there was a domestic source of coltan, it would make sense for the audience that this would be something that an American company would want.

Marc: Right.

John: Yeah, and the- I'm sorry, I was distracted for a moment from the giant faux bows on the front of both of those outfits.

Marc: They’re fantastic.

Chris: Sorry, my long rant about coltan.

John: No, I was just saying Nadine Haders did another great job, and it's like those dresses are perfect and not over the top, but yeah. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: No, that's the thing when we talk about - you never know what's gonna pay off on the show. That's one of the reasons that we have writing stuff. You never know who read what that's just gonna toss in-

Chris: Yeah!

Marc: Look at all that red, white, and blue.

John: Yup. And your great fake mine there. So is that just a frame?

Marc: It- we built it in. So it goes back about thirty feet. So in that opening scene when we had all the miners coming in and out we were able to get the camera back and see some distance.

Chris: That’s great. But it's an actual mine? I mean-

Marc: No, it's a rock quarry.

Chris: It's a rock quarry, ok.

Marc: It’s a rock quarry, we just dug into a side. This is an actual mobile trailer that we had dragged out and set up there. And then just dressed it. This is actually the Carver Cafe, which is from Twilight so when we were shooting this scene, and had all our production gear, all these people came because they thought we were filming.

[Laughter]

John: They thought we were filming Twilight.

Chris: Oh that's not a good thing.

Marc: I think Gina is fantastic in this scene.

John: Yeah, well I actually- this is one of my favorite American accents that she does before the con is revealed.

Marc: Right.

John: And then when she flips, it’s just perfect. It reminds me a little of the pilot, actually, the Nigerian scam. The voice she does.

Marc: And Tim was really influential in blocking of this. He really helped out a lot. And then they just went for it. 

Chris: Bruce Davison is so great.

John: I know it's really- it is one of those guys where it's like, ‘And you don't have an oscar, why?’ You know? 

Marc: Right.

John: He just had great performance after great performance.

Marc: Yup.

John: And he just grounds them. I mean, this is really tricky. We wanted to take this episode fairly seriously because, you know, the mine thing is serious. You know, you don't want to seem like you're making light of people's tragedies, so you need someone who can play a villain but would be utterly grounded. And Bruce was available, and he's a friend of the company, and he's great. 

Marc: He's fantastic.

John: I mean, he's charming as hell, you believe him, you believe in the relationship with Pierce. No, it’s- big win on this one with Bruce Davison.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And again, also making sure he seems reasonable. The villain is never a villain in his own head.

Chris: Right.

John: He's just a man trying to, you know, make a dime, or do a good thing, and he really conveys that.

Marc: Here's Gina saving me an insert, as she did in the previous shot with the card.

[Laughter]

Marc: Thank you, Gina.

John: Thank you.

Chris: Those of you budding filmmakers saving an insert is hours-

John: Well that's usually a second unit guy's problem but, yeah. Yes, that is a big deal. And now- and by the way, because we're a con and heist based show we do a lot of inserts on screens and information to make sure everyones tracking everything. Most shows do not do the number of inserts we do, in any way, shape, or form.

Marc: That's correct.

John: No, they just- the actor waves an object past the screen and tells you what's on it and you just move on. We're full service here. Look, and I love watching this with the sound off because just watching Bruce sorta modulate his performance. You can tell confrontational, then amused, then, you know. When you cut back to him here you'll start to see him get hooked in, but he's never boring, you know, he's never not making a great choice.

Marc: And I love using Gina in these scenes. And the twins use her well cause even in Double Blind with Michael O'Keefe, was the Gina mano y mano.

John: Yeah.

Marc: That sets it up. 

John: And you know, trying to touch the hair, that's a lovely bit.

[Laughter]

John: Yeah, I mean it's interesting, you think at some point you'll get bored of just having these scenes where Sophie seduces the mark. No. As long as the mark’s always different and the con’s always different, it's a little competence porn. It's like watching Parker break into a safe; you’re never tired of it.

Marc: Right.

John: Or I'm never tired of it.

Chris: No? And you know here you get, you know, two grifts going on simultaneously that have a different tone to them.

John: Yes.

Chris: And yeah, I mean it's true, there's so many threads to this story, inside the mine, you know.

John: Yeah, it's three storylines. And then, you know, this great little bit about politics. I mean, Pierce doesn't see herself as a bad person. Pierce is a politician. I mean, you know, there's interesting stuff now they're trying to talk about campaign reform, and they can't get it off the ground because even though everyone who runs for office hates raising money, they're better at it than everybody else so why give up that advantage, you know?

Chris: Yeah.

John: And this is the- oh burying paperwork on a busy person's desk. This was- we had originally a much more complicated bit for this that wound up going away. The bit with the box.

Marc: Right.

John: Yeah. Turns out just sliding stuff into people’s piles is a lot easier. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: And that's it, like watching Bruce there, he's not furtive. You know, this spiking a competitor is just something you do, this is part of his work day, may as well be on his iCal.

[Laughter]

John: And down.

Chris: There it goes.

Marc: Buried.

Chris: And by the way, I think you certainly buy that a busy attorney general has a desk full of paperwork.

John: Yes.

Marc: Absolutely.

Chris: I don’t think there’s any stretch there.

John: Who is he calling on this? 

Marc: Gina.

John: Oh there you go, Gina. Going back to Gina. God, this one just flies.

Marc: Yeah.

John: Gina looks great in this one, by the way.

Chris: Yeah.

John: I love that trench coat. That's just- yeah.

Marc: There's just no fat in this episode, it just really moves. 

John: The-

Marc: And a lot of different locations.

John: Yeah. And I'm trying to remember what- besides salting the mine there's another classic con we reference in here and I cannot remember for the life of me. Yeah, cause we wound up having to stack this one pretty deep.

Chris: Well it kinda, you know, by the end it becomes a gaslight.

John: Yes! That's right. Oh we're always trying to do the gaslight episode; we can never do it so we spot welded it in.

Chris: Yeah, yeah it is a little bit. The not the- we may be burning it by saying it right now, but, you know, the classic Mission Impossible in the fallout shelter.

John: Yes!

Marc: Right.

Chris: That's the fallout shelter episode.

John: You’ve woken up and everyone’s in like the tattered clothes.

[Laughter]

John: You know, charcoal on their face, this is the end of the world. I think they look through a periscope? The periscope that shows them the post apocalyptic earth. And it's not cool gamer world post-apocalyptic earth either, it's very depressing. 

Chris: And by the way, a very simple way to show a test here.

Marc: That’s right.

Chris: Test tube and the colored water.

Marc: Scrape, scrape. Colored water.

John: Yeah it's pretty- everyone knows what green is.

Chris: Yeah.

John: But again, this is another thing that shows you this research gives you a story. Trying to figure out how you salt the coltan, the girls had done so much research they found out that's what you do to keep the dust down, you know, they had a full file.

Chris: Right.

John: Of, you know, just the life of the mine. And then we dove in there for the story ideas.

Chris: Boy that mine looks great.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Really, I mean-

John: They built that how fast? Two, three days?

Marc: You know, like every show episode they don’t get many days.

John: Well sometimes you get a little more time on B because we’re over on A, but yeah.

Chris: And that, you know, credit to Paul Bernard, our line producer, too. 

John: Yeah, cause it was getting hairy by this point.

Chris: Well no, but I think just when we- you know, sometimes when we’re in the writers room and discussing things, you know, we’ll spike stories early in the process if we think there's no way we can do it, and he right off the bat, we said “We wanna do a coal mining episode.” He said “Oh, you know, it’s just like Eight Legged Freaks.” Which is a movie the company made.

Marc: Which I think we had more set than they did almost. I mean-

Chris: Really?

John: Oh really?

Marc: Becca, our production designer, and Randall just gave us so much with turns and chambers and then we, you know, we used one little tunnel just- and we just changed the background a bit.

John: Well that's the great thing about that, that frankenstein set is built to be corridors. So as long as you put another right hand in it, you have no idea where you are.

Marc: Yeah, they give us more than we ask for. And this, Dave just lit beautifully.

John: Yeah, this is gorgeous.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Half a million bucks. It is amazing- it’s always amazing to me when you get down to local politics how little money it takes-

Chris: Yeah.

John: To swing these races.

Chris: Well you had that great line about how much it costs to buy a senate seat. Less than a house in-

John: It's blown now because of the mega millionaires who ran this year. But at the time it was the average senate campaign cost 8 million dollars.

Chris: Right.

John: And the average house in sort of the ritzy section of Beacon Hills is 10 million. 

Chris: Right, yeah.

John: Yeah, buy a Senate seat cheaper than you buy a house.

Chris: I also like- is this where we set up the lunch pail?

John: Yes.

Chris: That's another great little moment. 

John: Great little character beat. 

Marc: Yeah.

John: Great little physical artifact. If there's any- yeah. If anyone's reading- pardon me, if anyone’s listening to these and they're thinking about trying to do television or anything. It's tricky, you can fall into words very quickly, and then- just remember it's a visual medium. Using props, using physical objects to link storylines is crucial. It- also because the audience doesn't have to process it, they recognize it.

Chris: And it helped in a story point later because then he sees-

John: He knew where he was.

Chris: Knows he's in there when he sees the lunch pail.

Marc: That’s right.

Chris: And I think the idea here, that his dad had been in the explosion, I think was kinda late to the writing process.

John: Yes it was. Yeah, we were trying to figure out how to link him, and then I think we were just going over the dialogue and the act was already written, which was the kid’s birthday party. And wound up making it that kid.

Marc: But it also- it was- put it well cause it gave Eliot a little stinger.

Chris: Yes.

John: Yeah. There's a lot- and also the thing I like about this, too- and we try to lock on this - Eliot’s not gonna send this kid to Harvard.

Chris: Right.

John: You know, it’s make your life a little bit better, that's all you can do.

Marc: Right.

John: Conceivably, you know. We try to do that a lot, it’s like give people the next thing up.

Chris: And we are not saying that- we don't make a statement that coal mining is bad and we need to bring organic farming to this community. 

Marc: Right.

Chris: I think it's pretty set early on, coal mining is how they make their living and they just want it to be safe.

John: And that was important, when the girls called the- they’re women now, we should stop calling them girls even though they are our baby writers. When the young women, when the wonder twins, called their coal mining source that was a big concern of his, you know. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: Everyone makes us look bad and they're like “No, we're gonna show it's a valuable part of the American economy; somebody has to do it.”

Chris: Oh, they’re so great.

John: Oh I love this scene! Love this scene so much. Because they're playing the sexual subtext here and the audience doesn't know it yet.

Marc: Right, no.

John: You know, and that's a little flirty look. I mean, you know, it makes sense when you go back and watch the second time.

Chris: What do I know Annie Fitzgerald from? I feel like is she- I mean, boy Bruce Davison- 

John: Yeah.

Chris: Did a ton of stuff. 

John: She's done a lot of television. I mean, you know, American television has its own sort of, you know, it’s like British theater in the 40s, it has its own collection of just really great actors who are kinda kicking around from show to show.

Marc: Yeah.

John: Oh that’s it. The beat where he goes, ‘Here we go’, and then dials the phone. What was that? That was a- we couldn't have scripted that in a million years. It was just really- a great moment of duplicity, and just that you saw the moment where he decided to do it.

Marc: Right.

John: And it was kind of almost sexual, it was just a weird choice.

[Laughter]

John: Oh great, in the elevator!

Marc: In the elevator! We went for it.

John: Nice.

Chris: That’s great.

John: Moving background.

Chris: Yeah, could've been a little static shot.

Marc: All in the city hall building, and Gary got in there with her, did a couple runs.

John: He’s pretty close to her, yeah; you have to be close to her. I think also this was the original act break. I think we cut out on this.

Marc: I think so.

John: Yeah.

Chris: I think there was a little trim here, yeah.

John: Yeah, there was another- the first scene in the next act is the act break or something like that. Cause I remember that- I remember- this is, you know, also people don't know, not only do you have to do the number of acts that the network asks you to do- they have to be certain lengths.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And so we have a traditionally short fourth act. And so you have to- sometimes we shoot the show and it's like oh that not where that commercial’s gonna go, and you have to jigger it a little bit.

Chris: Another tricky story point here was because we knew that we were salting the mine, and then we were gonna ultimately trap them in the mine and do our gaslighting. The question- the challenge was, how are we gonna get him in his own mine-

John: Right.

Chris: -at that moment when he's already decided to blow it up?

Marc: Right.

Chris: You know, that was a bit of a tricky writing and plotting that we-

John: We originally had him call and tell him that he won Yankee tickets, that he could collect at his own mine.

[Laughter]

Chris: Exactly. 

Marc: This is a great location that we never shot at. It was like a private club-

John: Is this the golf club from Tap Out?

Marc: No, it’s a private club in downtown Portland. And it's been there for years, and they just gave us so much free rein in the place.

John: Gorgeous. Oh and picking them up on the stairs and bringing them down.

Chris: That’s great.

John: That's a nice shot Marc.

Marc: This is nice to see both of them in the con playing their parts.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Which we don’t- again, just because we're very new at having Parker's character do the grift, we haven't really had a chance to do before.

Marc: Right.

John: And that also there's- if you go back in third season and watch the Parker-Sophie scenes, that when there's just the two of them and you compare them to the first and second season, you can see that evolution. And you can actually see that comfortable emotional vibe that they've set up. You know, from a writing standpoint Parker is the happiest that Sophie’s back. 

Chris: Right.

John: Yeah.

Chris: No, no, I mean, it's a pairing that we don't do enough.

John: Yeah.

Chris: The two of them. Because I guess story-wise-

John: They have different skill sets.

Chris: Yeah, yeah exactly. She's usually, you know, dangling from a building.

John: Rigged up. Yeah, exactly. 

Chris: But it just occurred to me that this is another party scene that is similar to the one in Double Blind. 

John: Yes.

[Laughter]

John: We all have- there's only so-

Chris: Champagne flute party scene.

John: There's only so many places to put- you know, if we oppress the man, the man hangs out in champagne parties, you know! 

[Laughter]

John: That's where he hangs out, that's where you gotta go.

Marc: Yeah.

Chris: That was another thing, too, with this episode in sort of conceiving it, was to give it a, at least in a political setting, give you kinda an upscale, rarified world that you could juxtapose with the grittiness of the mine.

Marc: Mine, yeah.

Chris: Rich swells, as we like to say.

John: Rich swells. Lush, rich swells. 

[Laughter]

John: 1920s types. Also late to the party, the fact the attorney general is a woman.

Chris: Yeah. Well part of-

John: That was- we started with a woman because we were like, we haven't had a female villain for a while, and there's a whole rash of- when we did research, for whatever reason attorney general is a big, sort of, upscale position as female politicians enter the race.

Chris: Yeah, that's true.

John: It tends to be- a lot of them are female in America.

Chris: But as a practical matter, also, you know, it’s hard when you have two bad guys that are- sort of have equal weight. 

Marc: Right.

Chris: You don't want the audience to be confused. You don't want two guys that look similar and the audience is saying, “Wait a minute, is that the mine owner, or is that the attorney general?” 

John: Yeah.

Chris: If you quickly decide that it's two genders, then you're pretty safe.

John: And then we had them sleeping together.

Chris: Yeah, and then that opened that up as a storyline.

John: When we talk about it, it makes it sound really chaotic how we write these things, but actually it's a well-oiled machine.

[Laughter]

Marc: Well-oiled. But it's also- when you shoot these scenes, you have to shoot both sides of the conversation twice. 

John: Yeah.

Marc: I mean, here we were at the party, we were in the mine, we were in the van. So you really do it- and you have to pay attention to so many things of how you shot that scene, which way was Hardison looking, which was Eliot looking.

John: Yeah, then again that's something we do that not every show on earth does. 

Marc: Yes.

John: I mean we actually match eyelines across locations.

Marc: Right.

John: That's crazy.

Chris: Right. Well, but it helps, right?

John: It makes a difference when you have three people on intercoms.

Chris: Now how do you keep that- I mean, do you keep that straight Marc? 

John: That’s Suzie.

Chris: Do you have a pad or-?

Marc: I mean there are times that I will do it and there are times I won’t, but yeah, Suzanne will keep a score.

Chris: Keep score.

John: That's our script supervisor, and you know, we’ve talked about this job before, that's the person who keeps track of every shot and all the continuity on set.

Marc: Yes.

Chris: No, I think it makes a big difference. I mean, you wanna get- when people are in different locations you wanna get- feel like they’re talking to each other.

John: Yeah. We tend to intercut simultaneously more than other shows do, so we kinda-

Chris: I like them when they're walking in different directions, too. I like when one’s walking downstairs and one’s walking upstairs; I like all that stuff.

John: I like motion. I like to see things moving on the screen. No, lovely scene, lovely little screw you scene between Annie and Gina.

Marc: Yes.

John: The ever present American flag pins. Always amuses me.

[Laughter]

Marc: Always good to have those.

John: Yup. 

Chris: Oh!

John: That’s a great shot.

Chris: What a great shot!

Marc: Oh yeah.

Chris: What a fantastic- these are some of the things that just make- that's a cinematic shot right there.

Marc: Yeah.

John: And it gives you depth, real depth.

Chris: Yeah!

John: I mean, look how far back on set you can see.

Marc: All those practical lights.

John: Yeah, and now this makes it look huge because he looks like he's in a different location.

Marc: Right.

John: Yeah, and this was the- this was a variation of the reveal the con bit. This was like the implied double-cross. It’s-

Chris: Right.

John: We’re deep into con world at this point.

[Laughter]

Marc: These guys did such a great job with this. 

John: Yeah.

Marc: Tim- I mean, Tim was all over this scene.

John: Yeah. He plays- well this is the character he kinda enjoys the most, is this kinda surly asshole, is really the only way to say it.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And he'll be the first to admit that's what the character is. 

Marc: Yeah.

John: But yeah. It's a little Jimmy Joe Meeker.

[Laughter]

John: It's a little- you can go back to the Rockford touchstone.

Marc: There's the lunchbox he saw.

Chris: There's the lunchbox!

John: Oh shit now I've gotta go kick somebody’s ass with a pickaxe. 

[Laughter]

John: He might not be thinking that but, you know.

Chris: We make a contract with the audience. I feel like when we send Eliot into the mine, I feel like the audience says, “When is he gonna fight a guy with a pickaxe?” 

John: Yes.

Chris: And if you don't give them that, I feel like we've broken our contract.

John: We have not necessarily delivered that which we promised to deliver. And that was-  there is the card- the various cards on the wall of things Eliot hasn't fought with.

[Laughter]

Marc: Right.

John: That was fun. And the in the King George-

Chris: Bowling trophy? No, he's fought with a bowling trophy.

John: King George: belt fu. Belt fu is something I've been wanting to do for a while.

Chris: Oh look at that!

Marc: This was fun to do.

Chris: That was great.

John: So how'd you do that?

Marc: Air mortars. The guys pretty much took their own fall.

John: Wait, that's Bruce and Tim?

Marc: Well we had stunt guys do it, and then they would- then they took a crack at it. And that rock pile, we had some come down and then Mark Franco and company added more rocks.

Chris: He's our special effects-.

Marc: To really establish that they are closed off.

John: Yeah.

Marc: But this is great. I mean, these guys just got down and dirty and wanted to play it. You know Tim was ready to play it down and dirty. It was great.

John: And also this was- I remember this was a bear. I was working on that other episode and came in and you guys were wrestling what this was. We don't usually lie to the audience this blatantly.

Chris: Yeah.

John: We have to- and that was the trick, we dont lie to the audience, so how do you write these scenes so that they are concerned because they've lost contact with Nate, but you can read it as concern for the fact that the mine has collapsed?

Chris: They’re in a collapsed mine.

John: Super- I remember long conversations about that.

Chris: Yes.

Marc: This is just another- the same hallway that we just redressed with some other things.

John: Put a minecart in.

Marc: And changed the background just to give us new locations.

John: And- yeah.

Chris: Oh that's great.

John: That's another great shot, look at that.

Chris: Look at that shot.

John: And then- did you- are those digital? No, you stacked those.

Marc: Those are stacked foam, yeah.

John: It’s- yeah, the two- you’re looking at two great actors just having an enormous amount of fun with these scenes.

Marc: Yeah.

Chris: Now you're waiting for him to do math. How much air is there in here?

John: And I'd actually prepped that movie, remember?

Chris: That's right! That's right.

John: I had prepared to direct a movie that wound up not going, but one of the conciets was two guys trapped in a safe. And I had to do the math on cubic air. And so that was again, that's why you have writing staff, you never know who's got a note in their notepad. Yeah, and then all this, the tone of the confrontation scene went up and down a lot.

Marc: Right.

John: Yeah, how crazy would she get. And then when Annie really plays it in control, which is great.

Marc: Well, that's like Parker’s so naive about it. And Sophie totally gets it and uses it to her advantage in the con.

John: Yeah, just like a knife. Just twisting it in. That was also another thing, the- how they had not heard that before. I forget what we were talking about. We were talking about the fact that they just have people whose job it is to go through wire taps. Just the hours and hours and hours of wire taps. But when you were a lawyer you had done some of that.

Chris: Oh, sure. 

John: Because they regularly recorded phone calls in these places.

Chris: Oh, in brokerage houses. Phones are always recorded, and those are all kept.

John: Yeah. Somebody has to actually go through that stuff. The great Bourne fade.

Chris: It might've been- there was a good disappear here. I feel like in some early version she decked her.

[Laughter]

John: Yeah, I think we had that originally and then were like eh, is it a punch? Is it a- and then Gina doesn't really punch.

Chris: She doesn't really punch.

John: In the season finale she hits somebody with a champagne bottle. But that's good. That gives her an edge.

Marc: Yeah. This guy was great, he was a local actor. Geno Romo. And he wanted to do his own stunts.

John: Oh, that's great.

Marc: And he tried out with Kevin, and he was great! Because Kevin said, ‘he's not trying to impress me.’ You know what I mean?

Chris: Right, right.

Marc: Cause that's when actors get hurt.

John: Yeah.

Marc: And he worked with Christian, and I said “Christian are you up for it?” He said, “Yeah, he's got skills; it's gonna be a great fight.” So-

Chris: Now how long-

Marc: So we had two actors, we had Christian and Gino doing their actual fight.

Chris: Now how long did it take to film the pickaxe part? I know it was done in pieces, right?

Marc: It was done in pieces, so probably half a day over all.

Chris: Wow.

John: And then the oxygen saturation stuff is from, again, the research. You know, being able to talk. And that's the other thing, and Chris, you're always on about this cause you used to be a journalist. If you're writing your spec script or writing your movie or whatever. Just call people!

Chris: Yeah!

John: Just cold call them. Nine times out of ten they love to talk about their job.

Chris: People- no matter- rule of thumb, no matter what people say I hate my job, they love talking about it.

John: Yeah.

Chris: And here we go, now he’s just got a bat.

John: Now he's lost the- that's actually a lesson-

Chris: Oh I love that shot, too.

Marc: Yeah that's a good commercial break.

[Laughter]

John: I think was the commercial break intended-

Marc: Yeah.

John: And then when you actually like timed it out- that's a 13 minute act four, we can't do that. Yeah. That's not gonna work. And here we are now trapped in the classic science fiction story, The Cold Equations.

[Laughter]

John: Other people might phrase it differently, but I always go to The Cold Equations.

Chris: And just he's so great at just- you totally buy all the things he says here.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Cause he sees his life ending. He's just got that fatalististic vibe to it and then he's just able to turn it on. Turn on the menace.

John: Well, and that's the Nate character. It's important, it's always tricky when you're trying to get these confessorial scenes. If you ask another character a question, and they give you the answer, that is boring. And they wouldn't fall for that.

Marc: Right.

John: If you argue with them, and you get exposition as refutation, it feels organic.

Chris: Yeah.

John: You know what I mean? That was also- that was tricky, too, hitting him with the board.

Marc: Yes.

John: Cause outline- we did a reset. That's right, I forgot we did a reset at the end of this. Just to-

Chris: You know, sometimes people were getting a sandwich and they missed it. You gotta make sure they understand what's going on.

John: I like a reset!

Chris: I like it.

John: Here's the thing, I think it was also we didn't want to- if we're gonna cut back to this, you didn't want to think that Bruce Davidson is in the other part of the mine beating Nate to death. Like, just taking the two by four to him.

[Laughter]

Chris: Yes.

John: I think that was also- that was, originally we had him strangling him. And it was like, well why wouldn’t you just not stop strangling him?

[Laughter]

John: Like oh, oh yeah.

Chris: Right how do you con somebody-

John: Into not strangling you. Yeah. that's no, hit him, hit him with the board. This is great. This is of course the scene in the The Lathe of Heaven where he is imagined- he has dreamt that he is a lathe- that's really obscure.

[Laughter]

John: It's like eight people who are gonna get the Lathe of Heaven reference.

Chris: I'll take Ursula K Le Guin for 200.

John: Take Bruce Davidson's minis series when he was 20 something for five hundred, Alex.

Marc: That's a great shot by Gary Camp.

John: That's a beautiful shot.

Marc: A little 360 steadicam.

John: Where the hell- wait where's the crew? What the-

Marc: They're hidden!

John: They're hidden. We do- when we do those 360s we hide behind trees and trucks.

Chris: Yeah, that's right.

Marc: Another great flashback sequence that the girls wrote-

Chris: Oh! Look at that!

Marc: This was cool. That was Gary running through the whole mine, so that's actually the full length of the set from beginning to end.

[Laughter]

John: That's great. Oh man, I did not know that. Oh yes, and Eliot screwing with Hardison.

Marc: Yeah.

John: A lot of fun.

Chris: And you know, I think-

John: And to see the little look he gives just for a second before he does it.

Chris: That’s great. Yeah. And to make sure showing you don't need a giant bomb in a mine. A mine is-

John: A mine is a bomb waiting to happen.

Chris: It's a bomb waiting to happen.

Marc: Right.

John: Now that- remember, I worked on the natural gas pipeline-

Chris: That’s right.

John: When I quit university. And yes the ever present threat of just blowing up sometimes. No, this was- oh and this was the header. Yeah, the flashbacks in this one are tough.

Marc: Yes. 

John: There's a lot of story in these flashbacks.

Marc: You really gotta wrap your head around these when you're shooting them.

John: We’ll try to give you easier ones for next year, there you go.

Marc: Perfect.

John: Do the ones in real time where there's no flashbacks. Like Rashomon, something easy like that.

[Laughter]

Marc: Right, yeah.

John: Yeah. 

Marc: There's the X of course, that we set up.

John: Oh yeah. And it was interesting, too. You do a lot of this in post. The flashbacks have to have different luts on them. They have to have different lights- different color schemes so you understand you're not happening concurrently and they happen in the story.

Marc: Right.

John: No, this is a nested flashback.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Yeah, this- he actually changed locations in the flashback, this is tricky.

Marc: Oh, yeah.

John: We’re in three different places. And both light comedic exposition and dramatic ‘you're gonna die’ exposition. Aldis Hodge does it all.

Chris: Yeah.

Marc: That's right.

John: He conveys urgency.

Marc: Our M.A.S.H. speaker.

Chris: And here's your undoing. Oh that's great!

John: Oh the zoom around.

Chris: Great zoom around too!

Marc: Give them a little something.

John: Yeah. And then push in, do you do a push?

Marc: I think that was done in post.

John: There you go. There's the push. 

Marc: There it is.

John: Yeah, the world’s just kinda closing in on her. We don't mention-

Marc: And this of course, now we're back in the car.

John: Yeah. What, like four minutes later? I don't always like-

Chris: Yeah, wow that's right, they've been in the car for a while!

John: This is like a four minute flashback.

Chris: What's the deal? Is the battery running out? Did they leave the lights on?

John: No, remember Inception! Time is different in your dreams! So, you know, you have more time in the flashback.

Marc: Always good.

Chris: What a great gloat!

Marc: The make them suffer look!

John: Yup.

Chris: Look at all the different looks we got on this gloat.

John: The villain must suffer, we must have the gloat. Disdain.

[Laughter]

John: Rage.

Marc: Another flashback.

John: And now! We do a flashback in the gloats! Oh my god! This is brutal! God, no this one is tough. I can't believe we pulled this one off. Yeah, and the whole- and again this was crucial, you know, how you move money around and just spook her into hiding it.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Yeah, no- and that's a big thing is that it all boils down to Irene Adler, really. You just have to scare somebody and they'll give up the information that you need. Move it somewhere safe. Yeah, multiple gloats. And also a little victory moment for Parker.

Marc: Yes.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Very nice. Very nice the- you know, she's learned a new job skill.

Marc: That's right.

John: Won't be using it all the time, but yeah.

Chris: Tomorrow's women. That's right, a little- just a little throwaway line seemed like the thing to sell her con.

John: Her character.

Chris: Now this is something we never do on this show. I remember this was like a late addition to the script, just a little character-y moment here.

John: Yeah.

Chris: And it's great. I mean it’s, you know, in a show this packed and busy to find a little time for this.

John: That's what I said in the Rashomon commentary, I love watching them just hang out in the bar cause that's what they talk to each other like when they're not on the job.

Marc: Right.

John: This is- the vast amount of Hardison/Parker interactions actually sound like this.

[Laughter]

Chris: Right.

John: You know, when they're not doing urgent stuff, you know. 

Chris: Yeah, ‘smells like bubbles.’

John: She's kinda spaced and he's trying to figure out the hell- smells like bubbles, yeah. And the- touch the chin a bit.

[Laughter]

John: That was great. And it all rides on his reaction there.

Marc: This scene was great.

John: Yeah. Well he plays it with the right amount of betrayal.

Marc: Yeah.

John: It's like what? Clark, you're Superman?

Marc: It’s very-

Chris: Yeah.

Marc: Gary giving us a 180.

John: Yeah. Just land into it rather than pop into the cut. No, it's nice. It- this was a great location.

Marc: Oh, yeah.

John: This is the rock quarry?

Marc: Yeah, same place.

Chris: Is it raining right there?

Marc: No, this-

John: Man it rained a lot during this episode.

Marc: It rained a lot. But when we first set up that mobile trailer, we actually had to pump out the surrounding area cause it was about a foot of water.

Chris: Wow.

John: And camera-

Marc: But they were great!

John: Camera and power cords don't really-

Marc: The rock quarry, they were giving us all- ‘you want this tractor?’ They'd move things, they gave us everything we needed.

John: Well it was like in The Three Days of the Hunter. 

Marc: Yeah.

John: The national guard- the reserve, pardon me, the state reserve guys they really gave us everything we could possibly want.

Marc: Exactly.

John: And hence we were able to bring filthy Hollywood money to their state. It’s a great relationship.

Marc: And it was in close proximity.

John: Yeah. Really nice.

Chris: And now we get-

Marc: This is our little closer with Timothy Whitcomb and Tim and Christian.

Chris: Now due to the miracle of receivership were able to-

John: Oh receiver- sweet receivership.

[Laughter]

Chris: We were able to both make our victim whole again, our client, and actually bestow the title in some way to the- instrument of their acting.

John: I learned more about corporate bankruptcy on this job than I could possibly ever want to know. 

[Laughter]

John: Various and sundry conditions and states wherein, and yeah.

Chris: No, but I think it's also a result of research and-

John: Yeah, it's based on that company- down in Central America, the auto company. The guys who took over their own plant.

Chris: Yes.

Marc: Yeah.

John: Yeah. Evidently doable. Not always heard of-

Marc: Yeah.

John: But, you know. The stories where the workers take over the means of production? Not a big play in America.

[Laughter]

Marc: This we graded darker in here, cause this was shot on one of the clearer days.

John: So you had to match the rest of the rain.

Marc: But of course we did the exterior-

John: And it's raining.

Marc: And it's raining. This is the shot where Dean goes, “how come you get all this moving gear?”

Chris: Oh, I know, look at that!

Marc: Mine is back.

John: And pull up to reveal the mine! Oh.

Marc: People are back to work.

Chris: And a perfect, you know, we started it on the mine, there's people coming in and out and exploding, and now they're going into a safe mine.

John: That's American work right there.

Chris: Beautiful bookend.

John: That's America at work.

Chris: Beautiful piece of work.

John: I think you’re our most patriotic director, Marc.

Marc: I am.

John: More shows should hire you to combat the liberal agenda.

[Laughter]

Marc: Amen.

John: That was Underground Job, stay tuned for a lot of great episodes and Marc Roskin thank you so much for giving us this episode. It was great.

Chris: So great.

Marc: Hello I'm Marc Roskin, director of this episode.

John: I am John Rogers, executive producer.

Geoff: I'm Geoff Thorne, I'm a co-writer of this episode.

Aldis: This is cookies, the good looking half of milk and cookies.

[All Laugh]

Christian: That's Aldis Hodge, I'm Christian Kane, and I play Eliot Spencer.

Aldis: That'd be milk.

Chris: [Laughs]

Christian: There you go.

Chris: And I'm Chris Downey, executive producer, co-writer of this episode: The Big Bang Job, part one of our explosive two part season finale. 

Geoff: Yay!

John: Yeah, I think this one is gonna go a little slower since we have the boys in here today, we're gonna keep—

[All Laugh]

John: Gonna keep hopping back and forth, that's why I broke out—usually Guinness, I broke out the Irish for this one. 

[Clinking Noise]

Marc: Ice in the glass, ice in the glass right there.

John: Okay, this is the big setup, we had to—we knew that at this point we were coming back after a break, so we had to do a big reset scene, and actually, this is pretty cut up. We had, at one point, a long sort of recap version of this scene to show you all the victims, the villains, and how they hooked up and how they connected, to remind you exactly, you know, how the season had built to this moment. This was a, this was a ton of—how'd we come up with this abduction/rescue?

Chris: Yeah, Geoff, I think this was, when we broke this-?

Geoff: I just think we needed a way in, we needed a victim, we—this show is very—this episode was very sort of James Bond-y movie-esque, and we didn't want to get too far away from what Leverage actually is, so we needed someone to bring the crew in, so we came up with Yasmin, and her—

Chris: Played by Ginger Williams.

Aldis: Yes.

Geoff: She did a lovely job, a lovely gal. And and this scene right now, is her being, sort of victimized, [laughs] but-

Aldis: Let me ask you something-

Marc: In the labs of Portland State University.

John: Yeah, this was great. Portland State was amazing.

Aldis: We actually, they got mad because we actually blew up a building. No, let me ask you something Geoff, I know that John and Chris write from personal experience of criminal history—

[All Laugh]

Aldis:—how many people have you abducted?

[All Laugh]

Geoff: No abductions, a little bit of grifting in my past.

John: Here, a little something for the red states: how many white women have you abducted in the past year and [drowned out by laughter].

Geoff: Uhhh, well they all came willingly, so is it an abduction? I dunno! If the victim comes along and they want to be there...

Aldis: So, so, how did that explosion happen?

Marc: Interactive light, and then we built some models and shot some models and put them in.

Christian: Man, don't give stuff like that away.

John: No, we, we actually... and unlike doing CG, we have found that models, which is the old school, actually looks best on explosions.

Christian: Yeah.

John: So we blow real stuff up.

Geoff: Practical.

John: And it's still pretty big, by the way, we have to build it in our parking lot.

Aldis: Basically part of their job is to build stuff just to destroy it.

Marc: And Christian, Christian actually wasn't in that scene, he was out doing bigger scenes.

Christian: Yeah, I was out doing-

Chris: That wasn’t you in the-?

John: Yeah, that was actually the reverse on you-

Christian: Yeah, that was- yeah.

Chris: You're kidding, really?

Christian: No, that wasn’t me.

Geoff: That's insane.

Marc: The reverse on Christain-

Christian: I was doing a bigger stunt that day.

Geoff: That later thing, ok.

Christian: I'll tell you where I was later on.

Marc: That was actually the last shot of the entire season.

Christian: Yeah, that's right.

John: Get out.

Christian: Me taking my mask off, that was it.

Marc: That was it.

Geoff: It was actually a lot more I-Spy-ish and we actually pared it down to make her more victim-ish.

John: Yeah.

Geoff: She was initially more…what would you say? She was more in the government. She had a gun in her desk, and she was, like, gonna pop off some shots.

Aldis: Ah.

Geoff: We were like, “Nah, she needs to be more victim-y.”

John: Well that's always the challenge when you do an off-speed episode, you have to make sure all the touch stones: the victim you care about, some sort of mystery to be solved. And this is a much more mystery oriented episode than usual.

Geoff: Yeah.

John: You know, we don't have our goal right up front, which is fun.

Chris: And also we’re trying to- ultimately we’re trying to prevent something which is typically not something we do.

John: Not ordinarily something we would do, exactly. Oh and here we are with Timothy Carhart, is that right?

Marc: That's correct.

John: Yeah playing the general, good job.

Geoff: Excellent job.

John: Looks exactly like a dude who was building rockets in the late 50’s to defeat the Soviets, thank you. And thank you to all the men out there who helped us defeat the Soviets.

Aldis: Has a fresh haircut right there.

Chris: Yeah, your eye goes right to that hair.

[Laughter]

John: That is some X-Men hair.

Aldis: It's just like boom!

Christian: He looks like that guy in Beverly Hills Cop II.

[Laughter]

John: He does.

Marc: That is the technical green color, as Dave Connel calls that.

John: Technical green?

Marc: Technical green.

John: [British Accent] “We need some technical green in here, mate.” Yeah. There you go. Yeah, look sciency!

[Laughter]

John: Which is an actual artistic term for that color.

Geoff: Sciency green.

Aldis: [Accent] “Sciencey!”

John: Yeah, this is a tricky as hell episode. We gotta meet the victim and then we have to set up the plot of the arriving bad guy. We have two bad guys, which is always difficult as hell.

Geoff: Right.

John: Always really tough to do. And it is an enormous amount of pipe. And there’s us towing a real plane.

Marc: Towing a real plane.

John: Lovely private airport.

Aldis: They allow us to do these things.

Christian: That's actually Timothy Hutton's plane.

[Laughter]

Marc: It came with another car.

John: That's right, that’s the plane he flies around to solve crime and woo authoresses in.

Chris: He has an interesting power like Elvis.

Geoff: It turns into an anime style mech suit to fight space battles in.

Marc: There’s Michael Rogers as a rival.

John: That's not Michael Rogers, Michael Rogers is the guy in the suit; that's a Portland actress. This is a lovely shot, looking up like this. Portland State has this great central staircase which we had scouted a bunch of times, and it always stuck in our heads and we finally shot the hell out of it when we did this.

Chris: Now how do you introduce the- there's a challenge here because we’ve never seen-

John: Always on his back.

Chris: We've never seen the big bad guy, and we've alluded to him the whole season, so how do you approach this?

Marc: Yeah, the idea was just to stay on his back the whole time, hear his voice, call him by name but never reveal his face until the proper moment.

John: Yeah, this is- in Inside Job I did that with Chamberlain, it's a very classic 1940’s way of- you know.

Marc: Well especially since this whole season has been building to this.

Geoff: Yeah.

John: We were very lucky to get Goran Visnjic who was amazing who doesn't normally do this kind of role and really enjoyed it.

Geoff: He did a great job.

Christian: Unbelievable.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: Yeah, this was a lot of fun setting up exactly the- oh by the way unfortunately cut was the fact that the battery is a xenon difluoride battery. The tech of this battery actually works.

Chris: The sound you hear right now is everyone listening falling asleep.

[Laughter]

John: No! No, no! They are fascinated by new battery tech! They’re on wikipedia now!

Aldis: You won't believe how many people are actually really truly fascinated by it, cause I get the questions all the time.

John: Yeah, exactly.

Geoff: Hey, the craziest thing about the show is we make up stuff that is less interesting than the stuff we grab from the news.

John: Yeah, almost everything you think ‘holy shit is that true?’ Yeah, that’s the true part. Particularly the horrible bits.

Geoff: Yeah, the most horrible is usually the truest thing.

Christian: You guys are a bunch of dorks, man. If I can't punch it, I don't care.

[Laughter]

Christian: If I can't punch it, it doesn't mean anything.

John: We give you shit to punch!

Christian: I know!

John: Is that how you read the scripts? “Blah, blah, blah, blah, Eliot hits a guy! Ahhh! Here we are.”

Chris: Punch!

Geoff: Spinning backfist!

Chris: It's true, he does enter here late after a lot of exposition is given.

John: He does, he does. As a matter of fact, he was scheduled to enter earlier-

Chris: What were you doing back there while all that- that exposition was happening? 

John: He was flirting with some extra back there.

[Laughter]

Geoff: Punching people!

Marc This is a great moment where Eliot is holding back something, and Hardison is the only one who is tapping into it.

Christian: Actually I think Sophie’s the only one that’s tapping into it.

Aldis: Well, wait for Hardison.

John: Yeah, she senses something, but Hardison gets it but he doesn't get it. I think Sophie's kinda figured it out by this point.

Aldis: Like I said man, see, right there, boom.

Christian: There you go.

Aldis: “Are you ok?” You see all the passion in the eyes? See the worry?

Geoff: Bromance, it's a bromance.

Aldis: Told you man, milk and cookies.

[Laughter]

Christian: I'm working off of it right here.

Aldis: Just saying. That just means we spend too much time together.

Christian: It does.

Aldis: Hardison needs to spend some special time with Parker.

John: We’ll see what we can do.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: This was a long act 1. And this was kinda fun actually, was hacking out exactly- and something we discovered going into the third act: audience likes to see process, they like to see you guys figure the stuff out, they like to see how you plan, not just the actual execution.

Aldis: How many pages was that?

Marc: And we love shooting five-handers.

John: And the directors love shooting five-handers. You got through that coverage in what, 48, 72 hours for one scene?

Marc: No, yeah.

Geoff: They sent us memos, can we have more than five-handers?

[Laughter]

John: But now you’re split up, split up into two and two, essentially, here.

Geoff: Can I just say how awesome a job Portland does, doubling every place else in the world?

John: Yeah, really fantastic.

Aldis: We got- yeah, who is that, Geoffrey Blake, right?

Marc: Geoffrey Blake playing Bixby. This was a fun beat, Tim played this really-

Chris: Lionel Whitney, by the way, his alias here, was a nod to Tenspeed and Brown Shoe.

[Laughter]

Marc: No way!

John: Nice, very nice.

Chris: Yes, that was the name of Jeff Goldblum's character from one of our beloved shows.

Geoff: Sweet.

John: What is the scientist Bixby's first name?

Geoff: Is it William?

John: It’s William, yeah. We-

Christian: Bill Bixby?

[Laughter]

John: Bill Bixby, we have a theory in another series that guy gets exposed to radiation.

Geoff: And all Hulk breaks loose.

John: And he becomes a non trademarked- he becomes the Incredible Bulk.

Chris: Or become a crime solving magician!

Geoff: Hey, I'm trying to get that show back.

John: Yeah, the crime solving magician who turns into a giant green monster when you cross him.

Christian: This was the second to the last shot right here.

Marc: Yeah it was.

Chris: Oh was it?

John: Yeah it was, Friday night.

Geoff: You’re kidding, really?

Christian: Before we wrapped the season. Was me and Hardison and then I jumped outside, that's right.

John: In the basement of the theater.

Aldis: Remember the soup you were supposed to taste?

Geoff: You guys don’t look tired or beat at all.

Christian: Yeah, I was supposed to say, “Taste the soup.”

Geoff: Eat it all.

Aldis: The soup was something.

Christian: [Weird Voice] “Just taste the soup”

Chris: Now there was a fight here, there was a fight here that got cut.

John: Yeah.

Aldis: Nice.

Chris: It involved the billfold; it was-

John: Yeah, it was a lot of fun, but then we looked at the rest of the script and realized, there’s enough action.

[Laughter]

Geoff: Yeah, there’s plenty of-

Chris: There's never enough action, come on!

Geoff: Ass-kickery is the proper term.

John: It actually- it was one of those things we did because we were actually scheduling stunt men and running into trouble with the big, giant act 4 sequence, which you’ve seen.

Christian: Yeah, right, right, right.

John: If you're watching this, you've seen it. And it turns out him just saying his name and that guy being scared shitless-

Chris: Yeah, it worked.

John: Works better. That's one of those times the dialogue works.

Chris: It worked well.

John: Also, nice freakout there, Aldis.

Aldis: Thanks.

John: Very good panic, freak out. And a good reset.

Aldis: Nice pat on my back, boom.

[Laughter]

John: Little something for you, there you go.

Aldis: Feel like my life is complete.

John: You look good in a suit, too.

Christian: Yeah, I guess they've already seen this. We can talk about other scenes, ‘cause at this point they've seen it.

Aldis: They’ve seen it, they’ve seen it, yeah.

John: Yeah, yeah they watch it all the way through and then they go back and watch the- yeah. Yeah, you can, absolutely. Also at the- we’ll skip over this, cause this is the standard spook a guy and take his wallet, we've done this a million times. 

Aldis: Yup.

John: Christain, the day you told me you were actually playing a certain beat, like a certain idea in your head when you- the whole sequence with Moreau when he gets thrown in the pool. What was the- it was trying to do the math of how far you could push it?

Christian: That was exactly it. I was- I'm counting the guys and I'm also counting exactly how long Hardison could make it where I could revive him; not only hold his breath, but where I can revive him.

[Laughter]

Chris: Like in the abyss.

Geoff: He can actually die, but I can get him back.

Christian: Yeah, exactly.

Chris: Part of the plan was to die.

John: So in your head you are Ed Harris and you're…?

Geoff: Mary Elizabeth.

[All talking over each other]

Marc: It would just be with compressions though.

Aldis: I actually counted it out, I could hold my breath for that long.

Marc: No mouth to mouth, just compressions?

Christian: Yeah absolutely, no mouth to mouth, just compressions. Listen, it's not my fault if he doesn't hack it - he got himself into that.

Aldis: I mean mouth to mouth- there’s enough ladies there to get him.

John: Yeah, but we actually timed the dialogue out so in theory you could have held your breath this long.

Aldis: Yeah, I got lungs of steel people. Asthma I got it yeah, but screw that.

Christian: Well hopefully when it gets to that part you can actually see that, because I am counting in my head while I'm having the conversation with Moreau to see how long that Hardison can be under.

Aldis: Look at his eyebrow twitch and you see, every time it twitches, that's a second.

John: It's a twitch of compassion.

[Laughter]

Geoff: Oh my god.

Aldis: It's not constipation, which most of you probably thought it was.

John: We’ll go back to this scene for a second, because it was tons of fun just coming up with the little con and heist-y stuff to do in that scene. The little three way game it's like tinkers [unintelligible]. It's a great little scene.

Chris: Yeah.

Marc So this pool has been out of commission for years.

Geoff: Really?

John: Yeah, tell us about this.

Marc: Totally, for years.

John: This was empty when we came.

Aldis: It felt like it, too.

Marc: This was the bottom of the Governor and we rebuilt it for the show.

John: Filled it.

Aldis: It was like the bottom of the arctic; it was supposed to be hot; it was cold!

Chris: So was it disease ridden or-?

John: No no, you were cold cause you got thrown in the water.

Marc: You were the only one who was cold.

John: Actually puked in the mens room because it was so hot in there.

Aldis: No, the pool itself was cold!

John: Oh yeah, yeah, but you were the only one going in.

Christian: Nobody’s mentioning the girls in the hot tub.

Aldis: By the way, ~sexual chocolate~!

John: Very good.

Aldis: I'm just saying every time, boom.

John: I don't think you have to mention it every time we see him.

Aldis: No, but the ladies were awesome.

John: We actually had to dub that giant section because when the girls all stood up- cause they were actually in the hot tub-

Aldis: It was splashing!

John: It sounded like a waterfall.

Christian: There it is, that's the reveal right there.

Marc: See that's why we held off the reveal till the right moment to see our baddie.

Geoff: Our nice James Bond villain.

John: That’s a nice reveal, it is.

Christian: He did such a great job in this role.

Chris: He's the devil coming out of basically hell.

Geoff: That's right.

Aldis: Now in the original version we had three naked women coming out after him, but I mean it's a family show, people.

John: It is a family show, we want your kids to be able to watch this.

Aldis: Exactly.

John: And that's a nice play, trying to figure out exactly what the hell is going on and catching up a little late.

Aldis: A little late?

John: Ah, the USB.

Aldis: The USB saves lives.

Marc: Everything.

John: It does. Well the thumb drive, the thumb drive is our friend on the show, thumb drive and cellphones.

Geoff: Best invention in the world. That and the cell phone.

John: This was also- I'm trying to remember where we came up with the last calls to figure out what exactly- who the next person should be. We just spent a lot of time in the writers room basically fucking around with cell phones trying to figure out what they can do. 

Geoff: Yeah.

John: GPS enabling and everything like that.

Geoff: Yeah, I saw something recently that's gonna be fun, hopefully, if we can work it in the next year that a cell phone can do.

John: Oh what is it?

Geoff: Holograms.

John: Ahh nice, holograms.

Geoff: They project a three dimensional light construct.

Aldis: Nice.

John: Cool. Tell visual effects now.

[Laughter]

John: Tim actually insisted on meeting Tim Carhart because they were shooting separately so he could imitate the voice properly.

Marc: Yes.

John: He actually rehearsed the voice.

Christian: That’s great.

Marc: He did, he made him a CD.

John: Nice. Also Derek Frederickson, the fifth Beatle, gave us all sorts of great graphics.

Chris: They all look fantastic.

Marc: Great graphics.

Geoff: God, those guys are great.

John: That exchange was actually one of my favorite bits in the script. “I'm not handcuffed to anything.” That just annoyed-

[Laughter]

John: Eliot's plan is working fine! Don't see what the-

Geoff: We’re on schedule man, chill.

John: I never realized how many characters I have in this show drink.

[Laughter]

John: Just looking at these now, I just put a glass in everybody's hand and-

Geoff: And they're kinda evil, dude.

Chris: This moment’s great too, here.

Aldis: All except for me; I can't get this glass.

John: Nope. And that was an improv too, that was-

Aldis: No love for me.

Christian: Makes him mad.

Chris: And shooting him a look like you-

Christian: It was in the script: Eliot does not look at Hardison when he goes in the pool. You know how hard that was to do, even though I knew I wasn't supposed to do it, but just not watch him go in the water right here.

John: Well also because it's your friend Aldis getting pushed in a pool.

Christian: It's my friend Aldis, exactly. And he's handcuffed to a chair! I mean he's really-

John: That is actually Aldis handcuffed to a chair going into a goddamn pool.

Aldis: I was handcuffed, I got kicked into the pool.

Chris: It was not a model of him.

Aldis: No, that was-

Chris: I know we talked a lot about models.

Aldis: No, this is not CG, people.

John: This is a dude handcuffed to a chair.

Geoff: That was really a money issue, though, I mean we could’ve built-

Marc: I saw Christain drawing up schematics of a bigger trailer if we knocked down the wall-

Christian: I can't wait till we get to the train.

John: Don't get me wrong, Christain liked the scene, it's just that-

Christian: No, I loved the scene.

John: Just, you know. No, this was an enormous- you got your underwater shot Chris.

Chris: I did.

John: Chris Downey has been waiting three years to do a shot underwater.

Geoff: Seaplane!

Aldis: And there it is, hold up, wait for it.

Chris: Oh yeah, here we go.

Aldis: And oh no, there I go.

John: Oh and that is Aldis Hodge going into the pool.

Aldis: That’s me.

Geoff: Oh no Mr. Hodge, I expected you to die.

Chris: Now what was that like, was that scary at all?

Aldis: To get kicked back wasn't scary at all, but to do- we had to do the takes over for the underwater shot of- alright standing up in the pool and then I had to sink down to the bottom and sit there for a minute, wait for the water to settle, and then they yell action and then I'm under there doing all that madness right there, yelling and all that screaming in the pool, that was terrifying.

Chris: That’s scary.

Aldis: Because you're sitting at the bottom of a pool like, “Alright, I'm waiting here.” And you know the chair is weighted down, so.

Chris: Did they call lunch?

Aldis: Like, ok guys.

Marc: Norbert wasn't scared at all.

Aldis: Actually you'll see my tie, I had to keep moving that thing out of the way right before we shot so I'm sitting there for a good 10, 15 seconds before they start rolling the camera.

Geoff: It looks great.

Christian: You did hold your breath for a really long time, man, I was impressed.

Aldis: It was fun man, it was fun.

Geoff: It was great, and ultimately all that matters is it looks great.

Aldis: It is.

Geoff: You guys breathing, surviving, you know.

John: No, they're great.

Chris: And it's a great-

John: Seven cameras, I think, in that room?

Marc: Seven cameras.

Christian: See, and there's the count and I'm counting right there.

Chris: You’re counting, I can see it.

Marc: Underwater cameras, you name it.

Aldis: At the same time, I also had a great stunt guy, Austin Priest, I've worked with him for years. He gave me-

John: He doubled you for part of this, right?

Aldis: Yeah, he doubled for some of it; he gave me a break every now and then. I did a couple takes and then he ran down and did a few himself. Cause after a while I was like, “Oh, lord.”

John: Well, I mean, the trick is you gotta work the rest of the day.

Aldis: Yeah, right.

John: Can't have you just exhausted. I love this exit, love this exit.

Geoff: God.

Christian: It’s great.

John: This is very-

Geoff: He fixes his jacket!

[Laughter]

Christian: Fix the jacket, he's back!

Geoff: Like alright I'm smooth, I'm tripping, but I'm smooth, baby.

John: Just the kobayashi-

Aldis: Wait for it!

All: Yeah!

Christian: It’s a wet rag.

Geoff: With a wet-!

Chris: Classic handkerchief.

Geoff: Well done, my friend.

John: It was great. And then the accent. Where’d you come up with that man, just fucking around with the suit?

Aldis: The- what, the-

John: The napkin- the-

Aldis: Oh at first I asked- I was talking like, “Christain, dude you gotta have some napkins. Cause I'm gonna ask you for a napkin.” And we were like, where does he pull a napkin out of?

Christian: My jeans are too tight, dude.

[Laughter]

Aldis: Yeah, the great Nadine Haders was like, “hey, handkerchief.” I was like, throw one of those in the pocket and we’ll go from there.

John: That's actually the test onset is when Christain puts on jeans, you have to try to put shit in the front pockets.

[Laughter]

John: And if nothing fits then they are tight enough.

Aldis: Have you seen my jeans? One time I spent ten-

Christian: Yeah, that's right, you have tighter jeans than I do.

Aldis: I literally spent ten minutes jumping into a pair of jeans. I was like, c'mon, this ain't happening.

John: And just so you know, if you buy- the job of checking those pockets is actually part of the lottery on the DVD, so if you didn't get the slip in the DVD set to get that job, then you should go out and buy like four more.

Christian: Nice, that's exactly it, man.

Geoff: Oh wow.

Marc: We’re talking about, the guys-

Christian: And I'm really hoping a female gets that ticket.

Marc: Elisabetta on screen in a bikini.

Aldis: Well I was about to say just for that moment right there, hot dayum to all the bikinis in the room!

Geoff: Well done, Mr. Clooney.

Christian: George Clooney is a lucky man. [Transcriber note: George Clooney and Elisabetta Canalis were dating at this point in time.]

Aldis: Yes.

John: Well because she's a lovely person too, it's not just the bikini.

Christian: Yeah she's great.

Aldis: She has nice, straight teeth.

Marc: This is a fantastic scene.

John: This was a bear.

Marc: Everybody was up on their game here, and big reveals and brilliant acting.

Christian: This is the first time I think you've ever seen anything emotional come from Eliot in front of the crew; he's done some stuff before, but never anything like this. And to do it in front of the crew, man this was a tough day for me.

Chris: Now how did you approach that- to get that vulnerability?

Aldis: He cried a lot, he cried.

Christian: If you'll notice, I really worked off of Tim right here to be honest with you. Tim gave everything back to me every single time, so I really worked off of Tim right here. And he helped me out with this a lot. And he didn’t do anything, just gave me his eyes, man, and it was really- I let- I felt like I let Nate down in that and I really used that in this scene.

John: Well it's a little like the second season finale, the one where he snaps in the conference room, cause I know he was anchoring off you in that, when you were trying to calm him down.

Christian: Yeah, right.

John: And he had the total meltdown.

Christian: Yeah.

John: That's what's great about television is the actors work together, they learn how to work with each other, and you get stuff you won’t get in a movie.

Geoff: From a fan perspective, before I came on this year, I was just a person watching this show and every season, the end of the season, there's always a moment like this where you guys gather, the characters gather, and something big is released.

Christian: Yeah, yeah.

Geoff: And this is, even though this is darker than the other ones, it's just like a big, nice compliment to the other two seasons.

Marc: This is my favorite beat, here.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: This is a great moment.

Chris: Yeah, this.

Marc: Just a great piece of dialogue.

Aldis: Kinda begs the question: who is next in line for a mental breakdown?

John: Yeah, yeah.

Marc: Me.

[Laughter]

Geoff: I have to say, that line of dialogue was written by Mr. Chris Downey and not by me.

Aldis: Ahhh.

Chris: No, no, I don't believe so, I think Dean, maybe-

Marc: I think Dean wrote that.

Geoff: Oh really? Okay.

Chris: Dean actually pitched this beat.

John: Dean pitched that line.

Chris: Dean pitched this beat.

Christian: Yeah, Dean told me about it coming in.

Geoff: Well done, Mr. Devlin.

Christian: This was tough for me, this whole thing was tough for me.

Chris: And I got a question: were you working your head off of what that thing was? I mean, you don't have to say, but were you-

John: As a matter of fact don't say, ‘cause we’ve got something in mind.

Chris: Yeah, don’t say but what's in your process?

Christian: No, I won’t say but yeah, I did, I had something yeah. It was-

John: Yeah, cause you look pretty goddamn heartbroken there. 

Chris: Yeah.

Christian: Yeah.

John: Nice. And by the way, for those people listening that pay attention to the stuff we talk about on the other commentaries when we talk about writing, Hardison taking the iPad there is important. We use Hardison as the thermostat, the emotional thermostat for the audience. A lot of times the audience knows stuff is ok when Hardison acknowledges that it’s ok. And him accepting that beat allows you- is a subconscious cue that we’re ok to move past what Eliot’s done.

Christian: Right, right, right, I noticed that myself.

John: And the scene plays on. Even past the revelation which is nice, I mean this scene stays heavy all the way through, no break because this reminds- remember when we did the pilot in Chicago, the first time you go up to Nate - I'm talking to Christain - when Christain goes up to Tim and is like, “Hey, about your son, I'm sorry.”

Marc: At the pool table.

Christian: The pool table, yeah.

John: The pool table. You're like how do I play this? I was like you're two gunslingers who always respected each other and might not want to know who's better, but you're equals, you’re peers, and that's the vibe here.

Christian: It's a standoff.

John: They're playing a separate scene than sort of everybody else here.

Christian: And that helped me the most. Standing in front of Tim helped me the most on that. Cause, you know, I worked off of him and it was just- like I said, it was just four hours to film that and it was tough ‘cause I had to stay there the whole time. I went home and went to bed. I mean, I was tired.

Aldis: Not to mention, the distractions from the passers by on the street [high pitched voice] “Oh my god are you guys shooting a scene? Can we get a picture?”

Christian: Yeah, exactly.

[Laughter]

Aldis: “No, we’re filming!”

Chris: That always helps when you have those emotional scenes.

John: This by the way- that park ain’t empty. That’s all of us hiding behind trees.

[Laughter]

Geoff: That’s hysterical.

Christian: That’s true.

Marc Gary Camp with a steadicam.

Aldis: Remember they said action, and people scattered like roaches.

Marc: Give all the credit to the cameraman.

Christian: You have to.

Marc: But on this particular beat, all the actors have to hit their marks exactly or you're not gonna see them and you're not gonna timeout when they speak.

John: This actually is something we do in the writers room is we figure out one per, and then it makes the blocking easier. But there have been times we've kinda gamed this out in there.

Christian: I don't think people realize how difficult a shot the roundy-round is like this, when everyone’s got dialogue you gotta end up on every shot.

Aldis: Gary Camp kills this.

John: You see how Gary sped up that turn a little bit just to catch you 'cause he knew that dialogue?

Geoff: He's a maestro.

John: Probably the guy who knows the script- after you guys, he knows the script the best.

Aldis: Gary Camp, yeah.

Christian: Gary knows the script the best. I mean, he's unbelievable. We couldn't do it without him.

Geoff: I love the duality of these guys, too. The one that Eliot could have grown up to be versus what he ended up being.

John: And the fact that- that came late to the idea that “you got the job?” That they knew each other. We originally envisioned it as a different guy, a new guy who didn't know the reputation. But that- but having him know him and be jealous.

Christian: Yeah, anytime there's a past.

Geoff: It’s awesome.

John: Yeah, well also that guy is vaguely resentful he'll never live up to the Eliot Spencer legend.

Christian: Right, yeah, I mean he plays it very well, as an actor he chose that and he played it very well.

John: But then the ability to say, “I heard you'd gone soft.” He just- he sees a hink, this guy isn't the badass he thought he was, makes him feel better.

Christian: Yeah, exactly.

John: This was us, second unit, this was a fun day.

Chris: Yeah that’s right.

John: One camera, two actors banging the hell out of that.

Chris: That's right.

John: In the fine tradition of Marc Roskin, that’s the-

Marc There you go.

John: Keep talking, move fast.

Aldis: I actually drove past this set on my way to lunch.

Marc: The streets of downtown Portland.

Geoff: By the way, I'm from DC, this looks like DC, okay? It tripped me out.

John: I know, I know.

Marc: Paul Bernard's daughter.

John: Paul Bernard's daughter. And actually, unfortunately, we had a communication breakdown, we couldn’t talk- we were standing across the street shooting across the street, we couldn't talk to the actors because we had a problem with the radio, so I'm literally standing on a chair across the street going, “You love your daughter! Tell her you love her! Now hug her! Now go die!”

[Laughter]

Christian: Some of the locals that were on the stoop didn't know what to think about that.

John: And this was actually for those of you who were making your amateur films, those were Sony ex-1s bolted to the front of those cars. Perfectly good footage.

Marc: They come in handy.

Geoff: Oh, yeah.

John: And then the distraction, so he puts it into park so he doesnt go rolling away when his neck gets snapped, which was why we wrote this scene.

Christian: And he was great with this, too, he really trusted me.

John: Yeah, cause if the guy looks tense, it doesn't look good.

Christian: Yeah, and he really trusted me. I mean that's a tough thing to do, that's somebody's neck, man, and you gotta be really careful with that. It was a big safety issue, but he was great. He really sold it.

Geoff: Oh, you didn't actually kill him?

[Laughter]

John: No, the fact that he was found dead of a fall the next day is total coincidence.

Christian: No absolutely, absolutely.

John: That was his last scene and he went home.

Christian: Exactly, and it was weird how he fell in his trunk.

Geoff: [Laughing] He fell in his trunk!

John: People do that, they put tire irons and shit in his trunk and then ‘Oh! I've stumbled.’

Geoff: Lid comes down.

Chris: He was digging a shallow grave, it was weird. I wonder why he was doing that.

John: This was great, this was actually the morgue set from the hospital scene- the hospital the previous year, right?

Chris: In Order 23?

John: Oh no no, this was from a film that was shooting up there. This is a plug. That room is not a morgue; that room is a big empty classroom.

Geoff: You're kidding?

Marc: Big empty science room.

John: That we dropped those drawers halfway to cut it in half, and then Becca Molino and our fantastic production design propped it up and it looked gorgeous.

Christian: They do it every time, they do it, I'm surprised by how they do it.

Marc: I worship Becca, Becca is a genius.

Christian: It's an unbelievable crew that we’ve got.

John: I love the resentment, by the way, that Aldis is playing here. And it kinda ties into the resentment here that nobody quite understands how hard Hardison works.

[Laughter]

Geoff: Yeah, get a body.

John: Yeah, exactly. That’s just shit he does now.

Aldis: Get a body!

Geoff: It's not magic folks, it's not a magic trick.

John: There's the red wig. Which we almost had her do the entire second episode of this in.

Marc: Yes.

John: This was one of the ones where Gina said, “I wanna do it in a wig” and we’re like, “No” and she showed up in a wig and we said, “Damn, that’s hot.” And then we were worried that it would confuse the viewer coming in for the second set, so we just kept it for here. I love him reining her in like that, lovely. And then a little bit of pipe before we go to the fourth act. That's also crucial part of the script is reminding the audience, “Okay things have been moving very quickly, just to remind you this is what we’re gonna do in this act.”

Marc: Yes.

Aldis: Hot damn!

Christian: Yeah, that was a good day.

[Laughter]

Chris: What is he doing, playing online poker? 

John: What is Moreau doing online?

Chris: What is he- he’s got a strange business model.

John: He's doing his Facebook status update, “Going to kill dudes; gotta go now.”

Marc: Also we had to put CG water in that hot tub cause it wasn't-

Geoff: What?

John: Oh! It didn’t work, that's right.

Marc: It didn’t work, as I said, we remodeled this and it was leaking.

John: This had been closed- that was like a hundred year old basement or something, yeah.

Aldis: Yeah.

Geoff: That's insane.

John: Yeah, the hot tub leaked, that was badly designed, that was poorly thought out. Yup, a lot of fun with this, banged out in the- that’s the parking lot of the studio.

Marc: Parking lot of the stage.

Christian: Is it really?

John: This is also a reminder that Sophie ran the crew when Nate was in jail. One of those little things that when you look at the show this year, they are much more peers.

Marc: And if at all possible, you can avoid shooting in an elevator, I would recommend it.

John: Oh sweet Jesus.

Aldis: That elevator was a beast.

Chris: Was this the one where the elevator sucked the camera down?

John: Yes, no, the light.

Christian: I remember a really bad day in an elevator.

Aldis: This, by the way-

John: No, not the one where you were attacked by a box.

Christian: Yeah, exactly.

Aldis: This guy right here, his name is Kevin Champion, he’s been my stand in, a trooper since the pilot and he finally got his just desserts.

Chris: He did a great job.

John: And by the way, he did great - fantastic job.

Aldis: Now who did we have on set to slate for him?

Marc Charles Barkley!

Aldis: Sir Charles Barkley.

Chris: Oh that's right!

Christian: That’s right.

John: Charles Barkley was in town

Geoff: Where was I when all this was going on?

Christian: Charles Barkley was on set-

Chris: I missed Charles Barkley, I was in a warehouse with you!

Marc: His first time acting with us and all of it-

John: Barkley showed up.

Chris: I was at the shoot out. Man, Barkley

Aldis: Barkley was a great man.

John: He was in town doing a fundraiser, swung by the set.

Chris: By the way, Charles Barkley, big friend of TNT.

Marc: This was a fun little beat.

Aldis: Yeah, I met him, I met him and I told him to come on down, he had a good time.

John: Really charming guy.

Chris: We better have Barkley on season four.

Geoff: I don't get to see the special things.

John: You don't get to see Barkley, I'm sorry. Just the elevator thing, what had happened is, was we stopped the elevator, we had lights in there to light it, and then all of a sudden the elevator just restarted, the doors closed and it started flying downstairs, pulling the wires after it into the-

Christian: Oh my god.

Aldis: Yeah, the elevator had issues.

Chris: Oh, this is a great reveal.

John: Nice little flash of the lift. And we've never seen Parker do the front lift.

Geoff: Yeah.

John: He actually- Kevin did a great job.

Christian: Kevin did a great job.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: Very pleased. And by the way, there are ID’s that do this, that do the live tracking in the buildings.

Chris: Oh yeah.

John: Yeah, absolutely.

Marc: Technical green!

Christian: Technical green.

Aldis: [British Accent] “Technical green, mate.”

John: This was also a lab that was already there that we shot from the other room.

Marc: Already there.

Geoff: Wow.

John: Yeah we just built- yeah, all the equipment was there and we just built where the bomb had been, that was it. That was all we laid in there.

Geoff: You make this stuff up in the room, you hope for the best.

John: It’s- and you have talented people busting their ass to make it real.

Marc: The people at Portland State- that's a green screen back there.

Geoff: No way!

Chris: That’s right, that is terrific.

John: Yeah, that's not the airport.

Geoff: Get out of town!

Marc: That was a warehouse at a stage.

Christian: Yup.

John: Yeah, that's like a couple blocks from our stages, right? Yeah.

Christian: It’s weird- everything you see in there, though, it's the real deal.

Marc: Yeah, we got a lot of use out of this stage.

Christian: Yeah, I can't believe they let us use it with as many- we went 2500 rounds of a gunfight?

[Laughter]

John: 2500 rounds.

Christian: Inside a place with flammable material- I'm just saying!

John: On the list of stupid ideas.

Aldis: Now wasn't this also the day we found out that we got picked up?

Marc: That stores chemicals and paper rolls.

Christian: Exactly.

Chris: That's right.

John: Nothing can go wrong there.

Chris: And failed microbrew brands. I walked around there. It was like microbrews you never heard of.

Geoff: The opinions shared by the writers and actors are not necessarily shared by TNT or Electric Entertainment Company.

John: Or the insurance companies therein.

Aldis: The thing I love about this is usually when people do car scenes like this when they’re shooting out the back it’s a green screen, but this wasn't, we ran the traffic.

Chris: You can tell.

John: No. And all 200 pounds of me is folded up in the back of that thing.

Geoff: No!

John: I'm in the rear seat.

Aldis: John was literally in the trunk of that car.

Geoff: Oh my god!

John: Yelling through the backseat.

Aldis: Shouting out directions. We did it guerilla-style, people.

John: We stopped traffic, had a cop chase us through the streets.

Aldis: Now you see how wild she's driving. It was a bumpy ride for us and we were seated comfortably with seatbelts.

John: Yeah, I don't think we're gonna let Gina drive again, that's not good.

Aldis: John was back there, we gave him a pint of Guinness, he was alright.

Christian: She doesn't know what side of the street to drive on.

[Laughter]

John: That's what made it more exciting. This is a great- now the shadowy figures and we’re setting it up.

Marc: Shadowy figures.

John: This act is insane, this act really is crazy. It was tricky structuring it, each storyline had to have three acts in itself, so you had to be able to switch between development, execution, and aftermath in each plotline. No, this was a ton of fun. And shooting a real train.

Marc: A real train, just a neighborhood in Portland. And I don't know if you know this, but Portland is a huge biking community and we shut off-

Aldis: Yeah.

Chris: That's where I take my bike ride, spring break bike path.

Marc: Everybody takes their bike ride. They rerouted it, no one complained, everybody was gracious, it was nice.

John: That's where the camera truck drove, the camera truck drove on the bike path next to the train.

Aldis: People ride their bikes on the freeways there - it’s insane.

Geoff: Safely!

Chris: That’s true, in driving rain storms in ponchos.

John: That’s a nice moment there, that acting moment- this is the first time in a while we’ve heard Eliot go, “yeah, we’re fucked.”

Christian: Yeah, yeah.

John: It’s a nice beat. That's my actors on a bridge.

Aldis: Yeah.

Marc: And one of the busiest bridges in Portland.

John: Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing, I was not- I was at the other set while they were shooting this, so I was- a lot of times I was watching the dailies I was like, “Oh wow, those stunt doubles are great- wait that’s-”

[Laughter]

Christian: See that right there, I really wanna concentrate on that - you’ve never seen Eliot kill anyone. 

Geoff: Yeah, that’s true.

Christian: I just broke that guy's neck, he's dead. 

John: Yeah, that guy’s gone.

Christian: That's the first time you saw and, you know it's-

John: It escalates the stakes; you realize whatever’s gonna happen next is not gonna be the normal thing.

Christian: Yeah, exactly.

Marc: CG DC in the background there.

Aldis: Yup, DC.

John: Real train under my actors.

Aldis: I begged you guys for days to let me jump down.

[Laughter]

Geoff: You must be high, are you crazy?

Marc: What was it like writing Eliot’s first shootout?

Geoff: We talked about it in the room, we bounced it around a lot, we wanted it to be a little bit over the top frankly and kinda John Woo-ish because every one of the characters is so perfectly- they're like the perfect example of whatever their thing is. And throughout the show, Eliot generally fights opponents that are numerous, but they're really not on his level. So to really show him doing what he does- it's kinda like that first episode where he has the teacup and the room full of guys. We didn’t see that, we saw the outside of that. This is what happened inside, basically.

Chris: By the way, can I just say something about that acting moment there? I loved that moment of picking up the gun.

John: Well the look to Tim.

Chris: You played three different emotions in a row, just on your face, of kind of the resignation and then you became a different person.

Christian: Yeah, well that's the point is once he picks up this gun- how's he gonna be in season 4? Cause now it's a whole box he never wanted to open again. I'll tell you, this is my favorite thing I've ever filmed in my entire life. This is my favorite thing I've ever filmed in my entire life.

[Laughter]

John: Two days. Two straight days for that gunfight.

Christian: You guys usually only give me 3-4 hours to fight and I got two days on this one.

John: Great shot here.

Geoff: Boom!

Marc: And boom!

Aldis: I swear I wanted to jump down, but at least-

John: That's our stunties jumping, but that's you on top.

Aldis: We were allowed to run on top.

Chris: Look at you go!

Christian: Them on a train, man.

Geoff: Which really you should not have been allowed to do.

Chris: There you go.

Aldis: Probably shouldn't have been, but it was gonna happen.

Geoff: Oh my god.

Chris: That's you!

Christian: On a moving train, on a moving train.

Aldis: Moving train.

John: This is- by the way, they got so excited, they came over the next day and I said, “What’d you do yesterday?” And Beth said, “I ran on top of a moving train without any safety equipment-! Oh, shit,” I was like, “That’s right! From now on, say it out loud just once!”

[Laughter]

John: “And if you say oh shit at the end of the sentence, don’t do it!”

Geoff: That's right.

John: No, but honestly guys, we can’t thank you enough for doing that for the show. Not a lot of actors would come out of their trailer to watch that happen, nevermind actually do it.

Aldis: Beth was hardcore about it, too.

Marc: This scene was shot over a period of two days.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Yeah, this is crazy.

Christian: By the way, everybody needs to know, that’s me. That’s only me, no stunt double, that's it, always me.

John: No stunties. I always joke - your stunt double has the easiest job in Hollywood.

Geoff: No joke.

John: “What are you gonna do today?” “Oh I’ll just have a latte, watch him bust his ass, have a good day.”

Christian: Nice punch right there, by the way, nice form.

[Laughter]

Christian: I'm serious! I'm being honest!

Chris: Now how did you- how much experience did you have doing gunfights on screen? I mean, obviously this is-

Christian: I mean, not that much, but I mean honestly I'm from Oklahoma, so-

[Laughter]

John: This, by the way: not a train. A fake train car we built on the set that we had interns- pardon me not interns, PA’s actually shaking and rocking and then strobing light, poorman’s process,  through it.

Geoff: Poorman’s process.

Marc: Eric Bates built that bomb, he’s very proud of it.

Chris: There's a couple [unintelligible] on it.

Marc: This is my favorite-

Geoff: Love that! Love that!

Marc: Ohhh!

John: No look, no look it's fine.

Chris: Now here, oh!

Christian: That was so much fun right there man, that was so much fun.

John: What I love is the countermove by the guy in the back, actually.

Geoff: I would date this sequence if I was single.

[Laughter]

Marc: That's a shoutout on The Closer.

John: No that- oh The Closer, no they've never done a shootout like this.

Chris: Now how much of that is like you're 12 years old and you're in the backyard?

Christian: Oh all of it, all of it. This was my favorite thing I've ever done. This is the scene I came to Hollywood for and I'm not lying; I'm being dead serious.

Geoff: Hey!

Marc: Kevin Jackson worked so hard with you on this. It was great.

Geoff: Kevin is great.

Christian: Yeah.

Aldis: Yeah, Kevin Jackson, our stunt coordinator.

John: And we showed up, we showed up, we’d been shooting that other stuff and we showed up in that warehouse on, like, hour 16 and you had been doing the slide on the concrete floor like, “Again! Go again!” Like Jesus, boy!

Christian: Yup, yup.

Marc: Christain looked like an offensive lineman, you know.

[Laughter]

Marc: In an overtime game.

John: Soaked in sweat.

Christian: 2500 rounds man; 2500 rounds for the day.

Aldis: Jeez.

Christian: That's a lot for television, I'm telling you.

Aldis: Yeah.

Marc: And if a gun didn't fire, we added it.

Christian: Yeah.

Marc: There's a lot of-

Geoff: Oh really, you CG’ed in muzzle flashes?

Christian: Now this is- this was my idea, I brought this to Dean and John. This was my idea. I wanted to slide through the oil or the water or whatever you had, whatever it was.

John: Oh the sights, the double cock.

Christian: Double cock, I came up with that. I'd never seen it before, you never do it with your own guns because it ruins it, and I can't believe how cool it looks.

[Laughter]

John: Who cares if it's wrong, it looks cool!

Chris: Now how about that shot?

Marc: And Joe LoDuca’s music during this.

Chris: The push up here.

John: Slow push, yeah, that's a great shot, there you go.

Geoff: You are about to die.

John: Now I would also mention this was a wire assist at the end, but you did it without the wire the first time.

Christian: That's all me right there, that’s all me. I went- right there was as far as I went without wiring.

John: And you got a good- remember we were testing it that first day. And you're like, “I can do this!” And just banged it out and you got about 15, 20 feet even without the stuff on the floor.

Chris: By the way folks, even those of you in good shape, try and get- try and just get on your knees.

Geoff: Yeah, no joke.

Chris: On your knees and lean back like that. I did it on set.

John: It was not fun.

Christian: There's my Desperado shot; I had to have a little fun. John gave me that one.

Aldis: Dun-dun dun-dun.

John: And this is the CG explosion, little pop, and then a real explosion.

Geoff: Oh nice, oh man! I love that.

Marc That’s a model-

John: That’s what I mean, a model blow, a real blow.

Geoff: But bear in mind, also this is the end of the season, these guys have been jumping, getting punched, blown up, hiding for-

Christian: Oh I didn't walk for two days, man.

[Laughter]

Chris: That looked painful.

John: And this is where we pay off the taser.

Aldis: Paid off the taser!

John: We introduced the taser in episode one, do a runner throughout the whole season and this is what you've been waiting for, the moment to pay off why she's been carrying it. We totally planned that - that wasn't accidental at all.

Geoff: [Forceful Laugh]

Christian: No, absolutely not.

John: We didn't cook that up in a drunken stupor in the writers room one night.

Geoff: I meant to do that, I meant to do that.

Marc We’re actually driving cars on the bike path, removing fence.

John: And we did a blow.

Marc And blowing up trains.

Aldis: We did a blow.

John: Yeah, we actually did a blow in there. We video assisted it, but that was a real explosion.

Chris: Wait, that was a real blow on the train?

Christian: Yeah.

John: Yeah. We didn't take the door off, the door was added.

Christian: See if you can't tell that's a little hard getting up there on the knees. I'm not as young as Aldis, but-

Geoff: You're excused man, you did your job.

John: And this is the classic, this is really-

Geoff: Awesome!

John: I'm gonna say Johnny Toe instead of John Woo because that’s really more of a Johnny Toe shot. And the flame bar.

Chris: That's an iconic shot right there.

John: Yeah it is.

Chris: We’ll be seeing that shot in a lot of fan videos.

Geoff: That move, I love that.

Aldis: It’s clean.

John: Very clean, and he was worried he was too slow on the night, too.

Christian: I did, I was like, “Man, was it fast enough? Cause I'm tired.”

Geoff: Plenty fast enough, man.

John: But you had done-

Christian: This was important right here, I wanted to show that, you know, the guns are done, I still don't like ‘em.

Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John: But you practiced quickdraw on the other thing you did, what was it?

Christian: Oh man from Anywhere from Into The West to Crossfire Trail,  we were always out there. I got that actually from Emilio Esteves, who is a friend of mine, who directed me on Close To Home and he was telling me about how they used to go out there and they- when they were all doing Young Guns they used to practice quick draw against each other to see who was the fastest.

John: Well Geoff Blake, who played Bixby, was on Young Guns.

Geoff: He's really good.

Christian: That's right, oh my gosh, that's right.

Aldis: I got a question, as far as season 4 for Hardison and Parker, cause you know, she just did the pretzels thing, the people are expecting something.

Geoff: What are you trying to say?

John: A lot of shirtless you.

Aldis: I gotta do push ups? Jeez.

John: We’re gonna advance the relationship.

Chris: But we'll do it at our own pace.

Christian: You know I haven't seen this scene yet, man, I can't wait to see it.

John: You haven't seen this?

Christian: No.

John: Had you not seen the full edit of this?

Christian: No.

Geoff: It’s tasteful, it’s tasteful.

Christian: I've been on a radio tour, man.

[Laughter]

John: Oh that's true. Kinda the whole music career giant international thing. 

Christian: It’s- you know.

John: This was a ton of fun, and again, just a little bit of fun. It's tricky when you're showing the moves this fast, how to reset for each act just to make sure the audience knows at all times where you are, what's going on.

Christian: Again, Goran was always on his game, man. You couldn't have picked a better Moreau, he was great.

Aldis: Oh he was spot on, man.

John: Well it helps, he was physically intimidating too.

Christian: He’s like 6’6”! I didn’t realize how tall he was.

Aldis: Yeah, yeah.

John: He's like a paratrooper. And this was Dean’s idea to finally do, like, the threeway-

Marc: Do the triangle.

John: Do the triangle, yeah.

Christian: Just to let people know, when the gun goes off, one of the loads came out and hit Tim in the eye. We went down for about 20 minutes ‘cause it hit him right square in the eye.

Geoff: Wow!

Christian: And nothing against- it was just a weird shot, it wasn’t even pointed at him, it just- every once in a while- guns are unpredictable and it went off to the side.

John: That's why you have safety guys on set.

Geoff: And you don't do this at home, kids.

John: No, well I doubt they'd have the jet.

Christian: Right.

[Laughter]

Geoff: Some kids have a jet, you know.

Chris: Well they might have a bus up on cinder blocks in the backyard.

Christian: When I come running out here, you don't know how many times I hit my head on the bottom of this wing.

John: I know! I was counting, actually.

Christian: I hit my head four times on the bottom of this wing trying to get under it.

John: Every time you stood up, you didn't quite time it right.

Christian: I stood up early and damn near knocked myself out. It freaking hurt.

Geoff: So Marc, some of these shots are pretty complex-

Aldis: And there we go, Bonanno!

Geoff: What's the stuff that drives you most logistically, you’re like, how am I gonna do this, and you know-

Marc: A lot of it is where are we gonna shoot it, what we can get away with, and how much time we have. And this was tricky cause we had so many locations. We’re barely in HQ and in the finale, in 16, we are, but this ist a lot of locations. You’re in a train, you're in a fight.

John: You're losing light. The great thing about an outdoor set like this is you got that beautiful sky, the bad thing is the sun goes up, sun goes down.

Marc: Sun goes up, sun goes down.

Geoff: Right, no control.

Christian: We were working against the clock this day man, we were losing the sun.

Marc: But you know, you would think at the end of the season you would lose energy with the crew and with the actors.

John: Not at all.

Marc: And I think this is some of our best acting in these last two episodes.

Geoff: I agree, I agree.

Marc: And they're big emotional scenes, they're heavy page count, and we shot the hell out of it.

John: Yeah, this is three pages of Tim talking.

Marc: And it's not just tapping us on the back, most shows don't do coverage like we do, and spend the time to light it like we do, and have flashbacks and cutaways and special effects and greenscreens and CG, I mean.

John: We’re crazy.

Marc: We’re nuts!

John: Why the hell are we doing this?

Geoff: Rockwood.

John: By the way, I'd like to say: quick note because we just blew by it, Elisabetta, who had not acted a lot when she joined us in the first part of the season, the beat where she says, “You opened the envelope?” And she sounds actually kind of hurt? It's a really nice communicative beat.

Christian: Yeah it is.

John: She's really found her voice as an actor.

Aldis: Yeah, I liked that beat.

Geoff: She did a good job.

Chris: She was really great.

John: She really did a nice job. “Who are you?” And that is the best choice by Goran.

Christian: That is the best, I love that.

Marc: I just kept saying build, build, build, and it- just all the way to the end of 16.

Christian: You've never seen him not be in control, except that moment right there.

John: You never see him he's- he’s not out of control there, he's just impatient.

Christian: No, yeah.

John: That veneer is going.

Chris: Oh here we go.

Christian: Boom!

Geoff: You wiped out there?

Christian: Didn't do it that time.

John: He slammed his head. Look at his process right there, he's like how is this gonna go.

Marc: And I just love the little-

John: And the fuck you smile. That’s a great look from Goran. 

[Moment of Silence]

John: Sorry, we all got lost in the show there for a second.

[Laughter]

Christian: Yeah, sorry.

Chris: Sorry, yeah now we’re like-

John: No, she did great, she did a great shot, we got a lot of footage of this. And it was really convincing. And then a little something for the ladies cause you gotta stop the blood flow somehow.

Aldis: Ah, there he goes, boom.

John: There's a whole box of rags right stage left, I mean.

[Laughter]

Chris: There's a whole first aid kit.

Marc: Could you imagine if you were doing pushups?

Geoff: What is wrong with people?

John: I mean, by god.

Marc: And a real plane taxiing away.

Geoff: Jesus.

John: What the hell were we thinking?

Christian: Did you see that? You saw on my shoulder right there, that’s where Tim stopped me a couple times. It was that really ripped up and bruised cause he had to stop me running full speed.

John: This was nice, by the way. I actually prefer this coverage, it's tempting to go into closeups there when he asked him not to tell the others. This is a very British shot to do this in a medium, because it allows the shot to kinda sit for a second, rather than forcing it.

Marc: Yeah, so we just thought we'd do it on a crane.

[Laughter]

John: Well that too. But I'm saying I liked the shot. ‘Cause it allowed you to set up the other shot. Also I love this bit, the little hurt look that Nate has when he finds out she wouldn't have done that for him.

Marc: Yeah.

Chris: And a very matter of fact, no; it was reminiscent of the flashback when he was getting strangled, his fantasy sequence. She's very bored and matter of fact about things like that

John: It's really- the character really did exactly we wanted her to be, which was a 1960’s spy character who was transplanted into the show. And this is something we almost never do. We've only done it twice - tie together the episodes, even in the season finales they tend to just end and you have no idea what we're gonna do next.

Christian: Right, this was fun to do. This was so great waiting on the second script.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: Yeah the walk- oh that’s right, cause somebody didn't quite finish the second script by the time you were prepping this.

Christian: Oh, that's right.

[Laughter]

John: Somebody was writing the script in Portland, say.

Geoff: I don't know who that would be.

John: And then the crane up, pull away, and you're out. Now this is cinematic as hell. And that’s 3x15!

All: [Cheer!]

Geoff: Nice!

Christian: Awesome.

John: Thanks for tuning in, and stay tuned 3x16!

Chris: Stay tuned.

John: You know you wanna watch them back to back, coming right up.

Geoff: Oh hell yeah.

Frakes: Welcome to The Morning After Job. Jonathan Frakes, Director.

John: John Rogers, Executive Producer.

Chris: Chris Downey, Executive Producer and Writer.

Frakes: And our star of the week, Mr. Spencer Garrett.

John: Did a great job.

Chris: Aw, how fantastic. Now, now, uh, Johnathan, then tell us where- where’d you first work with Spencer?

Frakes: He was on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation with the late, great Jean Simmons.

John: With who?

Frakes: C’mon, don’t start with me.

[John and Chris Laughing]

Frakes: And, uh, so I hadn’t worked with him in about 20 years, and then two episodes in a row. I did this show with him and a show called Good Guys with him. And he was just perfect. This burned out hockey player.

Chris: He really is.

John: He’s got a great range. 

Chris: Yeah, he plays-

John: He also played a lot of stuff in this.

Chris: He plays a lot of stuff. He plays rage, obviously. Plays fear, he plays arrogance.

Frakes: He’s a wonderful leading man, too. He’s got a great old ‘40s face.

John: Yup.

Chris: Now is- I guess his mom was an actor? Uh, I believe so.

Frakes: I wish I could pull her name. Yeah, still is. 

Chris: Yeah, I guess-

Frakes: The Duchess, he calls her.

Chris: Yes! [Laughing]

John: That’s like if you’ve ever- everyone who watches the show knows Mark Sheppard. Mark Sheppard fills up a room.

Frakes: Yes.

John: You go to Mark Sheppard’s house to have dinner, and his father’s there and Mark Sheppard is wallpaper.

[Chris Laughing]

Frakes: That’s right. Oh, his father’s the actor of the family.

John: Mark Sheppard’s father is just- fantastic, giant, British presence. Just really great. Um, what was the inspiration for this episode? Which is what I always ask during the credits.

Chris: Um, well, you know, it’s always-

Frakes: Tell the DVD story!

Chris: [Laughing] Oh, well, there is- there is a movie called The Morning After.

[Frakes Laughing]

John: Which is, uh, Jane Fonda.

Chris: Which is Jane Fonda- which, I believe she was either nominated or won an Oscar for. Uh, in which she wakes up next to-

Frakes: You sure that wasn’t Klute?

Chris: She’s a blackout drunk who wakes up next to-

John: Might’ve been Klute.

Chris: Wakes up next to a dead guy.

John: Yes.

Chris: And, uh, I actually tracked it down on VHS. It was not-

John: Wow!

Chris: Not very, not very helpful.

John: What, uh, what Russian- Russian grocery store did you find that in?

Chris: [Laughing] I don’t know. I don’t know where it was. Somewhere out here. Some, uh, you know, video stores that divide things by cinematographer.

[John Laughing]

Chris: Which is a great thing out in LA. Um, and, uh, I- I guess just the idea was- in doing what we call a gaslight episode. 

Chris: These are kinds of throwbacks to Mission Impossibles where we put somebody in a situation.

John: A tightly controlled situation, yeah.

Chris: A very tightly controlled situation where we’re- you know, the team is controlling all the information, trying to find something that is everybody's worst nightmare. And waking up next to the dead girl you picked up in a bar is every dude's worst nightmare. So that was-

John: You’re generalizing a lot there.

Chris: Well it's one of the guys-

Frakes: Just saying.

John: Just saying.

Frakes: Some.

Chris: -worst nightmares.

John: They came quick, that's all.

Chris: Yes.

John: And a little Order 23 actually.

Chris: Yes.

Frakes: Ooh there she is. The Italian is back!

John: The Italian is back.

John: The lovely Elisabetta Canalis proved to be a wonderful young woman, really charming and really found this character. This is great.

Frakes: And luckily for us, found her American accent.

[Laughter]

Chris: Yes.

John: No, the sort of surliness between the two of them was a lot of fun to play. And it was kinda fun because we debated naming her, and her just being The Italian was this kinda throwback to the 60’s spy movies, and it gave her a hook into the character, because her job is to just torment him.

Chris: Yes.

John: She's an outside force. She’s weather, so to speak.

Frakes: She's weather, but she was also very game, she loved this.

John: Oh yeah. Well this- nevermind the finale, we duct taped her to a chair!

Chris: Yeah.

John: And she's like, “No, no, duct tape me! I have no problem.” And we blew her up and we shot bullets at her, she's fantastic.

Chris: And we hadn't seen her in a while this season, so this was a really important scene.

John: It was a good reset cause we'd originally had another episode that might have popped her up and reset the story in the middle but it didn't work out with the story structure.

Frakes: It was smart to pepper her through the season, cause she's sort of a part of the family, and if you don't see her enough, you forget that.

Chris: Yes.

John: And we also were in another situation where we were not sure where the summer break would fall again. 

Chris: Right.

John: We didn’t know which episode was gonna wind up being the one we went out on. And this worked out, this was our new format, sorta putting the desk/table down there.

Frakes: This is actually a good call. The L.

John: Yeah, this- well it gave us the thing we had first year; it allowed us to shoot down that table, everyone’s at business, they're at work.

Frakes: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah leaning forward, engaged. When they were sitting in those couches, they tended to, like, sink and disappear.

[Laughter]

Frakes: Well it also does something to you physically as an actor; you have to sit more erect and your posture has to be-

John: We also shocked them, we put electric current through these seats just to wake them up.

Chris: And John I have to give you credit, I think you're the one that sorta pioneered the flash back and forth briefing scene. We kinda tend to do these-

Frakes: It was here. This was the one.

John: No, there was another episode where we did it on the first, and-

Chris: We did it in the first season, and what we typically do is we kinda unload all the exposition and then we start the con, and-

John: Yeah I actually like this, and whenever we run into - in the writing room - a really chunky first or second act, this is the first tool out of the toolbox.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Like can we crosscut in time, as we plan, as we execute.

Frakes: As we lay the plan and exposition.

Chris: And it makes it so much more energetic and dynamic, and I think this is the way we’re gonna do it a lot in the future.

John: I'm trying to remember the first episode we did that in.

Chris: I think it was Juror #6 Job.

John: Yes! Where, as he explained what he was doing in the chess game-

Chris: As he explained the assignments we zhoomed to the people doing the assignment, and we zhoomed back to the next guy.

John: Yeah. There's nothing- there's no law that you have to obey linear time in television. And also this character is based on- at least his violence is based on Terry O’Reilly who is my favorite Bruin.

Chris: Oh, sure.

John: And one of my favorite things is you can go on YouTube and find fights of Terry O'Reilly on YouTube, and they're just unspeakable [laughs].

Frakes: So that's who she’s referencing in this next beat with Spencer, yeah, “I know you from-”

John: Yeah, exactly.

Chris: And this is great, we shot this at the convention.

Frakes: We discovered this location, we shot the shit out of this location, it's so easy.

John: It's the convention center. It's doubled as the airport a couple times, it looks like an airport!

Chris: Yeah, and our special effects people put a plane in the back.

John: Yeah.

Chris: And John and I love this-

Frakes: Boom! Boom! Boom!

John: Now wait-

Chris: That's a beautiful-

John: Beautiful zhoom, but how was-

Frakes: Well I had to out Dean Devlin, Dean Devlin!

John: How was he in sight line for that, I just realized that?

Frakes: That's how the camera works!

Chris: They saw him, they 're up high!

John: That's a great shot by the way, look at that eye. Just one eye peeking over it's a great shot, it's beautifully done.

Frakes: And there’s from Aloha Air, they're there, they're in the airport.

John: Yeah, it's amazing if you tightly constrain your shot how much business you can put through it.

Frakes: Given the number of extras we’re allowed.

John: Our 20 extras turn into 40. “Now take off the stewardess uniform! Now put on a skirt! Now walk through again!” Yeah.

Frakes: “Change luggage! Another ticket!”

John: And that's- by the way, a great bit there that Beth does, just deciding to poke out while he's making the phone call. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: She's really working on being a Doctor Who companion in this episode, she's really working the cute-

Chris: And there's the great Gerald Downey.

Frakes: Gerald Downey.

Chris: Who is not my brother!

Frakes: Another recurring member of the family.

Chris: But I feel a member of my TV family, certainly.

John: Yes, it broke our scheduling that we were not able to get both FBI agents. But we did establish that he was off doing- that he was doing very well.

Chris: Yes, doing well.

John: And it really started from throwaway joke in the first season-

Frakes: Oh he had the pentagon job, the pentagon translating job?

John: Yeah he was doing-

Chris: Doing krav maga in Quantico.

[Laughter]

Chris: Which is an Israeli martial art.

John: We did- first season we wanted to start establishing the bigger world in the Leverage universe, and those guys happened to be the first two. And we just loved the actors so much that we started feeling bad for the characters. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: So we made the plot point that they start doing better every time we interact with them.

Chris: I think we kind of talked about in the arc of the overall series, every time the Leverage team brings them in and sort of hands these bumbling FBI agents a collar, that they move up the ranks until the final episode you see them being sworn in as director of the FBI.

Frakes: What about your buddy Michael Mahon, you gonna give him some love?

Chris: Oh let me give some love to Michael Mahon. I cast him on King of Queens - twice - as sort of an oily lawyer businessman.

Frakes: Oddly enough, something we use around here!

[Laughter]

John: That is in the Leverage wheelhouse.

Chris: And I knew in conceiving this character of the fixer lawyer that he would be perfect, and he was.

John: This, by the way, was so old school and one of the fun things about doing this show is we are taking absolutely Mission Impossible old school, and take parts of the conversation and cut them together. 

Chris: Yes.

John: Which you can do fairly seamlessly with electronic technology now-

Chris: Yeah we're not taking any liberties with technology like that.

John: No. Yeah, it's just fun, it really is, there is no difference between this and some dude cutting up reel to reel in Mission Impossible.

Frakes: What has she got? Bam! Recorded the whole thing.

John: Yeah. Exactly. No problem, great little mini gloat there. This was the cut, what are we gonna do, how are we gonna do it, and we bounced.

Frakes: And you do it.

John: Yeah.

Frakes: Did get us through this exposition of Act 1.

Chris: And there you go, and we're gonna set up-

John: And there's our-

Frakes: Our UPM.

Chris: Our UPM.

John: UPM, James Scura. 

Chris: Who is known as the-

Frakes: The Frenchman!

Chris: Yeah, I think the Frenchman.

John: He's the Frenchman.

Frakes: He's the assassin.

Chris: Long-haired bearded guy.

John: Now he is the assassin this episode, he is married to Kari Whurer-

Chris: Yes.

John: Who is the assassin in the other-

Chris: The Reunion Job.

John: The Reunion Job! so in our heads they're like a very bad Mr. and Mrs. Smith. 

[Laughter]

John: In the Leverage-verse they're the kind of B-level assassins that always try to get each other jobs. The Leverage-verse is a cruel place.

Frakes: Never too soon to do the 360!

John: Never too soon.

Chris: And this is a great 360.

John: I'd like to- oh and if you're playing the Leverage RPG, I'd like to use both those characters, I'd like to say. She's great as the groupie in this and it's fun, another thing that she could not have done in the first season, but we've established: Parker can do the short con. She's gotten those skills. She can't do the long con. You know, but Aldis in theory can do the long con, but he always goes over the top- pardon me: Hardison always goes over the top. And Eliot’s the next best.

Frakes: She knows a bar!

Chris: Knows a bar right near her place. And here we land on: boom!

John: Yeah right there, nice timing on that turn and we popped to him. When a girl like that says she knows a bar? You go to the bar.

Frakes: Go to the bar, yeah.

John: You go to that bar, yeah. Nice shot through the- oh wow that is a pretty shot.

Chris: And some nice closing time music from Joe LoDuca, our composer.

John: Yeah, really nice. Then and- good drunk by Spencer Garrett.

Frakes: I gotta say he pulled it out, he really did.

Chris: He did.

John: Again, we talk on another episode-

Frakes: You're afraid of going full tar. But you can't go- gotta go full drunk.

John: Never be afraid of going full drunk. You know what a good thing to do if you're playing drunk, by the way? Is, as an actor, close your eyes and spin for 30 seconds, and then start the scene.

Frakes: Oh good technique.

John: That is- that really helps, good for your physicality.

Frakes: So you're one of those guys who pulls their nose hairs when they wanna cry, too?

John: No, if I were playing drunk I would just get drunk. I'm playing drunk now and I'm drunk. Oh this was a lot of fun, we've been wanting some stereography for ages.

Frakes: Now where does this come from? It's a color combo thing?

Chris: Well our research showed a lot of terrorist groups use- actually use photographs to send coded messages. When you decode the photograph it breaks down into language.

Frakes: When you break down the pixels?

John: Yes, when you break down the pixels, they break down to the binary code, the binary codes are different enough, as soon as there's a difference, it’s encryption.

Frakes: Oh look at Beth here!

John: She's great, digging in on this.

Chris: She's awesome here.

John: And I like them-

Frakes: Setting the con, rebuilding Nate's apartment.

John: Yeah exactly. First time we’re in Nate's bedroom. I don't know why there's a praying mantis in there. 

[Laughter]

John: It's really disturbing, I'm not gonna lie to you.

Frakes: I gotta say, there's not just one praying mantis as you recall. There's a callback.

John: Yeah, and take the picture, always take the picture. And yeah, you can see the pictures in- the books in theory that are on his shelf.

Frakes: Never been done before.

Chris: No, dosing the glass? First time.

John: Just the little roll, that was a nice shot.

Chris: Time tested.

John: And then play to the camera: I'm done, I'm done, and now we go. I like Gina in these black outfits.

Chris: Yeah.

John: I just noticed that we started putting her more in these black outfits this year and it was nice. Well it's black and black because now we have Nate in thief gear, it’s very iconic.

Chris: Yeah, and if I could be a little pretentious for a moment, and I'll indulge myself.

John: Please, go ahead.

Frakes: You gonna talk about the mise en scène? 

Chris: I'm gonna talk about the color scheme. 

John: Oh alright.

Chris: We talked about colors being important here and we kinda used red as the color of rage, which is our character’s- our bad guy's fatal flaw, so you'll see red play a lot in his scenes, and some of the other scenes.

John: That's actually- we talk about how different writers approach stuff, a lot of times Chris is the guy in the room who will ask like, “OK, what's this bad guys problem? What's his fatal flaw? What's his emotion? What's the hook?” Everyone writes from different places.

Chris: This guy has a temper, and that's his weakness.

John: And sometimes it just-

Frakes: I didn't think that was too pretentious.

Chris: Thank you!

John: No, and it wasn't too pretentious at all. Great makeup! Great makeup by the makeup department here, fantastic. The little bit of blue there, the marks on the neck. That's an act out.

Chris: That's an act out!

Frakes: You wanna come back and see what happened to Beth.

John: I would like to know, I would like to know. A little disturbing, I have to admit. I'm fond of Beth, so that's a little disturbing.

Chris: And Spencer's fantastic here, he is really just going through all of what you would do.

John: And we do our flashback here rather than later, no it's a nice bit of work. This was a complicated little episode.

Frakes: Different pieces.

John: Unlike most episodes where there's only one timeshift, there's three. There's the shift forward in the set up, there's the shift back in this exposition, and at the end there's the standard flashbacks.

Chris: Well you had to flashback here because you wanted the audience- you didn't want the audience thinking she's actually dead for very long. And you knew that they were gonna key into that.

John: Also making sure like, well why wouldn't he check her pulse? Well-

Chris: He did!

John: We’re making sure he can't.

Frakes: He did that's why she put the piece of leather on her wrist.

Chris: And now who do you call? And this is the question guys ask each other. Who are you gonna call in this situation?

John: Your lawyer! Gotta call your lawyer.

Frakes: You got your guy, right I've got a guy. Gotta set that call.

John: I will also say, to a great degree, this is why you wrote the episode. 

[Laughter]

Frakes: For these two doing this?

John: You wrote the episode so the boys could be cops.

Chris: The B story in this was an homage to Cops.

Frakes: Bad boys, bad boys.

Chris: Bad boys, bad boys, playing in our heads.

John: Don't sing it! If you sing it we have to pay.

Frakes: Boy did they want to sing it in this scene, though.

Chris: Oh they wanted to.

John: I know, Jesus. People don't know - that's fifty grand, boom.

Chris: And that's a beautiful shot right there. 

John: The mirror shot? Really nice.

Chris: As we find her in the bed, and then find him looking at himself in the mirror. Oh that’s great.

John: Now I’d do a cop show with the two of them, just two surly Boston cops? Could do 13 episodes. We should do that show when we’re in the off season.

Frakes: And no time in the hair department!

John: Cause he's in the cap.

Frakes: Hats go on.

John: Hats go on. There you go. Yeah, we could do that in the hiatus show, we just do the cop show.

Chris: Yeah, and this scene here- we had, I guess, a strep throat outbreak during this episode. 

John: Yes that’s right!

Chris: And there were a couple of things we didn't get to, and I believe this was shot a couple episodes later, really late at night, like three in the morning, and they did a great job.

John: Yeah, no, and just-

Chris: And I love them putting the hats on!

John: The hats, both turning.

Chris: And we’re off.

John: And it’s interesting, because they still always play the hostility cause they annoy each other.

Frakes: They can barely stand to be in the same room, but they're fantastic together.

John: But the physical mirror is one of those giveaways. There's a great bit in The Underground Job where he comes in for the high five and Eliot's annoyed and he goes, “For morale!” Which is a call back to when they were in the woods, and Chris actually has Eliot break into a smile, you know? They’re not- oh that's great. “Next time you can get a firetruck!”

Chris: I think I wrote that on set, I think that was a replacement.

Frakes: I think you did write that on set.

John: You know what, that's like in Inside where he's like, “That's fantastic, you’re great, can we get out of here?”

Chris: Yeah, yeah, I think that was exactly it.

John: The mocking tone is flawless. And strategizing, these are two people at the top of their game trying to figure out exactly how to handle something.

Chris: It was nice to put the two of them together, you know, kind of reminiscing. It was a nice little kind of romantic beat, here.

John: Yeah, they do have a shared history, that's what originally drew them together, you know.

Chris: Yeah.

Frakes: That's sorta what's hanging over both these characters heads, is their shared history?

John: Yeah, and then in the end of the season it collides.

Chris: But here she's sending him off.

John: Yeah, and she'll always be better at the con. She's always giving him little confidence moments, little confidence beats and Gina does a lot of that with physicality that's not in the script. Great encountering bureaucracy moment here.

Frakes: And this is a funny scene, actually.

Chris: And they did a great job of just underplaying the debate between the two of them.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Just throwing it away.

John: Just the-

Chris: The harried prosecutor.

John: Eliot, once again, not happy with the lack of prep Hardison has done, Hardison, once again, overestimating his ability to pull off the con on the fly.

Chris: This is just them, you know-

John: Bickering!

Chris: Improving bullshit. 

Frakes: This is Blake, whose wedding Tim had just been at.

John: Oh that's right!

Frakes: She was fabulous as a lawyer.

Chris: She was great.

John: And they're out. See we've done, we've- oh and now.

Frakes: Oh no, not the convict.

John: If you’re a young writer remember, the much better solution to we screwed up is we succeeded too well.

Chris: We succeeded too well, we convinced them so well that we now have to take a prisoner back with us.

John: There's really no way to go wrong with we succeeded too well.

Frakes: Also, we see the scene doesn't seem too long cause it has the second beat.

John: Yeah that's right, you'd be out by now, you'd be in the car.

Frakes: “Idiot, now we gotta take this guy to the car with us!”

John: And he winds up being a clue path, by the way. Because he's at the same grand jury. 

Chris: Yes.

John: It’s actually- this all hangs together pretty beautifully, I gotta say.

Chris: And now here we go, you've found the dead girl in the bed, your substitute lawyer is here.

John: And your lawyer with the gloves, as one has!

Chris: When you’re the fixer lawyer, you have them.

John: You have gloves!

Chris: Yes. And by the way, there’s no-

Frakes: He's been in messy situations before.

John: He's got a wood chipper.

Chris: By the way, I went to law school; there's no class in fixer law.

John: Really?

Chris: I wish there was.

John: Yeah, you would have gone into that instead of the white collar defense law that you were into?

Chris: I would have gone into that. I would have gone into fixer law, that's much more interesting. 

John: Isn't that close, though?

Chris: Oh well, not with rubber gloves.

[Laughter]

John: Oh, worst client you ever had? Worst client. I don't think you've said it on the DVD.

Chris: Oh, well, I think it was the guy that looted the trust funds of Holocaust survivors.

John: Wow!

Frakes: Ohhh.

Chris: And he was actually a lawyer, too.

John: Yeah, wow.

Frakes: Here we go, here's the beginning of our cop sequence.

Chris: Oh I love this, this is my wife's favorite scene in the whole episode. 

[Laughter]

Chris: She goes, “That guy in the cage, where did you get that guy?”

Frakes: Well I got him going, too! I said, “You can't do enough, try to get into this scene with these guys.” Remember when we were shooting this? I said, “Do anything you can to get into this scene, because they will not let you,” and he said, “Are you sure?” I said, “I promise you.”

Chris: ‘Just try, do everything you can.’

John: You never have to worry on a Frakes episode with him getting somebody to underplay something, that's not- why are there so many praying mantises?! Alright the Irish whiskey just kicked in, I need a little bit more. I love the realization, the head snap that she does here. I adore- “Oh, what the hell?”

[Laughter]

John: Zero to Parker. In .5 seconds with Nate calling audibles.

Frakes: Yeah, and of course we've all got one of these.

Chris: Of course, it's Leverage! You don't have one of these?

John: And of course she does, yeah. Why wouldn’t she?

Frakes: I could use it. This one fits!

John: We never explain that.

Chris: And by the way, it’ll set up a locked off comedy frame, like we talked about in the previous episode.

John: Yes, exactly. Can't go wrong with that. And now they got the call.

Frakes: I had a field day with these guys.

John: Oh yeah.

Chris: What was nice was that Eliot gave Hardison shit for over investing them, and now we can switch it, now all of a sudden Eliot’s the one over invested.

Frakes: Yeah.

John: Eliot has his own soft spots that he’s-

Frakes: Kids! You don't put kids in jeopardy around him.

Chris: You don’t put kids in jeopardy.

John: And that's one of the tricks on the show is making sure- because there's a great saying that every private eye book is a private I - and I'm pointing at myself - book. So it’s very easy to write these characters to be very cool, but without flaws. And so it's very important to constantly remind- each one has their own specific set of flaws that run, that throw a spanner into the works.

Chris: Oh how fun was this?

Frakes: Really fun.

John: Oh guys, how much time did you spend on the cops pastiche, guys? How much money did you spend on this? Two characters?

Frakes: Boom!

Chris: Shot pretty quickly, too, because it’s all handheld.

Frakes: Two characters, two handhelds.

John: These characters are in the plot, how? They're related to the main storyline, how?

Frakes: Derek Sitter!

John: You're not answering any of these questions, are you?

Chris: Derek Sitter and Erin McGarry.

Frakes: They're in the plot because we stopped to save them!

John: Alright, alright, it's a gimme, I'll give it to you.

Chris: And they went for it, too.

John: The dude with the bat.

Chris: Derek especially got thrown into the deep end.

Frakes: His feet got ripped up, his hands. There was real blood by the end of this scene.

Chris: That was real blood, and he was like in character.

John: Yeah. “Sit your ass on the bumper.” That's great; just he puts on the dad voice right there. Just, “I have had enough of this shit.”

[Laughter]

Chris: And there's always the moment in the episode of Cops where it all seems to be calmed down, but there's some moment of disrespect, and the guy jumps back in.

Frakes: “Don’t you talk about my woman!”

John: Oh and down!

Frakes: That's where the blood came!

John: Big takedown by Aldis Hodge, there you go. I love also, by the way, this is plainly in the bartender's view, he's just used to this. He works-

Chris: Locked off comedy frame folks!

[Laughter]

John: There she goes! And by the way, how lucky are we to have an actress like Beth Riesgraf who will get her as in that harness and do that for us? That's not a stunt girl.

Frakes: Here's a cue!

Chris: How great is he?

John: Look at his face light up, there you go, and the hand shake- the awkward handshake. Yeah, that bartender works there, that bartender knows what's going on.

Chris: He knows the deal.

John: Yeah well cause Cora told him

Frakes: He knows who lives upstairs.

John: Exactly, they saved the bar. That's also tied into my theory of the bar where Fitzy, the old guy at the end of the bar, was a contract killer for the Irish mob back in the 50s, and now he kinda just keeps everything calm here. 

[Laughter]

John: He seems innocuous, but you watch, he's got dead eyes. 

Chris: Oh, but I'm so glad we were able to keep this storyline alive.

Frakes: With Downey?

Chris: Of his flirtation with her, and he’s just so sweet.

John: This is one of the frustrating things about making television, real human beings are attached to roles. And so availabilities! You know, budgets, schedules. You know, we wanted to bring Tara back this year and Jeri got another show and couldn't come back. You know, it always makes you happy when you can kinda bend reality to fit the show.

Frakes: See that look on Downey's face? That's something everyone feels when they finish playing a scene with Beth.

John: They always have.

Frakes: It is.

John: She's a blithe spirit.

Chris: And this is great, this is a great shot right here in the window. This is done- this is a great special effects shot, look at that.

John: Yeah we put the glare in, right.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And also the reflection, that reflection is CG, too, if I’m correct.

Chris: Now the bat he's carrying was once a dog.

John: Yes, originally it was a dog.

Frakes: Budget eliminated the dog and the trainer and the amount of hours we could use them.

John: Turns out dogs are ridiculously expensive.

Chris: It’s crazy, I think dogs- I learned that dogs are more expensive than trains.

John: Yes.

Chris: Trains, apparently dirt cheap in Portland. Dogs? Ridiculously expensive.

John: Nice push in on that to help set up in a static shot that things are changing, that's a nice choice.

Chris: Oh I love this, this is great. And this is the two of them going mano y mano.

Frakes: This is a great scene, this is a Godfather scene, or a Goodfellas scene.

John: Yes, yeah. This is- Tim really enjoys these too.

Frakes: He also loves when a good actor shows up. He loves to go toe to toe with a good one.

John: This was like in Double Blind when O’Keefe-

Chris: Michael O’Keefe?

John: Michael O’Keefe came in.

Frakes: And the three hander you had at the end of the season.

John: Yeah, you can’t get him out of these scenes, cause actors- and they tend to shoot these- they want to go long, they wind up doing the whole scene a couple times, as long as you set up to get the coverage. We’re very lucky.

Chris: It's a great objective, I mean he's gotta convince a guy that he killed somebody that he doesn't remember.

John: Yeah, I mean prosecutors in the south do this all the time.

[Laughter]

John: Well- the letters, the emails, go to the website!

Chris: Oh. “Close your eyes.”

John: What's that? Oh, “Close your eyes.”

Chris: I love “Close your eyes.”

John: What I love is he's trying to get him to remember and what he's doing is hypnotizing him. He's basically planting these memories into place.

Chris: He’s planting memories.

Frakes: He’s closing the blinds.

Chris: Yes, and I have to give Tim credit because he said, “I wish there was a little something more in this scene where I'm doing something to put it in his head.” And I added it later and it really worked well.

John: The choking?

Chris: I added the just closing your eyes and putting yourself back in the scene. Because we talk about the unreliability of memory all the time.

John: All the time, yeah. A lot of times when we’re talking about credit and who did what, and who should get the credit for stuff they show. 

[Laughter]

Chris: Unreliability.

John: Memory is unreliable, it’s really- that's why it's safer to default to us. Spencer's great, great way to play this in the closeup.

Frakes: Also a man comfortable with a glass in his hands.

Chris: Here we go, look at this shot! How did we- how many blocks was that?

Frakes: That was four- three blocks.

John: Three blocks on a zhoom.

Chris: That’s great.

Frakes: Three piece, three piece ninja.

John: Three piece ninja.

Frakes: Look at this guy, lost his shoe.

Chris: Hit him with the bat, and wait for the locked off frame- there!

[Laughter]

John: Oh nothing funnier than being taken out of a locked off frame.

Frakes: That's twice in this episode.

John: This was- I remember actually this- when you were writing this, you were in the- you were in the office, the writers room is right next to the office Chris and I share, because we’re a cable show, and we were breaking something else and you came in and you did not have the linkage.

Chris: I needed the linkage.

John: And we wanted- this was one of the ones where we needed to tie it in. And this is why you have a writers room, cause you never know when someone's gonna come up with- oh you know, this is how to do it. It's good to have ten brains. And again you can do a show with these two as FBI agents. We’re just oh so lucky.

Frakes: Blessed.

John: Yup.

Frakes: This is a long shot.

Chris: That is a long shot, right into the back room.

Frakes: From the exterior door, through the bathroom area, and back room.

John: I think we said it- I had fought building this set. I did not want to build this set; I thought we would never be back there. And the number of great long shots we've had moving back and forth between those sets? It's well worth it, worth it.

Chris: Well Jonathan, it was in the bar episode.

John: Yeah, it was in Bottle Job, we built it.

Chris: That was in your job.