Hello everyone!

Well, this must be a surprise that I’m actually only three days late (just barely) for yet another installment of Eberts File. All I can say is that my one day a week shooting schedule has been totally thrown out the window these past two weeks and I’m really pressed for time (and sleep!) these days. But that of course does not matter for neither wind nor sleet nor dead of night will stop the file from reaching your eyeballs!

And now The Lesser Evil!

There’s nothing like a little bit of deception and paranoia to really liven up an episode. TLE finally answered a nagging question: if either agency is going to extort him for counter agent, why not try the high tech one? The answer is that while bad at times, the Agency and the Official still remain ‘The Lesser Evil’ compared to Chrysalis. Still, grass always seems a little greener on the other side.

And now, the ‘bits’!

* Idalis was involved in a minor traffic accident before the shooting. The result was the red eye (A recurring theme in I-man – see my file on Liberty and Larceny) that required a little bit of script tweaking to explain. Idalis was a real trooper to continue with the tough shooting schedule.

* The book I pass to the official in the opening is "The Art of War", by Sun Tzu. It details the strategy, deception and countermoves involved in warfare and in commanding your own troops. On one side of the page was the English, the other the Chinese characters. Eberts read from the Chinese side.

* Some of you may remember Stark as Simon Taruses from "ST:TNG"’s episode "The Drumhead".

* Stark’s office overlooks Balboa Park in San Diego. Cerberus’ headquarters were in downtown San Diego.

* Always nice when a show has continuity. At last we address some questions like the $10 million dollars. While the answer was vague, at least the episodes are referred to rather than simply stand-alone.

* The final scene featured many a retake of Eddie trying to say "Cerberus". He’d misspeak it, be corrected then misspeak it again. I don’t blame him, a couple of times he’d ask for the pronunciation, and the director would have to think for a moment.

* The ‘slapping five’ scene in route to the front porch between Vince and Paul was totally ad-libbed. They are amazing.

* I’ll have to go into my archive of scripts to discover if Stacey Meyer was in the script or simply a Vince Add-in. I think it’s in the script. R2, how could you!

* Craig Silverstein is the story Editor for I-man. What that means is that he takes the writers draft and gives it a sort of polishing. This accounts for Paul’s ‘stay out of this Charlie Brown’ line. Although I had to admit I was surprised that the production and Craig knew of my drama exploits.

* This also segues into the final scene. Originally Hobbes simply rails on about having to pay the $800 for the window. Paul and I talked about and agreed that the real indignity is that Eberts one-ups him with the computer program. My thought was that when the scene arrived later that day Paul would ad-lib some lines to that effect. Instead, about 20 minutes before the scene was to start shooting, new script pages from L.A. arrived. Evidentially, Paul Called Craig and convinced him to add a few more lines to increase the feud between Eberts and Hobbes.

* Eberts is at last certified as a computer expert. Some of you (Well maybe all of you) had a problem with my rapid search engine abilities in "Tiresias". While that doesn’t fully explain it, at least

*Well, that’s what I got for this week. Hey, did my transcript ever show up? What happened? Anyway, we’ve got a repeat next week followed by the last three episodes for season one. I think. But after the hiatus one week will seem like nothing! Then we unveil so many surprises for season two that we may pass out sedatives before each episode.

So as my eyes droop let me say that having visited a few other the other Bboards on sci-fi’s site recently, you’re still hands down the best fans around. Thank you for your politeness and passion. Both are appreciated.

And now, my bed time.

Mike