Hello to all –

My name is Mike McCafferty, I play a small role on the Invisible Man and after every new episode I try to talk a little about that episode. It is something that has been dubbed: "Eberts’ Files". Welcome.

I’ll address TTPoC in a minute but let me talk about what happened last week for a moment.

It’s amazing how wonderfully trivial your problems can seem in a matter of minutes. On Monday I wrote in this column the uncertainty of the third season of The Invisible Man and asked for your help to insure its return. At the time it was the biggest issue in my life and filled my days with a lot of worrying and anxiety. As the saying goes "What a difference a day makes".

On Tuesday we were all reminded of how lucky we are to be alive and how blessed we are to live in a country like The United States of America. Instantly, everything in my life that seemed a problem shrank to infinitesimal proportions in light of everything that I had to be thankful for. The images of the horror in New York City will always burn in my mind and I would gladly trade anything I have to erase that day.

Our freedom has and will always carry a steep price. The tears we shed for those we lost and the resolve to find those who did this are testaments to the strength of our country.

Ultimately life continues. The best thing we can do to honor those victims of terrorism is to first mourn them, then continue with our lives. So in remembrance of them and defiance of terrorists, let’s do our share by bravely marching on.

Which I guess brings us to The Three Phases of Claire! If there was any episode I could pick that could lift spirits, I think TTPoC is the one. This one had it all, action, intrigue, humor Augustin Gaither and QSM along with phase 3 craziness! All that and some serious character interactions (and you know what I mean) and I think we hit a homerun.

So let’s measure the distance of that homer…

First, a well deserved chance for Shannon Kenny to show her acting ‘chops’. This episode was sort of her TIoBE and BK for myself and Darien. In all three episodes, the week before we shot that actor's ‘big episode’ the rest of us would offer encouragement to the person. During the actual week of shooting, there was an unspoken rule of helping each person and giving them the space to act. We stood aside and let Shannon take the stage with amazing results. Well done, SK!

The bridge that Shannon was on was about 50 feet off the ground! It’s a the navy ship yard and the Coronado Bridge is in the background.

Gaither returns! You knew we would just let him wallow down there in that cell for long. Writer Dean Orion continues to explore this ticking time bomb of a character as he first creates then solves the problem. Director Martin Wood cleverly added a bit of menace to Armin Shimmerman’s role. Somehow I think they’re leading us to something…

It is not scripted that The Official is playing gameboy. Continuing with my infatuation with props, I asked Josh Props to get us a gameboy after seeing the crew play with them during breaks. The game actually work and I believe it was Tony Hawk’s pro skating. Eddie had absolutely no idea how to play it and contented himself with the skateboarder simply going up and down the tube (which is why he’s saying ‘up!’) with no tricks. I absolutely loved watching him play. BTW for me it’s Gameboy advanced or nothing!

I was so thrilled to actually be able to work with Armin Shimmerman this episode. Mr. Shimmerman is a classy man who has been around the acting block many, many times. Of course all I wanted to know about was Deep Space Nine trivia. I had told him in the previous episode that he’d have to tell me some inside stuff about DS9 next time he came around. The first thing he did when we sat down on set was to turn to me and say " What can I tell you about DS9?" I didn’t need to be paid that episode, the five hours we spent chatting about DS9 was worth more than any paycheck. At one point as Armin was dishing dirt about the show he looked at me and said "I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, I’ve never told this to anyone". I don’t know either, but the secrets remain safe with one happy trekker.

I pointed out to Jonathan Glassner, Exec producer that Eberts shouldn’t be afraid to give a shot as he drew blood from Adam Reese in JA. Jonathan agreed and told me to cut the line. On set I improvised the following line: "Well, it’s been a while since I’ve given a potentially life saving shot to a close personal friend….make a fist, Doctor…" It then made sense that I would be too shaky to administer the shot, prompting Darien to take over. Ultimately the line was cut down to its original form and all that was for naught.

I’m not sure if any body beside me got the ‘Wizard of Oz’ reference at the end with The Keeper waking up and ‘having the strangest dream and you were all there’. In the script the Keeper also mentions Eberts at the end but Shannon omitted it because she hadn’t seen me in the dream. Later when I told her it was from "The Wizard of Oz" she saw the connection.

A little O/T; boy, wasn’t that episode of "The Chronicle" great on Saturday? I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something really added to it ;-)

Well, that’s will do it for me. We’ve postponed "Exposed" for a while and I think that it’s content might have something to do with it. But I tell you what: I’ll try to put together a chat session sometime this week or next and see who else I can corral into stopping by! Just the tonic for a long and hard week. Check the I-maniacs website (http://www.geocities.com/imanfanclub/main.html) for date and time (heh, heh, they don’t even know I’m doing this yet!!!)

Take care,

Mike