Day 4 -- Friday, April 19 If I've learned to expect anything on this show, it's to never expect anything. Apparently, Thursday's "Gotcha!" ending was a little lacking. I can understand that. How many times can one guy getcha? And so... New ending. Marv still tries his final death stunt. But now our hero, my character, Paul, has a little something up his sleeve. He exits the office when Marv is found dead and returns to report that he called the big boss, Mr. Cooper. Marv was "expected to fail" and his replacement is already on the way. This prompts Marv to get up off the floor and begin to call Cooper. But guess what? "Gotcha." Paul never made the call.

It's a nice ending for me and shows a little shift back in the power struggle. Our boy Paul has it goin' on. "Paul Palmer, huh?" Marv asks once he realizes he has been beaten at his own game. "Yep." Paul Palmer indeed.

And yet there is another Paul on the set. The saga continued today. We were rehearsing and he wasn't sure of one of his lines. It went something like this, "I'll take that to him... I'll show him that," and then he yelled to the script supervisor, who's job it is to help actors in a situation like this, "Is it 'I'll show him that'?"

She replied matter-of-factly, "I'll take that to him."

Paul replied not-so-matter-of-factly, "Just 'yes' or 'no' honey."

Meanwhile, Paul and I have had our run-ins, but I never thought there was anything real behind it, just a playful banter. Still, at one point today, I was trying to break up "the fight" between his character and the new office manager. I was standing behind Paul and as I did my dance around them, his elbow came flying back and hit me square in the chest. "Whoops," I thought, "he must have gotten a little carried away."

For the next run through the scene, I repositioned myself to the side of the fight to avoid the sternum attack. Though I was out of the frying pan, I suddenly found myself in the fire, as the same bony elbow swung out and hit me square between the legs. It worked. I backed away from the fight.

I finished the scene and then approached Jamie afterwards and spoke with him privately about the situation. "I can't break up the fight any more. I don't know what's going on but I don't want to stand there any more." And so now I yell at them to stop fighting from about five feet away, or as I like to call it, just over a swinging-elbow's distance away.

At one point during rehearsal, I approached Jamie with a "pitch," an idea for the last scene of the show, the one going through so much re-writing. As I gave my ideas and reasons to Jamie, Paul chimed in, "What? Are you re-writing this show?" Apparently Paul wasn't too happy with me offering suggestions. I wanted to tell him to speak louder but I did not.

It was later in the day when we were actually talking about something else that Paul chimed in, "I defend the writers all the way." His loyalty was about to be tested...

Go on to Day 5.

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