On the Set: Episode 406

I know it says episode 4005 on my production notebook there. That's its production number because we shot a couple of episodes out of order. The scripts were written in order and will air in order, but they were shot out of sequence due to the availability of Allison Scagliotti for our Warehouse 13 crossover.

Co-executive producer Ron Milbauer here. So, apparently part of my job (other than making stuff up & writing it down, helping other people make stuff up and write it down, and sitting around with my fellow co-executive producers, waiting for our executive producers to die so that we can finally rule) is to occasionally go to the place where we film the show and hang out during the production of an episode. Turns out, we film this show in an entirely different country. I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere in Norway.

Here’s how it works: They put me in a big black car, put me on a plane, (first class, ‘cause that’s how I roll. Well, that’s how I roll when someone else is contractually obligated to pay for it) pick me up in another big black car, take me to my hotel, wait for me to sleep for a while, and then drive me to the set.

My drive from the airport into the quaint little Norwegian village of “Vancouver”.

The first thing I realized is that the Norwegian people speak remarkably good English, only they tend to mispronounce certain words, like “about” (sounds like “ a boot”) and “sorry” (I can’t figure out how to write this one phonetically, but trust me, it sounds weird). They also have bizarre local customs like “politeness” and “hockey”.

My first experience on set was making the mistake of walking by a couple of guys testing out some pyrotechnic gag. My mind immediately flashed forward to a scene of me being intimately fondled by airport security in a repeat performance of Jaime’s experience.

It’s not so much the cupping and groping I’m worried about here, it’s the ridicule I’ll receive from my fellow writers back in L.A. for lack of originality. Luckily, either I didn’t get enough magnesium powder on my computer bag to trigger the alarms, or airport security was having an off day.

A lot of other really interesting stuff happened that I can’t tell you about without revealing some major spoilers, so here are some pictures instead: