Transcript of the UPN live chat 29-10-03 with Executive Producer David Greenwalt and CIA Technical Consultant Bazzel Baz. Transcript from UPN.com. Reprinted without permission. © UPN 2003.

UPN Chat Host: Hey guys! Thanks for being here today. Are you ready to take some questions?

David Greenwalt: Yes, I'm very excited to be here! Can't wait to hear what people who have seen the show think about it and I'm thrilled and excited to be here.

Bazzel Baz: It's a pleasure to be here and just add some valuable credibility to David's show. It's a great show and I'm glad our viewers are enjoying it.

buffyfan10: David how is the change from working on buffy the vampire slayer to your on show going? (by the way love the show so far!)
David Greenwalt: Thank you! This is not my own show, I should be very clear that it was created by Silvio Jorta and Gina Matthews and Grant Scherbo produced the pilot and I was lucky enough to come along to run the show which was in great shap when I got here with a terriffic look and feel and cast.

Especially Chris Gorham and it's different from Buffy because of the incredibly attractive and talented Joss Whedon is not here to watch my back.

I miss him like a woman!

guitarist101: So what's it like being on the show with Chris?
David Greenwalt: It's terriffic. What one hopes for is an actor who can give you the funny and the sad and the heart. Chris does all three effortlessly. Consult your history books for the early days of Tom Hanks and watch where this boy will go.

I did not get old, fat and rich by hitching my wagon to untalented people.

chiafrog: How far can they really take Jake?
David Greenwalt: The great thing about Jake, and it's not unlike Buffy in this, is that you can go from silliness to heartbreak to prat fall to tragedy and in this case we get to blame the government. We will take Jake through many adventures. Some will be PG rated and some will be more R rated. In fact, an R rated one is coming very soon.

stephanie: Mr. Baz, do you have to have an extensive knowledge of computers and technology in order to do what you do?
Bazzel Baz: I don't know. I think extensive is relative. I mean, I'm certainly not a computer geek and I don't always have the answer, but I certainly know where to go get the answer.

Whether I convey that via computer, paper or carrier pigeon it doesn't matter as long as it can get to David in time to make whatever adjustments he can for the show.

David Greenwalt: Baz is the man we all wish we were.

Bazzel Baz: *laughs*

David Greenwalt: He tells me when the show's gone too far afield and sometimes I even listen! I'll give you this clue: an enhanced human being is not that far from reality

Jake_tenpointO: Then is Jake 2.0 based on a real character?
David Greenwalt: *laughs* Jake 2.0 grows out of many, many things. The obvious ones are Spiderman and the Six Million Dollar Man -- are they real characters? -- Jake also grows out of something a little deeper in our psyches and that is the secret wish we all hold that we are something more than we appear. No, there's no real guy with a hundred million computers in him.

MySpoonIsTooBig: What is up with the sudden new image of Jake 2.0? This week's episode seems more sleek than usual! And just what does an executive producer do anyway?
David Greenwalt:An executive producer, while wildly overpaid and underworked, still must deal with networks, studios and a hundred people's opinions everytime said executive producer goes to the bathroom.

In her heart, an executive producer is really a writer and is responsible for making the stories good.

The new, sleek look is a blatant attempt to get the damn kids in. By God, I hope it works!

Some of it is also attributable to the very talent Leslie Libman who directed tonight's episode and took us one step further in the stylin' ways.

Jahadeem: Will Jim Brynes be back for more appearances?
David Greenwalt: The answer is: you betcha!

And he'll be accompanied by various other higher ups in the NSA and the netherworld of the government. These people will not have Jake's best interests at heart. Some of them would like to see him locked up in a cage, five miles beneath the Rocky mountains. I have a question for Baz -- do they really have a cage five miles beneath the Rockies?

Bazzel Baz: I think it's actually six miles.

MySpoonIsTooBig: Why is a CIA consultant involved with a show about the NSA?
David Greenwalt: *laughs*

Bazzel Baz: Because the executive producer of Jake 2.0 realizes that the CIA actually has its act together and knows more about anything else that goes on in the NSA, the FBI, the government and Osama Bin Laden's bathroom.

David, you might be able to answer that a bit better than me.

David Greenwalt: I thought Baz was a homeless guy. I had no idea he was working here. We just feed him every once in a while!

Bazzel Baz: *laughs*

You_Only_Live_Twice: Any of the gadgets in the show real gadgets they use at the NSA?
David Greenwalt: We make 'em up and we hope they look real! I don't believe there's a "JMD" which is our Jake Monitoring Device that Diane uses to track Jake and I don't believe there's a large holographic simulation room featured in the "Training Day" episode. But I hope and I trust that there's a s***load of computers and satellites and able bodied women and men keeping a watchful eye on our enemies.

Bazzel Baz: Jake 2.0 is not that far off in reference to tracking.

There are capabilities which are classified which allow us to certainly to keep track of individuals anywhere on the face of the planet if we choose to use them.

TaraLJC: Why was Jake's roommate, played by Matt Czuchry, written out? Any chance we'll ever see Darin again as a guest star?
David Greenwalt: We all miss Darin who was played to perfection by Matt Czuchry. We needed to isolate Jake from the real "comfortable" world he'd known before his accident and we felt the best way to do that was to have his roomate transferred to Hawaii and have Jake move to a new apartment.

We would love to see Matt return in a future episode.

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