Michael Paul Chan, the man behind everyone’s favorite tech-wizard and veteran cop, took some time out of his season four filming schedule to chat with us about how season four is going for him, and tonight’s Tao-centric episode of Major Crimes.
Major CrimesTV: How is it going so far for season four?
Michael Paul Chan: To be honest this is my best season ever; physically, and mentally, it’s really going good for me. This season for some reason we just, there is just such a connection, with all of us, it’s really cool. I think knowing what kind of a show we were, you know like being with The Closer for seven years, we kept putting the time and effort into this. And we had to accept that this was a brand new show, and for me for this season it just seems kind of right in sync.
MCTV: James Duff has said that the theme for the season is “courage”. Does that theme affect Tao at all?
MPC: It hits me full-force in (tonight’s episode). But I can’t say anything more than that about it.
MCTV: Last season it was revealed Tao had a side job as a consultant on a familiar-sounding cop show, Badge of Justice – are we going to continue to see any of that this season?
MPC: That I don’t know, we haven’t touched on it yet. It was fun to play with, but it seems that that was all last year and we’ve kinda moved on because of all the things that we deal with this season.
But I’ve gotten the heads up that James always likes to, he’s into numbers and I’m into numbers, so he always says, get ready for number eight! Eight is a good luck number. It’s such a fu
nny premise, but it’ll be fun because it’s a whole other thing to deal with.
MCTV: Tao is often the rock for the team, who holds things together. Does the pressure of that role ever get to him?
MPC: In (tonight’s episode) something happens and you see the vulnerable side of him, and hopefully we’ll get to deal with that a little bit more. Because something happens to him.
MCTV: What else can you tell us about this season? 
MPC: More of his cop-side is coming out, you know because he’s always been the cool techy nerd, so more of his cop-side is coming out. He sees a little harder-edged this season, which has been lots of fun to do.
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Major Crimes airs tonight at 9pm/8c on TNT.