OK, everybody who doesn't know what happens to Belgian-born action star Jean-Claude Van Damme when he guest-stars on the Monday, Feb. 9, episode of NBC's "Las Vegas" -- and your skill at avoiding NBC promos is to be admired -- is urged now to go get a sandwich or read a "Survivor" recap or something. NBC's not shy about the plot twist -- so here goes.

"He's funny," says series creator Gary Scott Thompson of Van Damme. "He has a sense of humor about himself -- and we kill him! I don't think I'm giving anything away that the promos don't give away. We're going to have to put a disclaimer in, 'Jean-Claude Van Damme was not killed during this episode.'"

The episode is called "Die Fast, Die Furious," which is the name of the fictional movie Van Damme is shooting at the show's Montecito Casino (and a take-off on the name of the real movie "The Fast and the Furious," which Thompson wrote).

Van Damme's apparent demise leaves casino security experts Ed Deline (James Caan) and Danny McCoy (Josh Duhamel) scrambling to figure out what happened.

Looking tanned and fit at 43 (he says he runs into the equally buff Caan at a gym in Santa Monica), Van Damme plays himself on "Las Vegas," as he also did in a 1996 post-Super Bowl episode of "Friends." Although the character has the same name, Van Damme insists that it's really fiction.

"I play a guy who is a movie star," he says, "[who says] 'Doesn't work!' and 'I cannot do this!' This guy has no patience. He goes to his chair, demanding water. I hate that stuff. This is what I am, here, normal. Maybe they thought it was me, but I'm not like that, really. I'm very patient in my job, most days, very focused.

"When I come to do this, I see people having fun on the set, but me, since I came from that old school, I have a hard time ... it's not that I don't want to create fun, I want to do my job."

In one scene, Van Damme has to swing at playful kick at Duhamel.

"I was not concerned," Van Damme says. "I knew I would not touch him. It was cool."

"He missed me by that much," Duhamel says, holding his thumb and index finger about an inch apart. "The cool thing is, he knows how close he can do. 'Sorry, I may have come a little close on that one.'"

Van Damme is only one of several high-profile guest-stars on the freshman action-drama, including Alec Baldwin, who was just nominated for a best supporting actor Academy Award for his role in "The Cooler."

"Alec was the man!" says James Lesure, who plays casino valet Mike Cannon. "I was impressed by his professionalism. This dude has been in the business for years. He came in here, he's prepared, thorough and ready to work. That's inspiring to me."

"He set an example for everybody," says Duhamel, star of the current film "Win a Date With Tad Hamilton."

Thompson concurs. "They all had to step it up to keep up with Alec," he says. "He was just chewing up the scenery. Anytime we have one of those people come on, someone like that, they're forced to raise their performance to another level."

According to Thompson, he now has to turn prospective guest stars away.

"We get phone calls every day from people who want to be on the show, and there's no room for them. If we have a really great one, though, we'll find a way to get them in. Donald Trump, the other night, told me he wanted to be on the show, and I'm like, 'OK, fine, we'll figure it out.' Like Paris Hilton, when she wanted to do it, we said, 'Fine, we'll figure out how to get you on.'"

The ability of Thompson and his fellow writers and producers to adapt quickly was tested earlier this season, when Duhamel suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon while playing basketball. The injury and the resultant weeks on crutches and then a cane were incorporated into the show by having Danny recover from a bullet wound.

"His agent called and said, 'Gary, we have a problem,'" Thompson recalls. "He was on his way to the doctor. Then Josh called, very upset, and said, 'Gary, I think I did something horrible.'"

As soon as the extent of Duhamel's injury was known, Thompson shuffled the production schedule and called a meeting of the writers.

"By the time he went into surgery the next morning," he says, "we had already written in the episode what was going to happen. We wrote him getting shot, then we wrote the denouement of the hospital where everybody comes to see him."

Walking with and without a cane in mid-January, Duhamel says, "It's healing quickly. I want to get back to walking and running again."