Recently, I finished watching Season 2 of Burn Notice, which has quickly become one of my favorite programs. This is a rare show that is intelligently written, well-acted, action-packed and character-centered.
Main character Michael Weston (Jeffrey Donovan) was a US government spy… until he got fired. The titular “burn notice” is the spy’s equivalent of a pink slip. Fired spies can hardly troll Craigslist for new jobs, and so Weston finds himself dumped into his home city of Miami under the watchful eye of the Feds, forbidden to leave the city, accounts frozen, identity wiped. And so, Michael teams up with an old friend, retired Navy SEAL, Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell, who I enjoyed in his Xena days) and an ex-girlfriend/former IRA operative, Fiona Glenanne (Gabrielle Anwar), to run freelance operations for fast cash, acting as a souped up hybrid of a private investigator and vigilante.
The show is largely centered on the plight of Weston’s client week to week, and much of the character’s motivations are based on a golden-hearted drive to help the “little guy.” Much of the appeal of these stories lies in the clever and conniving spy tricks Weston uses the solve the cases, with a good dose of glamorous Miami nightlife and fast-paced action sequences. All the of the plots are smartly done, but what raises this show above the “job of the week” storytelling is the specific attention paid each episode to Weston’s ongoing quest to find out who issued his burn notice and to get his job back.
Season 2 finds this story developing with quite a bit of intrigue and several guest stars from the annuals of SF television. Michael finds himself unwillingly contracted to the employ of a rogue black ops group headed by mysterious managers. Weston’s new handler, Carla, played by Tricia Helfer (best known as the notorious Caprica Six), strings him along, playing him against her foes, keeping him always on the periphery of her latest operation; he finds a worthy foil in Victor (played by Michael Shanks, a favorite of mine from his days as Daniel Jackson on Stargate SG-1), a fellow operative within Carla’s organization who shows dubious allegiances.The show strikes a perfect balance between the stories of the weekly clients and Weston’s overarching plots, including not only his drive to fight the burn notice, but also his on-again-off-again relationship with Fiona and family drama with his brother and mother (Sharon Gless, who shows a much harder edge than her previous motherly role of Debbie Novotny, but we knew she had it in her after her turn as a psychopath on Nip/Tuck).
This show is a crowd pleaser that manages to be action-packed, smart and sexy in one go. No wonder there are so many holds for it at the library…