The Return of Burn Notice
Jul. 10th, 2008 01:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI love Burn Notice. It’s good bad summer television, with spies! explosions! hotness!
The spy is, or used to be, Michael Weston, who lost his spying job and really wants it back. The explosions are often caused by his ex-IRA girlfriend, Fiona, who is just as full of awesome as he is. And—well, Michael’s buddy Sam really doesn’t count as a hot person. But he’s a lot of fun and he helps them save people from gangsters and so forth, even though the feds planted him to keep an eye on Michael.
Most of the time his federal connection is ignored, which is just as well. I like the whole Three Musketeers thing Sam, Michael, and Fiona have going on, and dealing with the consequences of Sam being a fed would totally ruin that. I wish the Fed bit had never been included just because ignoring it, while preferable to otherwise, is inelegant, but that ship has sailed.
Speaking of ships: there’s lots of lovely unhealthy adorable Michael/Fiona to cover any pesky continuity problems. Often shows will start out strong with dysfunction and then smooth over the problems with cute (c.f.: Jack/Ianto), but Burn Notice keeps the dysfunction, the cute, and the kickass in Michael/Fiona.
I love the fact that they’re both so badass. If anything, Fiona’s past is even shadier than Michael’s, and they’re definitely both capable, competent, and ready and willing to walk into the teeth of danger.
The show kind of gracefully elides any bad things they might have done in the past (Fiona’s ex-IRA, so that could get pretty bad) and in the present they are righteous good vigilantes who snipe at each other and blow stuff up (but only when people deserve it!) and save the day.
Burn Notice has a sense of proportion about what entails saving the day. Quite frankly, saving the world on a weekly basis gets kind of dull—it’s just so repetitious—so the varying (and generally fairly small, although I think there’s a proverb to the effect that saving a life is like saving the world) stakes of Burn Notice episodes are a relief.
So really, the show is just unbelievably cool. I am filled with squee that it’s coming back, and I’ll finally get to see where the heck the feds took Michael in that truck, and then he and Fiona and Sam can go kick ass and take names again.
My wish list, very short:
Let Fee gain some weight. Last season you could have hung Christmas ornaments off her collarbones. She looks like a concentration camp victim.
Let her and Michael continue being incredible.
Let Sam continue being awesome. Don’t make him go all evil Fed on us.
Explosions! I want lots of them!
The spy is, or used to be, Michael Weston, who lost his spying job and really wants it back. The explosions are often caused by his ex-IRA girlfriend, Fiona, who is just as full of awesome as he is. And—well, Michael’s buddy Sam really doesn’t count as a hot person. But he’s a lot of fun and he helps them save people from gangsters and so forth, even though the feds planted him to keep an eye on Michael.
Most of the time his federal connection is ignored, which is just as well. I like the whole Three Musketeers thing Sam, Michael, and Fiona have going on, and dealing with the consequences of Sam being a fed would totally ruin that. I wish the Fed bit had never been included just because ignoring it, while preferable to otherwise, is inelegant, but that ship has sailed.
Speaking of ships: there’s lots of lovely unhealthy adorable Michael/Fiona to cover any pesky continuity problems. Often shows will start out strong with dysfunction and then smooth over the problems with cute (c.f.: Jack/Ianto), but Burn Notice keeps the dysfunction, the cute, and the kickass in Michael/Fiona.
I love the fact that they’re both so badass. If anything, Fiona’s past is even shadier than Michael’s, and they’re definitely both capable, competent, and ready and willing to walk into the teeth of danger.
The show kind of gracefully elides any bad things they might have done in the past (Fiona’s ex-IRA, so that could get pretty bad) and in the present they are righteous good vigilantes who snipe at each other and blow stuff up (but only when people deserve it!) and save the day.
Burn Notice has a sense of proportion about what entails saving the day. Quite frankly, saving the world on a weekly basis gets kind of dull—it’s just so repetitious—so the varying (and generally fairly small, although I think there’s a proverb to the effect that saving a life is like saving the world) stakes of Burn Notice episodes are a relief.
So really, the show is just unbelievably cool. I am filled with squee that it’s coming back, and I’ll finally get to see where the heck the feds took Michael in that truck, and then he and Fiona and Sam can go kick ass and take names again.
My wish list, very short:
Let Fee gain some weight. Last season you could have hung Christmas ornaments off her collarbones. She looks like a concentration camp victim.
Let her and Michael continue being incredible.
Let Sam continue being awesome. Don’t make him go all evil Fed on us.
Explosions! I want lots of them!
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-12 08:55 pm (UTC)Have you see the new ep yet? I am ridiculously happy to have my summer show back on tv. I'm undecided about Tricia Helfer so far-- the core cast is so awesome I don't really feel the need to have her there. But I'm excited that Michael Shanks is going to have a 4-ep arc on the show as a cynical spy. I bet he can't wait to play a new character. I hope China Chow comes back as Lucy too. Her older-spy/younger-spy mentor relationship with Michael was adorable.
I love the cast so much! They are a uniformly smart, talented and classy bunch. I watched some interviews over at the Burn Notice site, and as great as the cast interviews were, I think I was most entertained by Martin Nix, the show's writer and creator. He's young for a show-runner, modest, as befits a poli-sci graduate whose scripts were all stone-walled until his one suprising success with Burn Notice, and as snarky as the Michael Weston voice-overs. Go Martin!
no subject
Date: 2008-07-13 12:58 am (UTC)I have seen the new ep. Michael! And his cockney accent! And Fiona berating him for not mentioning not being dead in his phone message! Michael: "I thought the fact that I was calling you covered that."
Also, I loved the fact that the computer whiz guy really stepped up to the plate in the scene where he was talking to the mercenary. He sounded FIERCE.
I hope Lucy returns, too. The mentoring thing was cool--I liked that she didn't fall into either of the normal categories for female spies ("evil sex kitten" and "cute but incompetent").
Michael Shanks! MICHAEL SHANKS! I've never seen him play anything but Daniel Jackson so I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around Michael Shanks, the cynical spy. Can't wait to watch it.
I practically bounced out of my seat last season when Richard Schiff (who played Toby in the West Wing) had a cameo. Sadly, his character got assassinated, so he won't be returning. :(