Burn Notice (season 1)

{5/5} “Covert intelligence involves a lot of waiting around. Know what it’s like being a spy? Like sitting in your dentist’s reception area twenty-four hours a day. You read magazines, sip coffee, and every so often someone tries to kill you.”

Michael Weston is on a mission in Nigeria when his contact tells him there’s a burn notice on him. That means he’s no longer a spy — no employer, no contacts, no money. After getting beat up he manages to get on a plane, which unexpectedly takes him to Miami after he passes out. Fiona, his ex-girlfriend and the emergency contact in his wallet, drops by to see how badly he’s doing.

He meets up with Sam, his old spy buddy, who’s now living off the rich women he meets. Then his mom Madeline tracks him down. She’s a hypochondriac and asks for a ride to the hospital — of course, to do that he has to steal a car. Michael can’t leave town, so he starts doing investigations to make money. In the meantime, he tries to find out who put out the burn notice on him.

Burn Notice season 1 originally aired in 2007. The show recently finished its 7-season run. I’d previously seen a couple of episodes and thought they were terrific so now I’m watching the whole thing.

Every episode is hilarious. It has a similar ratio of comedy to drama as Castle.

Every so often there’s a bit of narration from Michael — it’s always funny, like the quotation at the top.

Michael knows how to build things he needs out of other things he buys or finds, like the A Team although probably more realistic.

Each of the four main actors are tremendous — they can all be funny and at least two of them can be dangerous.

The 12-episode season ends with a 2-part episode in which Michael confronts the man who burned him and Michael, Sam, and Fiona try to stop some blackmailing drug smugglers. Everybody’s in even more danger than usual.

The music is catchy pop songs (without words).

Jeffrey Donovan (Changeling) plays Michael and Gabrielle Anwar (Al Pacino’s dance partner in Scent of a Woman) plays Fiona. Bruce Campbell (the TV show The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.) plays Sam and Sharon Gless (the TV show Cagney & Lacey) plays Madeline.

Seth Peterson (the TV show Providence) plays Michael’s brother Nate. Lucy Lawless (the TV show Battlestar Galactica) plays a client in one episode.

The show was created by Matt Nix (the TV show The Good Guys).

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 24th, 2013 at 6:55 pm and is filed under Reviews of TV shows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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