"Burn Notice": series review

Over the past few months, I finally had the chance to binge-watch "Burn Notice," a spy-themed USA Network action-dramedy starring Jeffrey Donovan, Gabrielle Anwar, Bruce Campbell, Sharon Gless, and Coby Bell (from Season 4 onward). The show ran seven seasons from 2007 to 2013, which was the same period when the world was switching from "dumb phones" to smartphones—a technological change that the show itself reflected over its final few seasons, along with some shameless product placement for Microsoft whenever we had a closeup of a phone or pad. The show's basic premise was that Michael Westen (Donovan), a spy who worked for the CIA, got burned, i.e., disowned, disenfranchised, disconnected, and disempowered. The CIA wasn't done with Westen, though: he was dumped in his hometown of Miami, close to his mother (Gless), and not allowed to leave the city. Most of the seven seasons were devoted to Michael's pursuit of the people who had burned him—a long, long rabbit hole that led Westen on many a wild goose chase. Along for the ride were Westen's sort-of-ex IRA-connected, bomb-happy girlfriend Fiona Glenanne (Anwar) and Michael's ex-Navy SEAL buddy Sam Axe (Campbell). Beginning in Season 4, the crew acquired Jesse Porter (Bell), a spy who got accidentally burned by Michael during one of Michael's missions. Another recurring family character was Michael's brother Nate (Seth Petersen), a gambling-addicted loser who both resents and idolizes his older brother.

To understand "Burn Notice," think of it as the humor-filled love child of two mostly humorless TV shows: "24" and "The Equalizer" (the TV show with Edward Woodward, I mean, not the Denzel Washington movies). Michael Westen is cut off from the CIA, but he still needs to make a living, so he becomes a government-trained do-gooder. Every episode of "Burn Notice"—for the first six seasons, anyway—runs on two parallel tracks: Westen's pursuit of the people who burned him, and Westen's aid given to the show's victim-of-the-week. The show never quite explains how Westen and his team are able to obtain the often-expensive spy equipment and weaponry they rely on to resolve their cases. It frequently seemed to me, as I binge-watched, that Westen & Co. had a net income of zero dollars, especially once you realized that much of the work they did was gratis—a charity to help out a friend of a friend, or a friend of Michael's mom.

The show stretched plausibility and didn't take itself seriously at all. Each episode featured Michael's smooth tones doing a periodic voiceover narration about spycraft; in interviews, Jeffrey Donovan has said that the showrunners had retained a veteran spy as a consultant, so a lot of what we learned on the show was true to life—except for when the discussion turned to things like bomb-making and such. In those cases, the show used fake chemicals and deliberately mis-portrayed procedures for the understandable ethical reason that it would be unwise to give true crazies an education on how to kill people en masse.

Ultimately, though, I found "Burn Notice" to be at its best as a character study, an exploration of a tight network of friendships and familial relationships. When the series begins, Michael is on prickly terms with his ex-SEAL buddy Sam Axe, who has been recruited by the FBI to spy on Michael. Michael is also navigating the complicated waters of his relationship with his mother Madeline, a.k.a. "Maddie," whose husband used to be abusive to her and the two boys, Mike and Nate. Fiona Glenanne, an ex-IRA operative whom Michael met during some missions in Ireland, begins the series as Michael's sort-of ex, and most of the seven seasons of the show are devoted to exploring how Michael and Fiona really feel about each other.

Like many post-2000 TV shows, "Burn Notice" folds long story arcs into its overarching plot, which means that, while there might be "villains of the week" (many of whom are quite colorful), there are often a few big-bad antagonists lurking in the background, pulling the strings in mysterious ways over several episodes, preventing Michael from finding out more about how he got burned. Season 7 mostly drops the aforementioned parallel-plot format to concentrate on a central question: the saving of Michael Westen's soul. In Season 7, Michael contends with a villain named James Kendrick, a man who seems able to reach inside Michael's head and manipulate him far more than any other villain has ever managed. It's up to Michael's friends to try to remind Michael of who he is and which team he's on, and the battle for Michael's soul lasts pretty much until the series finale.

I'll say it now: I found Season 7 to be the weakest of all the seasons; I wasn't convinced that Michael, who had been so solid for six seasons, could suddenly find himself so utterly hypnotized by James and his cult-like organization. It felt almost as if the writers of the show wanted to make Michael Westen more like Jack Bauer in "24," a man who becomes increasingly disenchanted with his country's government once he realizes just how full of vipers it is. This shift in the show's tone and in Michael's character felt somewhat off to me. Season 7 was entertaining, to be sure, but I think it could have benefited from better plotting.

Season 7 aside, "Burn Notice" is a dramedy, so it features plenty of lighthearted moments, often coming from Bruce Campbell's Sam Axe, a mojito-swilling bachelor who's always on the lookout for a rich woman on whose coattails he can coast. Sam and Fiona, both of whom have claims to Michael's friendship, don't always get along with each other, and part of the show's charm comes from its exploration of their evolving relationship, which often feels like a testy sibling rivalry. Gabrielle Anwar, as Fiona, also proves to have an amazing sense of comic timing. Like Katee Sackhoff as Starbuck in "Battlestar Galactica," Anwar is one of those actresses whose expressive face clearly telegraphs her character's inner emotions. Fiona is a joy to watch, and her interplay with the other principals is always entertaining. Maddie provides plenty of her own comedy as she growls and chain-smokes her way through scenes in which she's required to help the team in some way. These scenes can veer from the comic to the deadly serious, such as in the episode where Maddie—played by Sharon Gless—is forced to blackmail a cheerful, innocent bank officer played by Tyne Daly (Gless and Daly starred together in the 1980s crime drama "Cagney & Lacey," which also lasted seven seasons). Maddie ends up furious at her son for having to ruin another woman's life.

Season 4 sees the introduction of a new team member: Jesse Porter, played by the very capable Coby Bell. Fiona takes a flirtatious interest in the trim, muscular, and handsome Jesse for a brief time, but she quickly finds herself again and remains faithful to Michael. Jesse's character, from Seasons 4 to 7, often gets plenty of screen time, but I felt that he was sometimes relegated to fifth-wheel status: we never get to explore much of Jesse's own personal life, and we never see him with a girlfriend or anyone else close to him—not even a regular friend. Jesse becomes part of Michael's team, but he's the team member who's in the most eccentric orbit around Michael. That being said, his character is the focus for some great drama: he starts off as another burned counterintelligence agent—accidentally burned by Michael, who hides this fact from Jesse for as long as he can. Michael ropes Fiona, Sam, and Maddie into a conspiracy to keep the true cause of Jesse's current hardship away from the young spy, ostensibly "for his own good." But Jesse is no dummy, so as you can imagine, he figures out what Michael has done to him. Now betrayed and feeling both raw and murderous, Jesse has to contend with the urge to put a bullet in Michael's brain while also coming to terms with the fact that, in the spy game, people fuck each other over all the time, and it's nothing personal. Maddie, who has hosted the homeless Jesse at her house and developed maternal feelings for him, plays a key role in trying to get Michael and Jesse to clear the air between them and to patch things up. The epic speech she gives in the episode where she tricks Michael and Jesse to meet makes for the kind of drama that wins an actress an Emmy. Sharon Gless, as Madeline, is definitely a key to the show's success. Maddie Westen—tough and brave, bloodied but unbowed—is quite a character, and I mean that in several senses.

The show isn't above making sly intertextual references. Several Bruce-Campbell-related jokes allude to Campbell's famously prominent chin, and one recurrent character calls one of Sam Axe's makeshift weapons a "boomstick," a hilarious reference to Campbell's now-iconic "This... is my boomstick!" line in 1992's "Army of Darkness." Early in the series, Sam and Fiona, acting as spies, introduce themselves to their marks as "Detectives Cagney and Lacey," a nod to Sharon Gless's Cagney character from the 80s. The intertextuality extends further, and in subtler ways: Jonathan Frakes—Riker from "Star Trek: The Next Generation"—directs several episodes, and "Burn Notice" plays host to several cast members from "Battlestar Galactica," such as Tricia Helfer and Lucy Lawless (both of whom played Cylons on "Galactica"). Sci-fi nerd and comic actor Patton Oswalt guest-stars in a few episodes during some later seasons, and even huge stars like Michael Ironside and Robert Patrick make brief appearances. The show shamelessly plugs itself into the pop-culture Zeitgeist, and you can track the evolution of the series by what sorts of cell phones the cast members use.

Season 7, the show's final season, ends on a bittersweet note that involves both tragedy and triumph: a major character dies, but some of our main characters get something akin to a happy ending. All in all, I enjoyed "Burn Notice" for all its quirkiness: its humor, its action scenes (Jeffrey Donovan is an actual practicing martial artist who did most of his own stunts on the show), and even its frequently goofy, corny tone. All of the principal cast members do stellar work and mesh about as well as any small ensemble cast can be expected to. "Burn Notice" does follow a certain formula, and it occasionally strays a little too far into "24" territory, but overall, the series makes for a lively watch. I was thankful that the series didn't take the route of the 1980s show "The A-Team," in which the main characters would spray a fire zone with enough lead to build a huge bunker, all without ever hitting anyone. In "Burn Notice," bullets do actual damage, and the show isn't shy about killing off certain much-beloved characters, or about showing our main characters killing someone in cold blood when necessary. The series was, at least until Season 7, a delicate balance of humor and grit, with plenty of character development and interaction. While not as intense or as philosophical as my two favorite series, "24" and "Battlestar Galactica," "Burn Notice" still earns my respect as a show with an interesting story to tell.

ADDENDUM: here's a video that unabashedly praises "Burn Notice":