Pilot Impressions: Burn Notice
So Far, So Good
Imagine being at work one day, mindlessly going about your normal routine, when you unexpectedly receive the news that you’ve been fired. With no time granted to say goodbye to colleagues or pack up your belongings, you’re not even shown the door, just swiftly kicked to the curb. That’s the scenario that Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan), the central character in USA’s latest original series, Burn Notice, is forced to deal with while on a dangerous undercover mission in Nigeria. He luckily escapes back to the United States with his physical self more or less intact—no thanks to the big goons with the bigger weapons surrounding him—and then makes it his personal mission to find out how the heck his career managed to mysteriously implode.
The pilot is all about what happens to Westen immediately after he somehow winds up back in his hometown Miami and begins to rely on his few remaining willing contacts for assistance in the greatest and most personal undercover assignment of his life. Along with Irish ex-girlfriend Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar), those individuals include Lucy (China Chow), an ex-spy who runs her own high-end detective agency, and Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell), another former spy who now mostly leeches off of his rich girlfriends, when he’s not busy getting his customary all-day buzz from alcoholic beverages. There’s Westen’s hypochondriac mom Madeline (Sharon Gless), too, who spends most of her time complaining, getting worked up over Christmas, and trying to coerce her son into contacting his estranged brother, presumably so they can all be one big unhappy family again, at least for the holiday season.
What I don’t like about Burn Notice is currently far less important than what I do like about the show. My main gripe after viewing only one episode is that, just like its fellow USA series in spirit Monk and Psych, the whodunits are waaay too easy to figure out if you watch TV fairly regularly. I not only knew who the culprit was in the premiere before they even had the chance to utter their first line, but I also knew why they did it and what they would likely do next. As a result, I was three-for-three in my predictions, which typically does not translate into optimism about a show’s future.
To its credit, however, Burn Notice has one really great thing going for it that makes issues of predictability less critical than usual. That thing is the perfect casting of Donovan in the lead role of the fallen spook. The actor has this constantly aloof expression and deportment that works wonders when it’s time for him to deliver yet another droll dry line or to pull off one more MacGyver-ish improvised stunt required by his sudden and complete financial ruination.
If we didn’t get to see in different scenes how adept Westen is at winging it through impossible situations with ridiculously practical alternative solutions (in response to one predicament, he takes a quick trip to the hardware store to purchase the tools that ultimately help him get past a drug dealer’s bulletproof door by shooting the scum through a wall instead), he would come across as just another underachieving guy faking his way through a job that’s over his head. In other words, he’s the perfect spy—someone you barely notice because he seems so darn ordinary and unexceptional, when, in fact, he’s anything but.
One episode in, I definitely like Burn Notice, and I intend to hang around and watch more of what’s left this season.
The Verdict: B+
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Burn Notice currently airs Thursdays on USA at 10pm EST
Burn Notice photo courtesy of USA
