Get Season 2 of Burn Notice on Blu-Ray

This week we finish up the Burn Notice reviews (for now), with a review of the show’s second season. I haven’t watched Season 3 yet, but once I do, you can expect a review.

The Premise:

Following the conclusion of Season 1, Michael finds a few answers about who burned him – sort of. To be more accurate, he’s lost the FBI surveillance and instead has found himself in the care of Carla, his new handler. So, while now trying to make ends meet by helping the helpless, he now must also try to find out who Carla is working for, and what they want to do with him.

The Good:

Season 2 starts off very well, and continues to be paced pretty well. While we don’t have total resolution over who burned Michael, and how to get out from under their thumb, we do feel like we’re getting somewhere. It’s different from, say, Lost, where you get this sensation of taking two steps forward, and then one step back (and sometimes more). The show always feels like it’s getting forward momentum in terms of the plot. I also liked the reference to the George Smiley novels with the name choice for Carla.

The Bad:

Michael appears to rely on his guns and his explosives a bit too much. That said, he does try to keep with his MO of manipulating other people into doing the necessary killing for him.

The Ugly:

Michael’s mother taking him to the group psychiatric sessions again. Look, I know Michael has issues that he needs to work out with his family, but they did that for a B-Plot last season. It was annoying when they did it as a B-Plot last season, and it’s annoying this season. If they’d changed it up by having it be Fiona and Michael, that’d be something else entirely.

Gaming Usage:

The same general usage as last season. The show remains the perfect TV resource for Shadowrun GMs and players, at least in terms of missions, tactics, and group dynamics.

The Verdict:

The show’s changed for the darker tonally, but it’s still a great show, and I’m still giving it my recommendation.

Buy Season 1 of Burn Notice at Amazon.com

Yes, I am aware that I didn’t finish my recap of Season 1 of Burn Notice. To make up for it, I’m going to review the entire season (and season 2 besides, on a later week). However, we need to begin at the beginning. There will be spoilers, but they’ll be below the cut. I’ll try doing some spoiler-guarding stuff this time.

The Premise:

I’ll let the star of the show take this one (courtesy of IMDB):

Michael Westen: [voice-over] My name is Michael Westen. I used to be a spy. Until…
voice on phone: [phone rings] We got a burn notice on you. You’re blacklisted.
Michael Westen: [voice-over] When you’re burned, you’ve got nothing: no cash, no credit, no job history. You’re stuck in whatever city they decide to dump you in.
Michael Westen: Where am I?
Fiona Glenanne: Miami.
Michael Westen: [voice-over] You do whatever work comes your way. You rely on anyone who’s still talking to you. A trigger-happy ex-girlfriend…
Fiona Glenanne: Shall we shoot them?
Michael Westen: [voice-over] An old friend who used to inform on you to the FBI…
Sam Axe: You know spies… bunch of bitchy little girls.
Michael Westen: [voice-over] Family too…
Sam Axe: [phone rings] Hey, is that your Mom again?
Michael Westen: [voice-over] … if you’re desperate.
Madeline Westen: Someone needs your help, Michael!
Michael Westen: [voice-over] Bottom line? Until you figure out who burned you… you’re not going anywhere.

The Good:

This show is, in a word, awesome. This is, quite possibly, my favorite TV show currently on the air. Now, I haven’t seen Chuck, I haven’t watched Dollhouse, and I haven’t watched The Unit. However, Burn Notice is currently my favorite show. Unfortunately, I don’t have cable, so I have to rely on Hulu or USA’s web page to watch it – or Netflix. The dialog is great, the direction is great, the acting is excellent. The stories are wonderful. I just, in general, love it.

The Bad:

I know that there are probably so many locations in Miami they can shoot at without running into serious crowd control problems, and admittedly I haven’t been to Miami, so I can’t say for certain how true this is, but they make Miami look really small. The only episode I encountered where they really make Miami look big is the scene in Little Havana. Otherwise, a lot of the neighborhoods look the same.

The Ugly:

The second guy who tries to kill Michael, and then the assassination of the guy who (we thought) burned Michael. Those two things don’t add up with what we learn in Season 2. I’m used to TV shows making things up as they go along, and writers having to compensate for reveals we’d gotten earlier. I read comic books after all. Still, these are loose ends that are left hanging, more or less. At this point it’s not clear about whether we have two organizations competing over Michael, or if we we have two factions within the same organization, or what.

Use for Gamers:

This is, basically, a contemporary Shadowrun TV show. This isn’t just because of the team aspect of the show, but because Michael Westin is a SINless person, in the Shadowrun sense. He’s scraping by on the fringes of society. However, instead of working for organized crime syndicates, or corrupt corporations, he’s working for the little guy. I’d recommend any Shadowrun players or GMs to add this show to their to-watch list.

The Verdict:

In case you hadn’t already figured it out – I’m wholeheartedly recommending this show. This is one of the greatest dramas on television today.

The nice thing about being able to stream episodes from, say, Hulu (or NetFlix, if they’d ever get episodes up on there) is that I can just stream the episodes online rather then waiting for the next disk. It allows for me to get new posts up faster, all the better for you, and I don’t find myself jonesing for the next episode. At least, until I run out of episodes, but I’ve got another 10 to go yet before we hit the end of the season. So, shall we begin?

Nice bit of continuity at the beginning, with Michael investigating the photographs from last episode. From what we get revealed in the beginning of the show, it looks like whoever at The Agency who ordered the surveillance on Michael either a) has the FBI in on it – as far as the bugs are concerned (as opposed to the more conventional tails). b) is operating domestically illegally. c) is able to operate domestically illegally because of some strange exception for people with Burn Notices on them. Considering their rush to destroy their equipment and beat feet out the building, I’m leaning towards either b or c.

Well, the target in this case should be fairly straightforward to hunt down – you’re looking for a 3-person con artist team. 2 men, one woman, one of whom is a blond, and with at least one member who is not afraid to use force when necessary, and use force personally. How many of these teams are operating in Miami? Mind you, Michael used a different tactic to find them than the first one that came to mind for me. However, I’m thinking in terms of PC logic (which is an oxymoron), and he’s thinking of terms of spy logic.

Speaking of which, Michael and Sam living togeather for a business week. Could somebody cue the them from “The Odd Couple” for me please? Thank you.

It appears, that, much like in The Godfather, the weak link in this chain is going to be the young and inexperienced subordinates to Quentin. That should give Michael some leverage later.

On the one hand, considering what happens later on in the episode, Sam and Fiona getting caught by Quentin’s eager young apprentices turned out to be a boon. Still, that was cutting it realllly close.

Note to Michael (and Sam): Do not let Fiona “disable” any more vehicles unless you actually want them to blow up. Alternatively – Note to Fiona: Please put some rubber bands around your wrist – the next time you feel the urge to Blow Shit Up (tm – the Jammers), snap them. I thank you for your co-operation.

Sam, with your cover names, you’re lucky that the Apprenticies (sp) don’t watch TV Land, otherwise you would have been soooooooooooo blown. You could have mixed them up at least (Detective Cagney and Detective Friday, for example).

Ahh, the sweet sound of Karma. The “insult the local drug cartel” bit was a nice touch, and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer chap.

And now, Michael has a lead. It’s a small one, but it’s there – and it will be in touch. Be seeing you!*

*That was a reference to The Prisoner, by the way. Oh, you haven’t seen The Prisoner – well, track down a copy, dammit. I’m done recapping this episode anyway.

Yeah. Remember where I said that I wouldn’t do a Where I Watch on here because I couldn’t get enough feedback to support it? Well, yeah, I kinda lied about that. Not really. I’m going to give this a try to see how it turns out. I’ll be starting with the first season of Burn Notice, so kindly provided by Hulu and streamed to my Playstation 3 by the PlayOn Media server software I’m trying out.

If you want to follow along, you can try Hulu as well, and Season 1 is on Netflix as well. We don’t have the complete season 2 on DVD yet, and Hulu’s only got episode 9 of season 2. Yeah, that makes no sense to me either – you’d think you’d have all of season 2 up to now, but I digress.

Before I get started, just to give you an idea on how I do these. I scribble down notes in a notebook (my journal actually – yes I journal, with a fountain pen) in a general stream of consciousness fashion, and then once I’ve finished with the episode or episodes (depending on the show) I attempt to edit those into something coherent (and occasionally succeed) and then post those in the relevant thread or, in this case, a blog post. I tend to do much more editing for reviews. So, on with the post. There are semi-spoilers here.

I have to say, that if the possibilty raises its head that, at Michael’s dentist, that a potential killer (in the sense of someone trying to kill him) lurks within the 2 year old “Time” and “People” magazines in his dentists waiting room – he needs to find a new dentist (or a new insurance provider – or actually get an insurance provider).

I’m liking the voice over narration. It’s somewhat noirish, in the hard-boiled yet snarky Humphrey Bogard sense – I’m thinking specifically of “The Big Sleep” here – there wasn’t any narration there, but there was a hard-boiled yet witty sense to his dialog there, and not only with Lauren Bacall. If you missed that last time you saw The Big Sleep go back and watch it again – I’ll wait. Though, that said, you think they’d hold off on cutting him off with the Burn Notice until he came in from the cold. Even George Smiley wouldn’t be that nasty, in part because if George Smiley was going to put a burn notice on somebody and wasn’t going to kill him, he’d like him where he could easily (have somebody) keep an eye on him – say on The Continent.

Girlfriends like Fiona are why I post on RPG.net, because they will remind me to change my emergency contact to somebody else. However, I’d never work in the CIA in a position where I would get a Burn Notice at that level put out on me, unless they put Burn Notices at that level out on their ITS guys (which, if they’ve read BOFH, they might do).

All that said, Michael certainly is a Magnificent Bastard. That said, he’s going to need some work adjusting to “civilian” life. I’ve got multiple reasons for those quotes there – he’s still having to think like a spy for his line of work, and he’s not a civilian yet – he doesn’t have the rights that your average civilian gets, if you think about it, at least not until he gets that Burn Notice off his back. Though, the restriction to Miami feels slightly Grand Theft Auto or Mercenaries-ish: if you leave the proscribed area on the map, or try to, the heavy end of the hammer (be it a wanted rating or a NATO air strike) comes down on your head.

By the way, Bruce Campell is God. I’m just sayin’

The dealer’s comment about “Iraqui Antiquities” particularly considering how he got in touch with this dealer, makes me suspect that some of those Antiquites may have come out of the fall of Baghdad. It also gives me ideas for a Burn Notice-Lovejoy crossover, but that’s for something else.

I need to get “Guns make you stupid, Duct Tape makes you smart” on a T-Shirt, coffee mug, and bumper sticker. Maybe a mousepad too.

Well, I’d dismissed Vincent (the security guy) as being responsible for the theft as first, he’s the obvious target, and second, because now that I see him on camera longer, he doesn’t look smart enough. However, he it looks like he did pull the “heist” but his boss was the mastermind – bog standard insurance fraud.

Considering the last shot of the episode, there are 2 scenarios that come to mind now for the Burn Notice. Either Michael royally pissed someone off at The Agency (as in, got the guy’s wife pregnant/jilted lover/got his/her daughter pregnant/killed someone important to them/ruined their career/etc.) and this is personal, or if this isn’t personal – just business – then someone at The Agency is touched in the head. Actually, either way, whoever responsible is touched in the head, because head games like this are like something out of The Prisoner, and sane and rational people don’t pull those kind of head games in the “Real World”, or for that matter, Hollywood World. If things weren’t interesting before, they got really interesting now.