Get Burn Notice on Blu-Ray from Amazon.com

So, I’ve previously reviewed the first two seasons of Burn Notice. While I wait for season 3 to come out on DVD, I’m going to get started on another spy themed TV series – one with more of a James Bond (pre-Daniel Craig) theme.

The Premise:

Chuck is in charge of the Nerd Herd (Not-The-Geek-Squad) at a Buy More (a Not-A-Best-Buy-Circuit-City-Or-Comp-USA consumer electronics chain). His old friend-turned-arch-nemesis from College, Bryce Larkin, sends him an E-Mail that ends up uploading the contents of the Intersect, a classified NSA & CIA database (which Larkin has also destroyed) into his brain. Chuck ends up under the tender loving care of a beautiful CIA agent (whose cover is his girlfriend) and a rather nasty NSA agent (who presumably killed Larkin), while both agencies try to get the Intersect out of Chuck’s head, and deal with various international plots in and around LA.

The Good:

While a lot of the references to certain video games end up having the serial numbers filed off, generally the references to geek humor are pretty solid, to Chuck and his friend Morgan dressing up as a sandworm from Dune for a costume party (which they correctly refer to as Shai-Hulud, though they don’t refer to it as The Maker either, but that’s okay).

Also, the concept of the Intersect, while not technologically feasible, is conceptually feasible – and is actually something that the NSA and other intelligence agencies are working on – a computer system that can connect the dots between pieces of intelligence, particularly finding connections that human analysts might have missed.

The acting is pretty solid too, with Adam Baldwin stealing the show fairly often (particularly in “Chuck vs. the LTD”).

The Bad:

This season got cut short by the Writers’ Strike, so the season doesn’t really have much of an ending – particularly in comparison to some of the endings Burn Notice has had – enough of a cliffhanger to make me come back for next season, but enough closure that if I don’t get anything more, I can be somewhat satisfied with what I’ve gotten so far (or at least it’ll tide me over until they wrap things up with a mini-series, a movie, a novel or a comic book.)

The Ugly:

The segments in the Buy More can be a little annoying, but that may be because a previous job I had was tech support combined with a heavy focus commissioned sales – which wasn’t in the original job description (sales yes, the focus on sales, no) – so those segments brought up some bad memories. The segments covering the romantic subplot between Chuck and Sarah, his CIA handler, also run into the (in my opinion) bad romance conceit of drama by utter failure to communicate. Admittedly, under the circumstances some of that failure to communicate can be forgiven, but it’s still annoying.

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.