Just got done watching the first season (13 episodes) on DVD. It’s a potato chip show…once you start watching you just keep watching until the bag is empty. Burn Notice‘s greatest strength is that it doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. It’s enough to be a really good, deft, highly enjoyable espionage / Equalizer-type program.
The show revolves around an ex-spook who was ‘burned,’ i.e., severed from the intelligence community. For what, the hero Micheal doesn’t know, and he’s determined to find out. The program’s premise is that burned spies are dropped somewhere, and left alone as long as they keep their head’s down and stay put. In this case, the scene is Miami, providing for the requisite tons of bikini shots. While Michael tries to flush out those responsible for burning him, he makes a living helping little people in dire straits.
Also on hand is Michael’s estranged mother and brother. Michael was smacked around as a kid by his deceased drunk of a father, and those issues are a running plotline. Also on hand are Michael’s loony ex-girlfriend, an ex-IRA psycho chick who provides much of the show’s required violence and explosions. Needless to say, she still carries a torch for him, but he’s too emotionally damaged to really commit to her. Plus, as I said, she’s a nut.
I will say the violence is at least fairly realistic here. His girlfriend is quite wee, and when she attacks a bigger male, she generally does so with a weapon rather than her bare hands. She also fights Michael at one point, and it works because her advantage is that he tries to fend her off without breaking her in pieces, while she’s free to beat on him. The guy playing Michael has a black belt, and handles the action stuff quite well.
The cast is great, but really, it’s Bruce Campbell as Michael’s hilarious backup guy that drew me in. He’s fun every second he’s onscreen, and with somebody like Campbell, it’s just nice knowing he has a steady paycheck.
The first season ended on a cliff-hanger, so you may wish to catch up with those episodes before starting in on the second season. Good stuff, though.
