TV is the New Reading

USA's 'Burn Notice' has more problems than just its name

No, it’s true. Nobody asked me. But I personally think “Burn Notice” is a terrible name for a show, and that’s only one of its problems.

The title refers, apparently, to what happens to spies when they’re fired. They’re made non-people, their identities are removed and their assets frozen. They’re cut off and consigned to make their way in suburbia.

This seems like a terrible idea, and forgive me, but I have a hard time believing that this is what happens to our nation’s spies when we’re done with them. But for the sake of the premise, I’ll follow along as the story unfolds around one spy in particular.

Heading into this I should point out that I think Jeffrey Donovan is absolutely amazing. In a profession of hams, he’s got this gift for understated character development that truly stands out – especially considering he’s playing Michael Westen, an international superspy who drives about recklessly and blows things up.

Part of why this works is that he’s surrounded by seriously over-the-top performances by imperfectly cast cohorts. His “ex” girlfriend, Fiona, played by Gabrielle Anwar, is a holdover from his infiltration of the Irish Republican Army. Her calm reaction to mob enforcers seeking to suppress the witness she’s protecting is to toss four or five Molotov cocktails at them.

And a friend of his, Sam Axe, played by Bruce Campbell, is associated somehow with the FBI, but not officially enough to find out what happened to him, why he got fired, or, for that matter, to often wear pants.

And Glenn Close was unavailable so they dug up Sharon Gless to totter about playing his mother. Yep. The supersecret spy agency that fired him plunked him down in Miami, where his mom lives. So much for cutting him off without any resources. Mind you, they probably did this for the wacky hijinks he’d get into because she’d demand he follow up a series of cases for friends of hers and thereby get distracted by shiny things.

See, he’s got to conduct all of this surveillance and fuss with a bunch of improvised electronics and steal cars because ... well, OK, the main goal is to find out why he was fired. He is very slowly getting deeper into that puzzle.

Meanwhile, he’s earning his rent by ... protecting waitresses who know too much and ... tracking down con artists who victimize old people, and ... um ...

If it seems like it’s kind of hard to get a stranglehold on this storyline it’s because there are giant structural holes in it. Mainly, if you have a character whose goals are clear enough but his means of achieving them are pretty nebulous, you end up with quite a lot of vague to slog through.

So you could just sit back and enjoy the pretty people and the explosions. Except that honestly, I’ve never seen an entire episode all the way through. The story wanders around far too much and I drift off. There’s a lot of air between the higher-energy stuff, some of which can be called dramatic tension, some of which can be called suspense, but most of which can pretty safely be called boring.

Sure, fired superspy Michael Westen is cool and his sidekicks are indeed zany, but there’s just not much “there” there. And despite a love and respect for Donovan that traces back to his outstanding performances in the far superior USA production “Touching Evil” (which folded after a single season three years ago), unless it improves quite a lot and pretty darn soon, I can’t really recommend spending much time on his latest project.

Features Editor Terry J. Aman compiles the Best Bets for The Minot Daily News.

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