Burn Notice
Finally caught the first four episodes of Burn Notice -- a new show on the USA network a few people told me I would love.
They were right.
The premise: U.S. spy Michael Westen (a smooth, hilarious, constantly put-upon Jeffrey Donovan) is inexplicably given a "burn notice" by his handlers in the middle of a foreign mission. This means he's been blacklisted by all intelligence agencies, his credit destroyed, his assets frozen, his name put on watch lists. After a horrific beating he barely makes it out of Nigeria alive and wakes up in his home town of Miami still wondering how and why this has happened to him.
Almost no one he knows will still talk to him, all of his contacts are stonewalling him, he has no money, no prospects and is being trailed everywhere by the FBI. The only people who will help him try to figure all this out (and figure a way to sleep indoors and eat) are a psychotic ex-girlfriend (late of the IRA) a washed up ex-spy (played to drunken, sleazy perfection by Bruce Campbell) and the last person he wants to talk to for any reason -- his mother (Queer as Folk's Sharon Gless). Throw in a losery, trouble-making, gambling-addict younger brother (Jason Priestley at his least likeable but most interesting) and it is really a miserable existence. But you can't look away.
Westen realizes that with his skill set and no identity to speak of all he can really do is operate as an unlicensed P.I. and spy-for-hire for whoever will pay him while he tries to raise the money and chase down the clues to crack the mystery of who burned him and why.
The USA netork is certainly living up to its "Characters Welcome" slogan with this one -- and it's a bit slicker, more cynical and intentionally funny than their other two episodic detective series, Monk and Psych (both of which I do like, even if they seem a bit slap-dash now and then). The clever premise, the first-person narration I liked so much I realized I'd written two lines from the first episode almost verbatim in some fiction I'm working on) -- I think it's a winner.
Check it out.
As a little bonus -- you can watch Bruce Campbell's character recount Sam's spy stories on the show's website, which is pretty spiffy (even though I don't like the video that begins automatically, without your pressing anything).
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