TV Show: Burn Notice
12 March 2026 15:24![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teratornisWith some frequency I think to myself that I'd really like to talk more about various shows/movies/books/music here, and then I don't do that, so in light of a recent Burn Notice rewatch, I figured I'd write some stuff down.
So. Burn Notice.
I started watching this show while it was still airing, in its. . . third or fourth season, I believe. Just in time for the absolute doozy of the fourth season's mid-season cliffhanger, naturally. I remember, at the time, really enjoying the first few seasons, and then not enjoying the latter seasons as much. Since then I've rewatched the first couple seasons a time or two, but never got past the fourth season again because of that vague memory of not enjoying the show so much past that point. This time, I watched the whole series through for I think the first time since my initial viewing.
And I am really glad I did.
Burn Notice has a fascinating progression. I can see why I didn't enjoy the latter portions as much during my first viewing, but coming back to it now, with a much more well-developed sense of how to handle characterization and a strong narrative, was eye-opening, and I found myself deeply invested in the story.
The show starts out focusing on mostly fun and silly spycraft hijinks (expected, in a show featuring Bruce Campbell in a prominent roll). The main character gets blacklisted from his job as a hotshot international spy and stranded in Miami, his home city, with a couple of unhinged friends and his busybody hypochondriac mother. The overarching story focuses on him trying to figure out why he got blacklisted and undo the damage, while in the mean time he takes a series of various odd local jobs that involve said silly spycraft hijinks and an improbable quantity of exploding cars.
(Seriously, the amount of this show's budget that had to go to explosives and cars to destroy with explosives must've been staggering.)
Most of what goes on is presented in a lighthearted and cleverly comedic way. Even most of the more serious moments tend to be depicted in a way that makes you go "ooh, what happens next? I bet it'll be exciting." There are some grimmer and more poignant moments that sneak in (there are some genuinely touching bits with Madeline, the aforementioned busybody mother), but over all the show feels like a good fun romp that you don't have to take too seriously.
And then.
And then the show starts asking some much more difficult questions. Just how far will the main character go to get what he wants? To learn what he wants to know, and to clear his name? How much damage will he do in the process, and how will that affect him and those around him?
These questions and some of the setup for the way the last seasons go began a lot more gradually than I remembered. Michael (the main character) is put in a position to work with some pretty bad people. Everyone knows it's not a good idea, including him, but it's necessary, right? It's just a means to an end, and once he clears his name, he can turn the tables on them.
Right?
(Kudos, by the way, to actor Michael Shanks. I had seen him play Daniel Jackson through ten full seasons of Stargate by this point, and straight up did not recognize him in Burn Notice on my original viewing because his character Victor is such a wildly unhinged, trigger-happy lunatic that I didn't even have a basis for comparison. A truly excellent recurring character at this point in the series, with an unexpectedly poignant end.)
I think the first real, true domino to fall in this vein is when there's a very distinct choice to be made between Michael having an opportunity to clear his name, and having the chance to save the life of someone he loves, and 'both' is quite simply not possible. A fairly classic choice, sure, and of course the life of a loved one is chosen.
This time. Even if he has to commit outright murder to make it happen.
That episode, Long Way Back, is one of the first times you get the sense this show really isn't playing around anymore. This isn't fun hijinks, this isn't a game, this isn't silly. A choice has been made that's going to change things, and it may not necessarily be for the better.
The rest of that season (the third) begins to set the tone for the rest of the show. The fun hijinks are still there, but there is a sense that a trap is beginning to close. There are more choices to be made, and a lot of the time there aren't any good ones. People get hurt because of Michael's actions, and both he and the viewer are left wondering if it's worth the cost. But of course, after a point, what can he do but continue? Inaction is also a choice, after all, and there's no telling until after the fact what the right option is, if there ever was one to begin with.
Despite the way the show starts, despite the borderline comedic tone it sets for the first couple of seasons, Burn Notice is a classic tragedy.
Michael is a clever, intensely loyal, and very determined character. Not unexpected, for the protagonist of a spy show. Those traits serve him well over the course of the series, his tenacity and quick thinking and relationships with his friends and family solving an awful lot of tangled problems and doing a lot of good.
But he's also driven to the point of blind selfishness, and his cleverness repeatedly pushes him past the point of no return with the self-assurance that he can find a way out of whatever trouble he's landed in. He's increasingly willing to compromise his own ideals, despite objections from friends and family, with that same perhaps deluded self-assurance that it'll be worthwhile in the end. More than once, his loyalty is proven to be badly misplaced, and we see more and more over the course of the series that he has some pretty glaring blind spots that make him easy for those he trusts to manipulate him and use that loyalty against him.
Maybe if he'd made different choices things would've turned out better, or maybe everyone would've ended up dead. Either way, his choices eventually lead to a point where that closing-trap feeling is very much realized. There's a scene that struck me where Michael very simply tells his mother, "This is a fight I can't win." He's still looking for a way out, and so is the audience, but this time there just isn't one.
That's the penultimate season. The final one spends a great deal of time pushing those moral boundaries that have already been stretched by this point, and driving home very certainly that there is no going back, no getting the life he wanted back, and that the people Michael has spent a lot of time thinking of as the good guys are willing to make compromises and do more terrible things than he ever would have considered. That they're very much not the people he thought they were, and whatever he was striving for through so much of the show, it maybe never really existed to begin with.
Unlike the standard tragedy most of the main characters do survive, though there's a few minutes where it's implied they didn't. Not everybody survives, though, and the most important deaths are intensely hard-hitting, and are going to leave a long and lasting mark on everyone else.
And that goal Michael's been striving for the whole time, to clear his name and get his old life back? That life doesn't exist anymore. He's done things now he can't take back or wipe away, and the people he wanted to work with have done far worse. The illusion is gone, and there's nothing left of what he wanted, if it ever truly existed at all, and he and his friends who survived the experience have paid a pretty devastating price.
Despite that price, the show's ending is hopeful, if not truly happy. There's room for the remaining characters' stories to continue, and room to believe they'll all be okay, but whatever happens next it definitely won't be close to the same as it ever was before.
There are points where the transition from lighthearted hijinks to increasingly hard-hitting tragedy is a little jarring, and some of the back and forth of "this is a bad decision," "but what choice to I have?" between the main cast can get a little stale. There are a couple of points in the final few episodes that wobble a little on the landing (there are some face-heel/heel-face turns going on that happen at a jarringly breakneck speeds, and one particular little speech Michael gives that seems bafflingly out of character, even at the low point he's reached by then in the series). As in just about any show that runs for as long as this one did (seven seasons), there are some episodes that are kinda meh, and some writing that's on the eye-rolling side.
I'm very glad I watched from start to finish this time, though. I was pretty thoroughly invested in the progression of the overarching plotline, and remembered little enough of it that the twists and turns were surprises.
Over all, the progression is pretty well handled, and there's frankly very few episodes and aspects that I genuinely dislike. The first few seasons are delightful fun, and the moral struggles and more serious tone of the latter ones do for the most part land very well. The writing is clever, the individual episode plots fun and interesting.
The main cast is great, and I love the range of acting and journey of character development for everybody. There's a frankly unhealthy level of devotion going on between all the main cast, which makes it all the more interesting when those ties develop more friction than they can handle and break down. That friction is certainly dramatized, but generally pretty well handled and has genuine impact on the plotline. We get a fair amount of depth on everybody, and their backgrounds feed well into their behavior and reactions. The dynamics are honestly a lot of fun to see, when they're not breaking your heart.
As much as I love Michael's relationship with Sam (Bruce Campbell), Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar), and later in the series, Jesse (Coby Bell), I am especially invested in his relationship with his mother Madeline (Sharon Gless). It is intensely volatile, and a major part of both their backstory is that their home life in the past was rough, to say the least. They spend a lot of time at odds, and not understanding each other, but both in spite of and because of that, they have some of the best and most emotional moments on the show. The difficult relationship they have is such a central through-line, and Gless does such an excellent job with Maddie's character. Her relationships with the rest of the characters is also a ton of fun.
The show has a great ensemble cast, too. A lot of colorful actors playing equally colorful characters. Perfect for actor bingo. It's got the usual best of roster for TV from the 00s/10s. There's also almost no fridging or character assassination, and a pleasing amount of follow-up on recurring enemies and allies.
I loved rewatching this. It remained as fun as I remember, but with more depth than I had recalled, and this time through I was absolutely hooked even through the final seasons. I thoroughly enjoyed the journey, and it'll be something I rewatch again sometime down the line.
I'd love to write some fic for it at some point. We'll see what sort of ideas strike.
So. Burn Notice.
I started watching this show while it was still airing, in its. . . third or fourth season, I believe. Just in time for the absolute doozy of the fourth season's mid-season cliffhanger, naturally. I remember, at the time, really enjoying the first few seasons, and then not enjoying the latter seasons as much. Since then I've rewatched the first couple seasons a time or two, but never got past the fourth season again because of that vague memory of not enjoying the show so much past that point. This time, I watched the whole series through for I think the first time since my initial viewing.
And I am really glad I did.
Burn Notice has a fascinating progression. I can see why I didn't enjoy the latter portions as much during my first viewing, but coming back to it now, with a much more well-developed sense of how to handle characterization and a strong narrative, was eye-opening, and I found myself deeply invested in the story.
The show starts out focusing on mostly fun and silly spycraft hijinks (expected, in a show featuring Bruce Campbell in a prominent roll). The main character gets blacklisted from his job as a hotshot international spy and stranded in Miami, his home city, with a couple of unhinged friends and his busybody hypochondriac mother. The overarching story focuses on him trying to figure out why he got blacklisted and undo the damage, while in the mean time he takes a series of various odd local jobs that involve said silly spycraft hijinks and an improbable quantity of exploding cars.
(Seriously, the amount of this show's budget that had to go to explosives and cars to destroy with explosives must've been staggering.)
Most of what goes on is presented in a lighthearted and cleverly comedic way. Even most of the more serious moments tend to be depicted in a way that makes you go "ooh, what happens next? I bet it'll be exciting." There are some grimmer and more poignant moments that sneak in (there are some genuinely touching bits with Madeline, the aforementioned busybody mother), but over all the show feels like a good fun romp that you don't have to take too seriously.
And then.
And then the show starts asking some much more difficult questions. Just how far will the main character go to get what he wants? To learn what he wants to know, and to clear his name? How much damage will he do in the process, and how will that affect him and those around him?
These questions and some of the setup for the way the last seasons go began a lot more gradually than I remembered. Michael (the main character) is put in a position to work with some pretty bad people. Everyone knows it's not a good idea, including him, but it's necessary, right? It's just a means to an end, and once he clears his name, he can turn the tables on them.
Right?
(Kudos, by the way, to actor Michael Shanks. I had seen him play Daniel Jackson through ten full seasons of Stargate by this point, and straight up did not recognize him in Burn Notice on my original viewing because his character Victor is such a wildly unhinged, trigger-happy lunatic that I didn't even have a basis for comparison. A truly excellent recurring character at this point in the series, with an unexpectedly poignant end.)
I think the first real, true domino to fall in this vein is when there's a very distinct choice to be made between Michael having an opportunity to clear his name, and having the chance to save the life of someone he loves, and 'both' is quite simply not possible. A fairly classic choice, sure, and of course the life of a loved one is chosen.
This time. Even if he has to commit outright murder to make it happen.
That episode, Long Way Back, is one of the first times you get the sense this show really isn't playing around anymore. This isn't fun hijinks, this isn't a game, this isn't silly. A choice has been made that's going to change things, and it may not necessarily be for the better.
The rest of that season (the third) begins to set the tone for the rest of the show. The fun hijinks are still there, but there is a sense that a trap is beginning to close. There are more choices to be made, and a lot of the time there aren't any good ones. People get hurt because of Michael's actions, and both he and the viewer are left wondering if it's worth the cost. But of course, after a point, what can he do but continue? Inaction is also a choice, after all, and there's no telling until after the fact what the right option is, if there ever was one to begin with.
Despite the way the show starts, despite the borderline comedic tone it sets for the first couple of seasons, Burn Notice is a classic tragedy.
Michael is a clever, intensely loyal, and very determined character. Not unexpected, for the protagonist of a spy show. Those traits serve him well over the course of the series, his tenacity and quick thinking and relationships with his friends and family solving an awful lot of tangled problems and doing a lot of good.
But he's also driven to the point of blind selfishness, and his cleverness repeatedly pushes him past the point of no return with the self-assurance that he can find a way out of whatever trouble he's landed in. He's increasingly willing to compromise his own ideals, despite objections from friends and family, with that same perhaps deluded self-assurance that it'll be worthwhile in the end. More than once, his loyalty is proven to be badly misplaced, and we see more and more over the course of the series that he has some pretty glaring blind spots that make him easy for those he trusts to manipulate him and use that loyalty against him.
Maybe if he'd made different choices things would've turned out better, or maybe everyone would've ended up dead. Either way, his choices eventually lead to a point where that closing-trap feeling is very much realized. There's a scene that struck me where Michael very simply tells his mother, "This is a fight I can't win." He's still looking for a way out, and so is the audience, but this time there just isn't one.
That's the penultimate season. The final one spends a great deal of time pushing those moral boundaries that have already been stretched by this point, and driving home very certainly that there is no going back, no getting the life he wanted back, and that the people Michael has spent a lot of time thinking of as the good guys are willing to make compromises and do more terrible things than he ever would have considered. That they're very much not the people he thought they were, and whatever he was striving for through so much of the show, it maybe never really existed to begin with.
Unlike the standard tragedy most of the main characters do survive, though there's a few minutes where it's implied they didn't. Not everybody survives, though, and the most important deaths are intensely hard-hitting, and are going to leave a long and lasting mark on everyone else.
And that goal Michael's been striving for the whole time, to clear his name and get his old life back? That life doesn't exist anymore. He's done things now he can't take back or wipe away, and the people he wanted to work with have done far worse. The illusion is gone, and there's nothing left of what he wanted, if it ever truly existed at all, and he and his friends who survived the experience have paid a pretty devastating price.
Despite that price, the show's ending is hopeful, if not truly happy. There's room for the remaining characters' stories to continue, and room to believe they'll all be okay, but whatever happens next it definitely won't be close to the same as it ever was before.
There are points where the transition from lighthearted hijinks to increasingly hard-hitting tragedy is a little jarring, and some of the back and forth of "this is a bad decision," "but what choice to I have?" between the main cast can get a little stale. There are a couple of points in the final few episodes that wobble a little on the landing (there are some face-heel/heel-face turns going on that happen at a jarringly breakneck speeds, and one particular little speech Michael gives that seems bafflingly out of character, even at the low point he's reached by then in the series). As in just about any show that runs for as long as this one did (seven seasons), there are some episodes that are kinda meh, and some writing that's on the eye-rolling side.
I'm very glad I watched from start to finish this time, though. I was pretty thoroughly invested in the progression of the overarching plotline, and remembered little enough of it that the twists and turns were surprises.
Over all, the progression is pretty well handled, and there's frankly very few episodes and aspects that I genuinely dislike. The first few seasons are delightful fun, and the moral struggles and more serious tone of the latter ones do for the most part land very well. The writing is clever, the individual episode plots fun and interesting.
The main cast is great, and I love the range of acting and journey of character development for everybody. There's a frankly unhealthy level of devotion going on between all the main cast, which makes it all the more interesting when those ties develop more friction than they can handle and break down. That friction is certainly dramatized, but generally pretty well handled and has genuine impact on the plotline. We get a fair amount of depth on everybody, and their backgrounds feed well into their behavior and reactions. The dynamics are honestly a lot of fun to see, when they're not breaking your heart.
As much as I love Michael's relationship with Sam (Bruce Campbell), Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar), and later in the series, Jesse (Coby Bell), I am especially invested in his relationship with his mother Madeline (Sharon Gless). It is intensely volatile, and a major part of both their backstory is that their home life in the past was rough, to say the least. They spend a lot of time at odds, and not understanding each other, but both in spite of and because of that, they have some of the best and most emotional moments on the show. The difficult relationship they have is such a central through-line, and Gless does such an excellent job with Maddie's character. Her relationships with the rest of the characters is also a ton of fun.
The show has a great ensemble cast, too. A lot of colorful actors playing equally colorful characters. Perfect for actor bingo. It's got the usual best of roster for TV from the 00s/10s. There's also almost no fridging or character assassination, and a pleasing amount of follow-up on recurring enemies and allies.
I loved rewatching this. It remained as fun as I remember, but with more depth than I had recalled, and this time through I was absolutely hooked even through the final seasons. I thoroughly enjoyed the journey, and it'll be something I rewatch again sometime down the line.
I'd love to write some fic for it at some point. We'll see what sort of ideas strike.
no subject
Date: 14 Mar 2026 02:37 (UTC)I'm really impressed by how you laid out the themes and arcs and tone shifts without specific spoilers. It sounds like I will get a lot out of this material as I go!
And yes, Michael's relationship with his mother is amazing. Difficult yet very moving, and believable. And I love going back to season one (even without knowing the whole story yet) and seeing how well established all the characters were out of the gate, and how they grew. It also handles the balance between overarching plot and case of the week extremely well on average.
I hope you continue to write occasionally on such topics! I really enjoy your thoughts.
no subject
Date: 14 Mar 2026 03:48 (UTC)I love Maddie so much, having her as a character was such a fun choice for this show, and she's got so many great bits. Her and Michael's relationship is definitely put through the wringer a few times, and all through the series their interactions remain some of the most interesting to me, though I genuinely enjoy everybody in the main cast. And most of the recurring ensemble cast, too. You're very right that the balance between overarching plot and episodic plot is really well balanced, it feels very natural. Especially when one impacts the other in some way.
Glad you enjoyed the read! I definitely hope you end up watching more of this show, and I'd love to hear what you think of that!