Just in time for it to be revealed who the orchestrator of the frame-up was, in the mid-season finale: An old adversary from previous seasons, Larry Sizemore (Tim Matheson), the sociopathic nut job who had spent the better part of a year blackmailing Michael before, and is now doing so again. He breaks the case open, however, and even manages to convince Pearce to trust him a little by the end of it. It’s difficult to show your boss you’re making progress on the case when all the evidence points back to you. There’s a lot of dramatic tension the whole way, as Pearce is far from stupid, and Michael’s framers were very thorough. Nobody’s going to take the word of a burned spy, after all. And this means he has to find out who’s framing him, while at the same time keeping his new CIA contact, Agent Pearce (Lauren Stamile) from finding out about the evidence that points to him in the first place. Now, instead of trying to get back in the CIA’s good graces, he has to fight to stay there. This provides an interesting twist on the series’ original premise. An apparent disaster strikes early in the fifth season, when Michael’s CIA handler is assassinated - and evidence is planted to make it look like Michael was responsible. He’s working his way back in… but it can’t be that easy, can it? That would work for a series finale, but the show wasn’t done with season 4, and it’s not done with season 5 either. The burn notice hasn’t been entirely lifted, but the CIA is talking to him again. It ended with him walking into CIA headquarters. This was particularly important, because this season brings about the biggest change to the status quo: the fourth season finale had Michael catch the bulk of the organization that had gotten him burned, and turned them over to the government. More time focusing on Michael’s goals, less time (but still enough) on the victim of the week. It’s a great format, but after four seasons, it was understandably getting a little stale so when the fifth season switched the degree of focus, it made sense to me as a minor tweak to the format. Usually the first and last episode of each half-season deal with the arc, and it is otherwise regulated to small scenes within the episodes, which are primarily dedicated to the team helping this week’s victim. One of the formatting oddities forced by the show’s nature is that the plot arc for each season (or half-season) is mostly dealt with in small doses this is one of the reasons why the show inspired me to take a season post-mortem approach in the first place. So, spoilers ahead, it’s time to look back. The second half of the fifth season just concluded tonight, and as always, it’s set things up for the next season in an explosive manner, both figuratively and literally. The show typically runs for a few months in the summer, then takes a break and runs for a few more months in November and December. Often this involves explosives, but it always involves using his spy training, which is narrated by Westen as he goes along. In the meantime, he takes on odd jobs for money, helping out clients who have been victimized but who have no other means of helping themselves. Michael’s goal in the series is to find out who burned him, get his revenge, and hopefully get back into the CIA’s good graces. Later (season 4) the team is joined by Jesse Porter (Coby Bell), a spy that Michael inadvertently burns himself. He reconnects with his mother (Sharon Gless), his weapons-crazy ex-girlfriend Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar), and his friend Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell). Michael Westen is a spy for the CIA who has been blacklisted for crimes he didn’t commit (the “burn notice” of the title is the notice given to drop all contact with him.) Cut off from all resources, his financial assets frozen, he is stuck in his home town of Miami. I actually came into it a little late, sometime around the middle of the second season, but one of the nice things about Burn Notice is that it’s the kind of show which is accessible and easy to pick up. As I wrote when I started the “TV Post-Mortem” posts, Burn Notice is one of my favorite current TV shows.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |