Burn Notice

[Rackhir]

I showed a friend the pilot off of the DVD collection and he insisted on watching the whole series, straight through, all the episodes...

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Like Reaper, Burn Notice is very episodic and formulaic, and having participated in a couple of Reaper threads in this forum, I'm not surprised to see Burn Notice get raves here as well.

How so? The main plotline carries throug every episode, with some minor new development towards the final scene, leaving with a clff anger for getting the issue of his burn notice resolved next season. It may be episodic in that the jobs he takes on tend to end at the end of each episode, but so what? It's a television show, not a miniseries. Frankly, I'd be annoyed if every "episode" randomly ended up being a three-parter or four parts, etc... The final two episodes were part of a whole, and there's no reason to think they won't do that again, but I sure hope they keep most episodes limited to one part.

....with a protagonist who keeps his own hours and winds up spending them sticking his neck way out for people he just met with little prospect of getting any kind of compensation for his lfe-endangering efforts.

Actually, I think he gets compensation for every single job he does, just sometimes it's a small amount. he actually complains about how small the pay is for the amount of work in the pilot episode. And if he's not rolling in piles of cash, it's partly because he gives a strong impression of not caring about great wealth, just enough to get by and cover his investigation. Most of the money he earned when a spy went to his family anyway. And while the jobs may suck, the specifics of his situation, such as having lost his credit histoy, makes it hard to get a "normal" job.

And of course, these good friends he made over the last hour disappear from his life right after the coda--even the women who he falls head over heels in love with ("it just wouldn't work out").

First off, most of his clients cease to appear, often for good reason. The guy in the Cuban neighborhood that hired him to kick out the local gang, for example, cannot associate with him anymore, because as far as the gang knows, Michael's a psychotic thug that's taken over the area, and if they were to find out he and the shop owner were friends...things would go south. Even when they don't need to avoid Michael like the plague, there's no real reason for them to show up again. What for? To give him back up? Come on. And some minor characters DO make recurring appearances, such as Barry the money launderer, or Lucy, who runs the business he gets his first job from.

The hero comes off like a scoundrel, but you know he will ultimately make the selfless, heroic choice--even to the extent of keeping his karma clean by executing some overly complex scam to deal with the bad guys when he could just as easily exterminate them with a well-placed bullet or bomb. So basically, it's all the fun and unpredictability of rooting for the bad guy with none of the guilt, plus the comfort of knowing that the show's premise won't change on you because the hero's actions always result with him managing to just break even somehow.

Not really. He avoids killing and explosions because he likes not going to jail and drawing police notice, which I find rather sensible. It's not like it's a D&D town and he can justify the deaths with: "but they scanned as evil!" And he does rarely kill, or assist in killing. In the pilot, he shoots the two thugs in the bathroom (you can hear the pop of a silenced gun going off twice). In the episode where he's dealing with the hotel jewel theft, once his cover is blown, he has no qualms running out to save his own hide and leaving the guy he had strongarmed into helping set up the identity to die. Barry is even given one of that poor guy's jewelry pieces later as thanks for his help, as "

Spoiler

won't need it anymore." And in that episode dealing with the gang, he sets up an assassination within the organization, even if he himself doesn't carry it out, he still knows his hands are stained, and talks about it in the standard third person narrative role as the event occurs.
As for how the plans unfold, often times, things go wrong, and those plans need to be changed, which is nice to see. And the reason he needs cover IDs and plans and trickiness is because...the groups he goes up against can easily overpower him. In his words: "Bullets don't bounce off of my skin!" Also, several of the episodes involve the bad guys having hostages in one way or another, making direct force not really viable.

Bottom line: cute, nostalgic show with interchangeable episodes, comfy in its unambitiousness.

I'm sorry you feel that way. I think this show does a pretty darned good job of providing reasons for why everything that's done is done, instead of the "more intuitive" shoot, shoot, and shoot some more.

 

[Crothian]

It is rare to see two people like a show and still have one argue point by point why one person's reasons for liking it are wrong.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Great show! I find it a combination of a lot of shows over the years, The Prisioner for concept but almost every PI show, Magnum being first one that comes to mind.

I like it because of the cast, they work well together.

 

[Villano]

my impression is that it's a charming throwback to shows like Rockford Files or Magnum PI,

A guy who worked for the government is accused of a crime he didn't commit. He now earns a living helping other people, all the while trying to clear his own name.

It's The A-Team!

Michael is Hannibal (the thoughtful leader).
Sam is Faceman (the ladies' man).
Fiona is B.A. Baracus (the violent one).
And Michael's mom is "Howling Mad" Murdock (the crazy one who complicates things).

See, it makes perfect sense.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

It is rare to see two people like a show and still have one argue point by point why one person's reasons for liking it are wrong.

Heh, it sure is.

 

[catsclaw227]

I really, really enjoy this show, but sadly I always forget when it's on. I've missed pretty much the entire recap of the first season that they've been doing as a lead-in to season 2, and to date have only seen a handful of episodes.

This is why my DVR gets so much love.

 

[catsclaw227]

And I also love this show. I've been keeping tabs on it, love that it will be running on USA-HD now, and is a good example of the shows coming out of USA Network lately.

Psych and In Plain Sight are pretty good too.

 

[Felon]

How so? The main plotline carries throug every episode.....

Snip lots of supposed rebuttals that don't really rebutt anything I've said.

I'm not sure why you think explaining the show's contrivances on a case-by-case basis somehow undermines an analysis of the the show's formula. MacGyver always had a good reason why he had to design helicopters out of supply-closet odds and ends, and the guys on C.H.I.P.S. always had a reason to get into a high-speed care chase with a requisite twenty-car-pile-up. It's like a guy who comes to work late every day but always has a great explanation; you can explain away individual instances, but when a pattern develops, it's self-evidencing. Are the plots episodic? Yes. Does he risk his life for strangers for completely inadequate compensation? Indeed. Does the show try to portray the guy as an antihero without him doing anything really nasty? Sure.

I'm sorry you feel that way.

Nothing to feel sorry for. The show's good for what it is: the kind of disposable light fare that's designed to do well in syndication. It's not the kind of show that's constantly trying to top itself; it's got some basic rules and a format. It's not going to have powerful story arcs. It might have the occasional "classic" episode that stands out from the pack, but for the most part it'll be like A-Team or Dukes of Hazard or Monk or the aforementioned Rockford Files, with all of the episodes sort of blending together so that they aren't really memorable individually.

 

[Felon]

A guy who worked for the government is accused of a crime he didn't commit. He now earns a living helping other people, all the while trying to clear his own name.

It's The A-Team!

Yeah, I wanted to say the same thing, but didn't feel like defending the comparison to anyone who wanted to focus on the differences.