USA's 'Burn Notice' Returns

USA Network’s Burn Notice, one of the best shows on television, returns tonight at 10 EDT. The espionage comedy-drama features Jeffrey Donovan as a fired CIA agent–the “burn notice” of the title refers to his termination, which continually threatens to take on the unpleasant, deadly, espionage connotation of the latter term.

Joining Donovan’s character, Michael Westen, in helping him to get by without an identity (which was taken away by the spy agency upon his termination), avoid being killed by his former employers, and make a meager living helping people menaced by various villains, are ex-girlfriend and superspy Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar) and buddy Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell), a former super-agent, “all-around Cold Warrior” (as the USA Network PR description charmingly puts it), and current FBI informant.

The series harks back appealingly to a long tradition of adventurous do-gooders operating outside the law, such as Erle Stanley Gardner’s Lester Leith and the ’80s TV show The Equalizer, while revitalizing the espionage genre with a much-needed dose of panache and high spirits.

The broadcast networks have been putting out mostly gloomy, dank crime dramas for a full decade now, and that style has largely run its course. Burn Notice should appeal strongly to audiences looking for a fresher, more positive approach that doesn’t deny the less pleasant aspects of human nature.

The program is innovative in another way. With “how to” shows being so popular on television, it was only a matter of time before somebody created a narrative fiction form of the series. Burn Notice is exactly that, right down to having a voice-over narrator fill us in on how it all works.

What “it” is that the show teaches us is how to dispense of confidence tricksters, mobsters, and other such miscreants.

Westen has been set adrift in Miami with no money and no way of making a legitimate living, his identity having been destroyed by his erstwhile employers. Under the watchful eye of the FBI, he tries to find out who put the burn notice on him and why, in hopes of having it reversed.

In the meantime, Westen helps people who are in trouble and cannot get help from the authorities. In one episode, for example, he protected a single mom from a Colombian drug trafficker who wanted her dead so that she could not testify against him in an assault trial. In another episode, he foiled some identity thieves who were preying on old people.

Westen uses his spy training to defeat the villains, all of whom are apt to resort to violence when their schemes are threatened. As a former spy, however, Westen is very skilled at both armed and unarmed combat, and he uses it well when necessary. His real gift, however, is at planning. In each episode he creates a scheme that lures the villains into not only incriminating themselves but also ensuring an additional benefit.

In the case of the drug trafficker, who is directly responsible for numerous deaths, Westen’s counter scheme results in the drug dealer’s execution by the dealer’s own associates. In the case of the identity thieves, Westen tricks their leader into providing him with their bank account numbers so that he can clean out their accounts and return the money to those from whom it was stolen.

That episode, “Identity,” is strongly reminiscent of Erle Stanley Gardner’s excellent Lester Leith stories. That’s a huge compliment, and Burn Notice gives the spy genre some of the panache and optimism evident in the Leith stories (and rather lacking from NBC’s My Own Worst Enemy). Donovan, last seen in the USA Network series Touching Evil, appears much more comfortable in this role than in the previous program, and his ability at comedy is used to great effect here. Anwar, Campbell, and Sharon Gless anchor the supporting cast with strong comic performances that also work well in the dramatic moments.

But the real attraction of the show is the plots. Combining the complexity of the schemes in the old Mission Impossible TV series with the benevolent, sticking-up-for-the-underdog spirit of The Equalizer, the plots are pleasing both to the aesthetic sense and the moral one.

In addition, the program’s prominent theme of the breakdown of legitimate authority in American society is a perennial one, having provided the foundation for vigilante fictions for more than a century. Its particular, unusual mix of old and new elements makes Burn Notice both new and interesting as a new season begins.