Is It Worth Seeing How Burn Notice Ends?
Show: Burn Notice
Premiered: Summer 2007
Why Was It Made? Though there had been lots of TV series by then that portrayed the exciting, dramatic, seemingly superhuman skills of spies of all sorts, the idea of a protagonist who wasn't infallible -- whose failure, in fact, was basically the premise of the series -- was novel. And thus did a nation fall in love with Jeffrey Donovan's (early) John McClane-esque Michael Westen.
Why Did I Stop Watching? Despite its clever premise, it eventually turned into just another USA procedural-lite, and at the end of Season 3, I got bored and bailed.
Why Give It Another Shot? If you send me a screener of a show I used to watch with "FINAL SEASON" emblazoned across the front, I'm going to be curious. So good job, USA!
What Aspects Of The Latest Episode Would Seem To Invite Further Viewing? Though the "Previously On" segment at the top of the episode obviously ran down lots of stuff from the past three seasons that I hadn't seen -- plus the murder of Michael's brother Nate (Seth Peterson), which I did -- the good thing about Burn Notice is that it pretty much resets every season, so I didn't feel like it was going to be hard to keep up once the episode proper started. Also, Michael's new CIA handler (yes, he's back in the CIA, after making a deal in the Season 6 finale to save all his buddies) is played by the great Jack Coleman and his new target is played by Adrian Pasdar. Heroes reunion from when Heroes was still good!
What Aspects Of The Latest Episode Discourage Further Viewing? Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar) is still terrible, her face is still weird, and the opening credits still features a clip of her with the Irish accent she weirdly dropped early in Season 1. Also, I always enjoyed the Michael's spycraft exposi-narration, but now he does it over scenes he's not even in?!
Final Verdict: I'm kind of on the fence! I'm not adding it to the DVR quite yet, but is summer, so if I find that I don't have enough stuff to watch and that my options are adding this or reading...well, sorry, books.