Burn Notice: Devil You Know

Creator Matt Nix wrote and directed last night’s third season finale of Burn Notice. He did an excellent job on the latter duty, especially since he has only directed one other episode in the show’s run. The writing was mostly solid too, but more than a couple of things left me scratching my head rather vigorously (at least until my scalp got sore, then I stopped).

The episode picks up right after last week’s. Gilroy, after hoodwinking Michael and succeeding in diverting the plane with the mysterious prisoner, was double-crossed and killed by the aforementioned mysterious prisoner. How a prisoner on a maximum security transport plane managed to get a gun and shoot a devious black ops psycho like Gilroy and then attach a bomb to him is one of my head-scratchers. Maybe we’re not meant to know. Maybe the point is that all we need to know is that this mysterious prisoner—who we learned is named Simon—is even more formidable than Gilroy. Simon is played by Garret Dillahunt, who I swear to God has played a villain in just about every show and movie released in the last couple of years, including Life, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, The Road, Damages, White Collar, CSI, and Lie To Me…I’m almost sick of him.

Michael dodges the explosion that eviscerates Gilroy and takes off on foot, the cops hot on his trail. He gets away on a jet ski…and yet, immediately after, Feds show up at Michael’s loft and at Maddie’s house, demanding that she deliver Michael to them. How do they know who Michael is if they didn’t catch him? Cops just saw some random white guy running away. I mean granted, the people who burned Michael did withdraw their protection of him at the end of season two, and a local cop named Paxson was after him at the beginning of this season, so it’s likely that Michael is on some local law enforcement lists…but it still seemed a little flimsy to me. Head-scratcher #2.

Michael regroups with Sam and Fiona at their “emergency emergency spot.” Michael thinks that Simon (whoever he is) must have had some local explosives expert in Miami help him set up the bomb that took out Gilroy (though again, how a guy stuck in a deep prison in Poland could set all this stuff up in Miami is hard to believe). Fiona volunteers to use her many connections to help track the bombmaker down in hopes that if they find him, they can find Simon.

Except Michael doesn’t have to find Simon, because Simon finds him. He lures Michael to a local tv store by blowing up an adjacent food stand and then displaying Michael’s mug on all the tv screens in the front display of the store. Michael walks in and sees even more tv screens. These screens have images of past operations that, Simon explains, he was responsible for. The catch: apparently, the people who burned Michael transferred all of the incidents from Simon’s file to Michael’s. They determined Simon was a loose cannon and locked him up, and gave his reputation to Michael so that they could burn Michael in hopes of recruiting him to come work for their nefarious organization.

I think. I think that’s what the deal is. But I gotta tell you, it’s driving me crazy at this point that we have no idea who these burnmasters (yes, I’ve decided that is a word) really are and what they are grooming Michael for. I hope Matt Nix and his team give us some answers sooner rather than later and don’t emulate the ridiculously amorphous and underdeveloped dastardly organizations that are an unfortunate hallmark of NBC’s Chuck.

At any rate, Michael understandably wants to slam Simon back in…well, the slammer. The problem is that Simon has set up another bomb, this one in a hotel. If Michael doesn’t follow his instructions, he’ll detonate and kill a whole bunch of innocent souls. Simon wants Michael to get “Management,” the people who burned the both of them, back into Miami to have a little chat. “Management,” is once again represented by Frasier’s dad…er, ah, I mean John Mahoney. So once again, Michael has to play ball with a lunatic. I have to say, though, that Gilroy was a much more charismatic baddie than Simon. Maybe it was the accent. Dillahunt was better on Life.

There was a rooftop escape that involved a way too convenient garbage chute, but plenty of highlights make up for it. Some of them include: Sam and Fiona driving their car through the bombmaker’s house, defusing the hotel bomb, Michael swimming for his life and breaking into his own loft, flipping cars, a helicopter explosion, and finally, an inventive, brutal, and surprisingly bloody fight scene between Michael and Simon that showcases Jeffrey Donovan’s considerable choreography skills. Fiona doesn’t have a great deal to do, but Sharon Gless has some of her most intense scenes yet, and she nails them.

The cliffhanger is the darkest and perhaps most puzzling season ender yet. Part of me is happily impressed and intrigued by it, while another part is pissed that I have to wait another three months to see what happened.

Season 3, Episode 16: Devil You Know (Originally aired March 4, 2010)

For more on Burn Notice, click here.

Thursdays at 10/9c on USA

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Glenn Watson.

Chuck Vs. The Fake Name

If any one of the people who read my last Chuck review and dreamed of roasting me on a spit, save yourself the aggravation and stop reading now. Because the show hasn’t gotten any better and, consequently, I don’t have many nice things to say.

We open with a gratuitous shot of Ellie’s nimrod Significant Other Devon/Captain Awesome doing hanging sit ups while shirtless. They are having a conversation about why Chuck hasn’t told Ellie about Hannah. Okay, fine. But why do we have to gaze upon this shirtless monkey at the same time? Are we supposed to worship his abs? Are shirtless scenes written into this actor’s contract? Later on in the episode, we get to see Superman reject Brandon Routh shirtless and shower-steamy. Why? I guess because little Brandon is hunky and that’s why he was hired! Personally, I still think he looks like he’s about twelve years old.

Ellie goes to confront Chuck at his apartment. She lets herself in (I guess she still has a key since it used to be her apartment). She hears the shower running, so what does she do? She starts talking about Sarah and how she’s glad Chuck is moving on and all this intimate, personal stuff. Obviously, you know that Chuck isn’t really in the shower. So out steps Hannah. Cue the awkward conversation and meet-and-greet!

Honestly, if you have to talk about personal things with someone, who is going to just blurt it all out while that person is supposedly in the shower? No one would do that. A real person would wait until the other person got out of the shower, or leave and come back later. And, for the sake of argument, let’s just say I’m wrong. Let’s say someone would feel comfortable bringing up those things outside a shower door…Ellie, a grown woman, is going to talk to her grown brother about his love life while he is in the shower? Creepy. If my sister tried to talk to me about anything while I was in the shower, I’d turn the water off, get dressed, and punch her in the face.

This scene encapsulates my huge problem with this show. This scene only exists to develop the plot. It exists only so that Chuck can become aware that Ellie knows about Hannah and to set up more conflict. Ellie, as a character, acts the way she does in this scene to facilitate the plot. That’s not how it is supposed to work. Character should dictate plot, not vice versa.

Meanwhile, Sarah and Shaw are having lunch. She tells him that she doesn’t want to see him outside of work because she needs to break the pattern of getting involved with her spy coworkers. Okay, not a bad idea…but then why did she ever lead Shaw on in the first place? Again, to create conflict for the plot. Shaw takes it rather well, but lunch doesn’t end there, because the two of them are actually on a mission. They abduct a sniper assassin baddie named Rafe Gruber (a Die Hard shout out?).

Rafe was recently wired $1 million by The Ring to do some nefarious deed, and they want to figure out what it is. Because guys like Rafe stay out of the limelight, not many people know who he is. So they decide that the best way to figure out who Rafe’s target is is for someone to take his place. The perfect guy for the job is Casey (he even says so). But because Chuck is the lead character, he gets the gig.

Zachary Levi provides one of the only laughs through his imitation of Rafe’s gruff, tough guy voice. With his impression down pat and his hair slicked back, Chuck assumes Rafe’s identity and answers Rafe’s Ring phone. He gets instructions to go meet these hammy mob wiseguys, and they will tell him who his target is. Okay, if The Ring is this super-secret, super-powerful rogue’s gallery, why are they relying on middle-aged mafiosos? Why don’t they just tell Rafe over the phone who his target is? They’ve already paid him, so why…ugh. Never mind. It’s not worth it.

Even though the mob scene where Chuck has to convince that he’s Rafe isn’t logically justified, it is entertaining. Chuck brings Casey along as his associate, but one of the guys recognizes him as a sniper he served in the military with named Alexander Coburn (one of Casey’s previous aliases no doubt). Served with…this wiseguy has to have twenty years on Casey, when would they have served together? At any rate, Chuck has to pretend to beat up and torture Casey as the imposter that he is in order to save the two of them. It’s like the great opening scene of In the Line of Fire.

It’s interesting to see Chuck put into this precarious position, where he has to hurt someone he cares about in order to save him. It worsens the dilemma he is already having with Sarah. Sarah has been worried all season about seeing Chuck become a spy like she is. She doesn’t want to see someone so sweet and innocuous learn how to make a living lying to himself and the ones that he loves. That’s why she tried to get him to run away with her.

Pointless B storylines include the Buy More employees (minus Morgan, who is conveniently away for no reason) cooking gumbo in the store and Chuck inviting Ellie and her nimrod over for dinner with him and Hannah. The climax of the episode is affecting enough and reveals the secret of Sarah’s real name. Zachary Levi and Yvonne Strahovski do fine work. Casey saves the day in the nick of time in a cool way that reveals something exciting about his character…and then he verbally explains what the reveal is after the fact. Just in case it was too subtle for viewers to understand. More cringe-worthy relationship woes follow. Color me disinterested.

Season 3, Episode 8: Chuck vs The Fake Name (originally aired March 1, 2010)

For more on Chuck, click here.

Mondays at 8/7C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal.

Burn Notice: Good Intentions, Great Episode

Both Michael and Fiona get in over their heads in this intricate and tightly-ratcheted penultimate episode of the season. The stakes are a little higher, the action is a little more frantic, and the explosions are a little bit bigger. It’s just about a perfect hour of television, effortlessly fun and entertaining, with the production values of a big-budget feature and rock solid performances.

Michael meets in an isolated location with Gilroy but brings Sam along for a little sniper backup. Unfortunately, Sam can’t be much help when Michael gets in Gilroy’s car and goes for a jaunt with him. I guess sometimes you have no choice but to go cruising with a psychopath. They go to a nice friendly spot: a white supremacist militia training compound/weapons cache. Gilroy wants Michael to buy a .50 caliber machine gun from them and gives him a metal case full of money. The case comes in handy when the baddies try to jump Michael and take his money. After some close-quartered combat goodness, Michael makes his getaway and learns that Gilroy set Michael up to be a distraction while he stole the actual gun. Jackass. The goons unload on them as they speed away, but fortunately Gilroy’s vehicle of choice is armor plated. I gotta get me one of those.

Michael returns to his loft but before he can even enjoy a nice yogurt, Sam gets on his back for getting in the car with Gilroy and Fiona follows suit because Michael didn’t return her recent calls (he was a little busy). Because Fiona is scarier, Michael pays a bit more attention to her. She wanted Michael to aid her in a job involving a “harmless weasel” named Coleman (played by Jonathan LaPaglia, younger brother to Anthony and the former star of an awesome time traveling show called Seven Days). He agrees to pay Fiona well, but wants her to commit to the job before he tells her what it is. Yeah, call me crazy, but that seems awfully sketchy.

Coleman gives her an envelope containing a cool $10,000 and takes her to meet his boss, Gabriel. Having bugged her phone prior to the meeting, Sam listens to all of this with apprehension. He now has two friends getting involved in ways they shouldn’t with psychopaths they don’t know enough about. “I gotta get some new friends,” he laments to himself.

Gabriel is a very serious fellow that immediately starts putting Fiona through tests to see if she is on the level. In tests like these, you either pass or get dead. The most enjoyable of these tests involves watching Fiona strip a Beretta and put it back together in under a minute while inflicting pain on a goon trying to stop her. She passes with flying colors, but she’s still in over her head. On more than one occasion, Sam and Michael have to scramble to save her life, and Gabriel has dug into her past more than she would have liked. He knows all about her IRA days and strikes a nerve when he brings up her murdered sister. Gabrielle Anwar is very good in these scene, which is especially powerful because we almost never see anyone have an edge over Fiona.

We eventually learn that Gabriel is after a computer chip company called Apex that moved into his town in Argentina and dumped toxic waste into the water that killed Gabriel’s young daughter. He kidnapped one of their lead scientists and is holding him for ransom…holding him with no intention of ever returning him, even though the scientist also has a young daughter. He also plans to kidnap Apex’s lawyer/negotiator head honcho. Fiona has to earn Gabriel’s trust so that she can stop him.

Michael, meanwhile, still has his hands full with Gilroy. He knows the plane with the mysterious prisoner is soon coming from Argentina, but he has to figure out how Gilroy fits in, what he plans to do with the .50 caliber, and how to stop him. There’s a fairly dramatic twist involving Gilroy at the very end of the episode that comes after a series of awesome infernos and explosions. Sharon Gless is only in a couple of scenes, but she certainly makes her presence welcome by providing solid comic relief. The upcoming finale promises to be a wildly exciting end to a near-perfect season.

Season 3, Episode 15: Good Intentions (Originally aired February 25, 2010)

For more on Burn Notice, click here.

Thursdays at 10/9c on USA

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and IMDbPro.

Chuck: Q&A with Zachary Levi and Joshua Gomez

It’s exceedingly hard not to like Zachary Levi and Joshua Gomez. During the Chuck teleconference I participated in with them, I learned that they are as charming and affable in real life as they are on the screen. They answered a host of questions with warmth and enthusiasm, although the NBC brass severely censored them on what they could and couldn’t say about the second half of the third season, which begins next week.

They were able to confirm that Scott Bakula will return for the final episodes of the season, and a surprise visit will be made by Geek Hall of Fame godfather Christopher Lloyd. People asked about how involved they were with the Twittering (or is it Tweeting?) and online games/fan campaigns for the show. They said not really, which I found refreshing. TV shooting schedules are brutal, and I can certainly understand that any modicum of free time Zachary Levi has he would prefer to spend not in the Chuck universe. Both Levi and Gomez did however voice considerable appreciation and reverence for the rabid fanbase (some of which I have angrily prodded in my recent reviews of the show) that has kept the show going until now.

I wanted to ask how the budget cuts they were forced to make in filming the third season has affected their work, but alas it was not to be. One caller brought up a potential continuity error in the show that dealt with how Chuck responds to the new Intersect. One of the main throughlines of the season thus far has been Sarah telling Chuck that, now that he is a full-fledged spy, he has to learn to control his emotions in order to his job. It seems that mostly, the Intersect only works when Chuck is calm and in control. But there was an episode that had Chuck and Sarah held captive in separate rooms by baddies, and Chuck got the Intersect to work (and then deployed some awesome martial arts badassery) by frantically worrying about what would happen to Sarah if he didn’t save her. So in that instance, Chuck got the Intersect to work precisely by not controlling his emotions.

It was quite enjoyable and revealing to hear Levi attempt to answer the question. He basically said that it wasn’t something that he could answer—though he acknowledged the validity of the question—because, as an actor, there are certain parts of the show that he is not involved with. He may be the star, but like any tv actor, how his character develops and how the show proceeds is strictly in the hands of the showrunners. I sensed a certain devil-may-care attitude about his answer, as if he were saying that yeah, the Intersect inconsistency was a stupid mistake but that’s how things on this show just go sometimes. I think the guy is very smart and deserves higher-caliber writing to work with than he has received lately.

Several questions were asked about how Morgan and Chuck’s relationship was going to change and evolve given the whole Hannah romance triangle debacle. Both actors insisted that Chuck and Morgan would not break up and that they would eventually become closer than ever. Hmm. Levi also promised that, though he has not yet read the series finale, he knows that the episode will wrap up the series satisfactorily should it not be renewed for a fourth season. I think that possibility is more than likely at this point.

Also of note: Levi directed an upcoming episode, his directorial debut on the show. He is very proud of it and it looks to be a key game-changing event when it airs in a couple of weeks. At any rate, I wish Levi and Gomez well and I am cautiously optimistic that the latter half of the season will bring the show to a satisfying conclusion.

For more on Chuck, click here.

Mondays at 8/7C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal, Chris Haston, and IMDbPro.

Burn Notice: Q&A with Jeffrey Donovan and Gabrielle Anwar

My second conference call—this time with Burn Notice stars Jeffrey Donovan and Gabrielle Anwar—was an improvement over my first. I actually got to ask a question, though this was after the AT&T automatons mispronounced my last name. And then they cut me off while I was starting to ask the follow-up question that I was promised and that everyone else on the line seemed to get. Happenstance? I think not. Nefarious conspiracy masterminded by an evil society of soulless, corporate, degenerate energy vampires determined to destroy me at all costs? I think yes. I swear to god, it would not surprise me to find that the AT&T forces on the other end of the line were stroking white cats while wearing gray tunics and laughing maniacally as they screwed me.

It was pretty surreal standing in the gray Boston drizzle talking to two stars I’ve watched and enjoyed for years. I mean I talked to Jeffrey Donovan, so brilliant in Touching Evil, and who worked for my idol Clint Eastwood on Changeling! I talked to Gabrielle Anwar, who danced the tango with Al frickin’ Pacino in Scent of a Woman! If I flunk out of Hollywood in the coming years and end up selling rum-filled coconuts to tourists in the tropics, I can always think “Hey, I once talked to two tv stars on the phone and tried not to sound like an imbecile!”

What did I ask? I asked if, after having three seasons under their belts, were they finding it easier or harder to play their characters, and were they facing any challenges now that they weren’t when the show started? Donovan said it was harder to do the stunts now that he’s getting older. That, of course, is a standard, self-effacing answer from the Star Playbook. He wasn’t serious; the guy has martial arts training up the wazoo, he’s barely over forty and he looks to be in great shape. Anwar mentioned something about worrying about not becoming boring onscreen. She’s in no danger of that, I tried to assure her.

I wish they had delved a little deeper into the question, and had they had the time, I’m sure they would have. I would think that in some ways, playing Michael Westen and Fiona Glenanne would be easier now because they know their characters and have spent a good chunk of time playing them. But I also think it would be harder to stay invested in the roles and continue to find layers to peel back and explore. I wanted to discuss less about the physical logistics of making the show and more about the psychology of creating and shaping a recurring character over an extended time period. But alas, it was not to be.

Neither was my follow-up question (did I mention that the robotic telephonic ghouls molested me?). Donovan is credited as a producer on nine Burn Notice episodes, and I wanted to ask what that job specifically entailed for him and what he got out of it. There’s a perception that when stars are credited as producers, it’s just a contract thing or a bone that the powers that be throw at them to make them feel more important. But I imagine that Donovan earns the credit and is heavily involved in putting the show together and shaping its direction.

Most of the questions asked were reasonable. People asked about plot points in upcoming episodes, and the stars dutifully explained that they weren’t at liberty to say. There was one guy who asked this fairly ridiculous, convoluted question that involved the actors using their characters’ skills at tactical analysis to analyze the characters themselves. Did that make any sense? If it didn’t, don’t worry. It didn’t make much sense to Donovan or Anwar. Donovan was a good sport and tried to produce an answer, while Anwar more or less refused to answer the question. It was pretty funny because she was honest, but from a professional standpoint, she could definitely learn a couple of things from Donovan about PR.

Someone asked who their dream guest star on the show would be. Anwar said Steve McQueen, which made her cool point quotient skyrocket in my book. Donovan explained to her that Steve was dead, and she replied that she didn’t know that the potential dream guest star had to be alive. Donovan said Angelina Jolie. Not as cool of a choice, but certainly understandable. I think he should get his Touching Evil co-star Vera Farmiga to come aboard. I’d also love to see Tom Selleck.

And speaking of Tom Selleck, Donovan at one point talked about Magnum P.I., recounting a specific episode and saying that he was a fan of the show. That made me giddy, because I have always loved Magnum P.I. and always saw Burn Notice as a descendant of it. He also talked about Moonlighting, in response to someone’s query about the nature of Michael and Fiona’s relationship on the show. The only time Moonlighting is ever really talked about now is in the context of a case study of how to ruin a tv show. The theory is that Moonlighting was doomed as soon as Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd got together (which I don’t think is true), and therefore, any show that is built on the romantic tension between two characters can never have them get together or else no one will have any reason to watch the show anymore. Trisha Huntsman wrote about this ongoing dilemma in her February 17^th article on Bones, a show completely built on the romantic chemistry of its two leads. The writers are doing everything they can to keep Booth and Brennan apart, which in my opinion is making the show stale and causing maybe more harm than if they got them together.

But Donovan made an interesting point, referring to Moonlighting as the typical tv romantic relationship, but describing Michael and Fiona’s relationship as atypical. Matt Nix said a similar thing last week. Their relationship is atypical, and therefore, more realistic. Michael and Fiona have consummated their romantic tension, they’ve loved each other, hated each other, pushed and pulled and fought and made up. They can never be together in a normal sense, but they seem to forever be drawn to each other. That makes for a much healthier dynamic and a much healthier show. Burn Notice always feels balanced. You’re not always waiting for some missing element to come into play.

The point is, is that Donovan knows his tv, and that’s refreshing. The other highlight? Someone asked if Donovan and Anwar would like to see Michael and Fiona action figures come to fruition and pointed out that plenty of other shows like Lost and Dexter have action figures. Donovan was hilariously shocked to learn that Dexter has an action figure. “He’s a serial killer! What, does he have a knife in his hand?” The guy asking the question assured him that it wasn’t a figure lining the shelves at Toys “R” Us but was for older, adult collectors. I’d make a crack here about guys over the age of twelve who collect action figures if I didn’t have eight or nine of them ceremoniously posed and displayed on top of the microwave in my apartment.

One final thing I would have liked to have asked Donovan: “Could you go beat the powers that be at USA network with a golf club until they apologize profusely for canceling Touching Evil in 2004 and get them to release the damn DVDs?”

On my next conference call, I’m going to use a fake name they can’t mispronounce like “Frank Lewis.”

For more on Burn Notice, click here.

Thursdays at 10/9c on USA

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal, Glenn Watson, and IMDbPro.

Burn Notice: Partners in Crime

Some guys take women to the beach, some take them to the movies, others take them to a farmers’ market…but Michael Westen takes Fiona to an ugly Polish military intelligence building. Fiona articulates that much to him, unhappily. They are there trying to scope out some more information on what Gilroy is after. As of last week, all Michael knows is that he is very interested in a flight starting from Chile, passing through Miami and ending up in Poland. Michael needs to figure out what the mysterious cargo is so he can intercept Gilroy from intercepting it. It’s a tough gig, this spy business.

Michael spots a guy named Conrad coming out of the business and figures him for an easy mark that he can turn to his advantage. He presents himself as a Russian businessman needing information about the flight (Conrad is half Russian), thinking he can appeal to Conrad as a fellow countryman. He figured wrong. It turns out that Conrad is a patriot who would never think of selling out Poland. He’s about to shoot Michael in the head when Fiona appears all ninja-like and smacks the bejesus out of him with her bluntly sexy shotgun. Michael is a lucky man.

Fiona agrees to help Michael find a new tactic for turning Conrad and getting the information he needs. Michael gratefully accepts, and all Fiona wants in return is a little mad money. To get this mad money, Michael gives in and offers to help Sam on a gig Sam has been trying to get Michael to take for some time. The job involves helping a pretty fashion mogul named Isabella find out who is stealing from her company. She offers to pay Sam and Michael $30,000. For Michael, the motivation is the money. For Sam, it’s all about having access to fashion models. One of the fun things about Burn Notice is how consistent the characters are.

Isabella believes that the culprit is her vice president Tim. Michael and Sam initially operate under this assumption, but when Isabella is murdered and Tim framed for the crime, they realize that they shouldn’t have listened to her. That Sam and Michael failed their beautiful client is indicative of some of the darker currents Matt Nix has been introducing into the third season. Of course, given the slickly fun format of the show, there is really never any danger that Michael will become an unlikable character. But I appreciate that Nix is at least trying to subvert Michael in safe but effective ways so as to keep him from becoming too predictable and unidirectional.

Sam and Michael quickly determine that the real killer is Isabella’s other business partner Damon, who gives a very devious and insincere eulogy at her funeral. Michael thinks on the fly and convinces Damon that he is yet another business partner of Isabella’s, one she didn’t talk about and for good reason: he and Isabella were starching heroin into her fabrics and shipping them all over, making $4 million a week. This same concept was revealed to be the baddies’ secret evil agenda in the terrible attempted Steven Seagal comeback vehicle Exit Wounds. This scheme appeals to Damon’s greed and lays the groundwork for Michael to find ways to incriminate Damon and his accomplice Ric in the murder. They also have to hide Tim from the cops until they can clear his name.

Fiona, meanwhile, poses as a CIA agent and goes to Conrad under the pretext that her agency is trying to take down the fictional Russian traitor that Michael played in the beginning. She continues to work on Conrad, telling him that there is a mole in his office and that he has to steal the flight cargo information for her so that she can keep it from the other baddies. You can tell that Fiona isn’t wholly comfortable deceiving an honest man, but it is for the greater good and she complies.

The episode features some standard surveillance work, a nifty Michael-jumping-onto-a-moving-truck escape scene, and some sniper rifle badassery. The real highlight though is seeing Bruce Campbell do a first-rate impression of David Caruso on CSI: Miami by playing a CSI forensic scientist with a penchant for saying sternly intense one-liners and whipping on his designer sunglasses. Campbell was better at being David Caruso than David Caruso is.

Season 3, Episode 14: Partners in Crime (Originally aired February 18, 2010)

For more on Burn Notice, click here.

Thursdays at 10/9c on USA

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Glenn Watson

Burn Notice: Q&A with Matt Nix

This morning, I got to participate in a conference call with Matt Nix, the creator and showrunner of USA’s hit Burn Notice, now halfway through its third season. After enduring twelve minutes of listening to insipid muzak waiting for the damn thing to start, Matt came on the line (everyone called him Matt as if we were all longtime close chums) and the slightly creepy PhoneLand Moderator Automatons moderated all of the questions. Since technology has always hated me (I’m not a complete Luddite I swear), naturally I didn’t get to ask my question.

I was going to ask if there were any plans to do a flashback episode showing Michael when he was a globetrotting spy, before he got burned. I think that would be a really cool idea, because we’d get to see Michael operating out of Miami and in a very different geopolitical context. We’d get to see how he became the cool-fire, noble hero he is today. But I didn’t get to ask my question, so unless Matt thinks of it (or has thought of it) on his own, we’ll never see that episode. I’ll bet Matt has thought about it though, because he seemed like a really smart, savvy guy.

He talked about all the right things—thematics, character arcs, evolving relationships, plans for the future, etc. There’s a reason why every episode of Burn Notice always feels smooth and polished and that reason is Matt Nix. He wrote the right pilot (although his original concept for the show was much darker and was set in Newark I think) and put together the right cast and a great crew. Unlike a lot of show creators that soon hand off the major duties to writing teams and supervising producers, this guy clearly still plays a very active role.

Matt was also a good sport and answered all questions, including some very stupid ones. One guy asked if they cast Chris Vance, who plays baddie Gilroy, because he looks like Dougray Scott, the bad guy from Mission: Impossible 2 (he was also supposed to play Wolverine before Hugh Jackman but Mission: Impossible 2 ran over-schedule). Matt’s answer: um…no…Then, get this: someone, completely serious, asked if Sam and Michael’s mother Madeline were ever going to get romantically involved! I nearly wet my pants when I heard that. Madeline is twenty years older than Sam; she’s the mother of his best friend. No one in their right mind who watched the show would ever imagine them as a couple. Matt referred to the idea as really creepy. I think that’s an understatement. If I were Matt, I would have ended the call right then and there.

The rest was pretty much what you would expect. He promised some strong guest spots coming up and hinted that later on in the season, Gilroy’s relationship with Michael will change in a really unexpected way. Can’t wait for that. Hopefully I’ll get to ask a question the next time this thing comes around. If anyone has anything they’d like me to ask in case the opportunity arises, let me know below. Just try not to be a moron who asks creepy and insane questions.

For more on Burn Notice, click here.

Thursdays at 10/9c on USA

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal, Justin Stephens, and Joe Pugliese.

Burn Notice: Enemies Closer

Last night’s Burn Notice marked the return of Michael’s twisted former associate Larry, one of the key factors that made it the best episode of the winter so far. Larry, as played by Tim Matheson, is a wonderfully malicious character that forces Michael to go to a darker, more violent place. Usually Michael is cool as ice, so when he starts to come unglued it’s all the more riveting to watch.

Larry shows up uninvited at Michael’s loft, much to Michael’s dismay. Larry has however been productive during his break-in: he killed a guy who was there to kill Michael. Of course, that would be more impressive if Larry wasn’t the cause for that guy wanting to kill Michael. See, Larry got back to town and used Michael’s name while he was stealing $2 million from Colombian gangsters/money laundering baddies. So now, like it or not, Michael and Larry are intertwined until they can neutralize these degenerates.

Naturally, Michael enlists Sam and Fiona to help him, but they become more and more reluctant the more Larry inserts himself. Fiona especially is distressed, because she sees the side of Michael that Larry brings out, and she realizes that she has more in common with Larry than she would like. Michael’s plan involves convincing the Colombian head honcho that Michael didn’t rob him, but rather, it was an inside job. We get all the usual espionage misdirection tactics and a cool pool/mattress/plunge escape scene…but the real highlight is the darkness that Larry brings to the proceedings.

Larry is so different from Michael, he’s completely amoral and self-concerned, and you can tell that Michael hates having been associated with him during his spy days. The fact that Michael worked with Larry for three years opens up really interesting narrative possibilities. Was Michael always the patriot that we have known him to be, or did he used to be less virtuous? At some point I would love to have a flashback episode that shows us Michael as he was when he was still a spy.

On the family front, Michael’s brother Nate returns unexpectedly. As if Nate weren’t handful enough, he shows up married! To a card dealer he met in Vegas! This would almost seem like a cliché, except for the fact that it seems exactly like something Nate would do, based on all we have seen from him. The woman is a flake that doesn’t eat protein and is allergic to cucumbers. To make matters worse, they start pushing really hard for Madeline to come live with them in Vegas, away from Michael and all of his explosive situations. Madeline is less than receptive to this idea.

The other big highlight of the episode is an emotional one: a blow-up between Michael and Sam. Gilroy asked Michael to obtain six weeks of flight data. Michael knows that Gilroy is looking for a specific flight, and giving him all of that information makes him nervous…but he knows that he has to keep building his relationship with Gilroy if he wants to eventually take him down and see how he fits into the scheme of who burned him. Michael asks Sam for help and tells him to get a temp job through one of his Coast Guard buddies in order to get the information.

Sam is reluctant because it puts him and his Coast Guard friend on the line. He agrees initially, but after he gets all the data, Sam figures out what flight it is that Gilroy wants and gives it to Michael to give to Gilroy. Michael tells Sam that he needs all of the flights because that’s what Gilroy asked for. Sam, in a rare moment of forcefulness, tells Michael that he won’t give him anything and won’t help him with anything else until Michael “gets his head out of his ass.”

Bruce Campbell is great in that scene, and the fact that Sam is usually the easygoing wingman makes his actions here all the more dramatic. There are several good, meaty scenes between Michael, Sam and Fiona, and that I’m all for.

Season 3, Episode 13: Enemies Closer (Originally aired February 11, 2010)

For more on Burn Notice, click here.

Thursdays at 10/9c on USA

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Glenn Watson

Chuck Sucks

I know, I know. It’s an obvious title that sounds mean and superior, but truly, that’s the thought that just kept echoing through my head over and over and over again as I watched this episode. I acknowledge that Chuck has a fan base and I respect that. I have enjoyed the show off and on, though to be fair, more off than on. But I’m hoping even the fans will agree with me that this was a really piss-poorly written and actually infuriating episode.

We open with a masked operative descending a harness into a big round vault while trying to grab some big golden mask and not set off the alarms. This is obviously a reference to the famous vault sequence in Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible that has Tom Cruise trying to steal files off the computer of some bigwig in Langley without sweating or touching the floor. But is it funny simply to reference a famous scene? Should the writers get points simply for paying homage to Mission: Impossible? I say no. I say it’s only worth referencing a famous scene if you are going to subvert it in some clever way. That’s not the case here; they don’t do anything fun or funny with it.

When said masked operative cocks up the theft, I naturally assumed it was Chuck on another training mission. But, back by popular demand, it’s actually Shaw! Good work, buddy. The air starts getting sucked out of the vault chamber that Shaw finds himself trapped in, so with no alternative, he calls Casey to ask Chuck for help.

Chuck is working his day job at the Buy More and is being asked something else by Hannah. She wants to go with him on his next computer install thingy so she can learn the ropes. Of course, being that the Buy More is totally beneath her and she only took the job to get close to Chuck after having one magical encounter with him on an airplane, she doesn’t really need to learn any ropes. Actually, since we’re on the topics of ropes and Hannah, I wonder if she’d be up for me showing her the ropes and then wrapping them around her throat and sucking the life right out of her? I can’t think of a better use for her character than that.

Sorry, back on track. Sarah arrives and whisks Chuck away so that he can help with the whole Shaw situation. Of course if Chuck just let Shaw complete the process of suffocation and left Hannah with me, we could kill two birds…er, ah, I mean useless characters…with one stone. Alas, Chuck is too noble and goes to save the moron. His sudden bolt from the Buy More raises more suspicion with Hannah and, especially, Morgan. As of last week, Morgan and Ellie are convinced Chuck is hiding something from them and are determined to figure it out.

Chuck arrives at the museum site where Shaw be a-dyin’. Casey tells Chuck to override the server so that the vault will open and Shaw can get out. At the museum control center, Chuck encounters the curator, who wants Chuck to fix the computer problems they are having. Guess who shows up? Hannah! She followed Chuck thinking he was on an install. So now Chuck has to save Shaw without tipping Hannah off that he’s a secret agent man. Okay, that’s a workable setup with comic possibilities. The two of them pull it off and the overjoyed curator hires them to come back the next night to watch over the computers and make sure nothing bad happens during the unveiling of the “Mask of Alexander.” This is the mask that Shaw is trying to steal. Why? Because it’s a McGuffin, that’s why! The highlight of this whole scene was me realizing that the actor that plays the curator is the same guy who played the South African diplomat Danny Glover and Joe Pesci harass in a hilarious scene from Lethal Weapon 2. Come to think of it, that was the highlight of the whole episode for me.

From here it’s all about Chuck trying to do the mission stuff at the museum while keeping Hannah at bay. This becomes harder to do when she puts the moves on him big time. Chuck doesn’t seem to mind.

The one cool thing in the whole episode: a pretty nifty wire gag/fight involving Sarah. Everything else was terrible. Yes, I just made a blanket statement but I’m right. I swear. Now look, even though they often make me nauseous, I get that romance subplots are going to come up in virtually any show. I guess everyone wants to see romance except me. But I can deal with it when it is done well. But when romantic triangles or (deformed quadrangles in this case) are pulled out of thin air and slapped together just to keep the two leads apart for the sake of conflict, that really honks me off.

Why is Chuck all over Hannah when he’s still in love with Sarah? What the hell? And even more insane, Sarah inexplicably, like at the flip of a switch, falls for Shaw. Shaw is a bland, loser character played by a bland, loser actor whose chances of ever playing Superman again have dwindled even further now that Warner Bros. has gotten on their knees and begged Christopher Nolan to reinvent the franchise like he did so brilliantly with Batman (he’s not directing Superman, just supervising thank God). Shaw and Sarah have spent virtually no time together, he wasn’t even in last week’s episode, and she has been cold toward him since they met. Now, just because at one point during these ridiculous proceedings it looked like they were going to die together they fall in love? Let’s review: Sarah was ready to throw her career away and go on the run from the U.S. government (or at least Chuck’s version of the U.S. government) to be with Chuck. Then, earlier this season, she saw the taped footage of Chuck explaining why he didn’t go with her and professing his love for her and she started crying.

So now why the hell is she all lovey dovey with Shaw? And why are she and Chuck talking and encouraging each other to go be with their other respective losers when they clearly still have feelings for each other? There is no real reason for these two to be apart right now. There is no Bryce Larkin. They didn’t not get together because of another lover in the way. They didn’t get together because Chuck wouldn’t run away with Sarah and she thought it was a personal rejection. Now that she knows that it wasn’t and they are still working together, what exactly is the reason they can’t be together?

I’m not saying they should be together, because obviously I understand the adage about a show dying once the two leads consummate. I acknowledge that they should be kept apart, but find a better reason than this. This is just ridiculously stupid. You have to build relationships, you can’t just suddenly slap together drastic developments as if you were making a bologna sandwich and hope everything sticks. And, as if it wasn’t bad enough that these completely forced relationships came together in the first place, literally the last several minutes of the episode consists solely of cutting back and forth between Chuck & Hannah and Sarah & Shaw putting the moves on each other. Back and forth, back and forth. A little kissing here, a little rubbing there…did you get that? Did you see that these new couples have been formed? I don’t know, maybe we should cut to another shot of the exact same thing for emphasis!

Are the Keebler Elves writing these episodes while eating sugar pops and puffing the magic dragon? That’s the only logical explanation I can think of for any of this to be happening.

Season 3, Episode 7: Chuck vs The Mask (originally aired February 8, 2010)

For more on Chuck, click here.

Mondays at 8/7C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal.

Cuddy’s House

Last night’s House took advantage of Lisa Edelstein’s considerable charm and talent in an episode that blissfully broke the medical mystery formula and focused solely on a day in the life of Cuddy. Some people might venture to call it a filler episode designed to take the production burden off Hugh Laurie and cut costs, but even if all that were true, I was still rather stunned by it. In fact, I’d almost go so far as to call it revolutionary. Network television is all about repetition these days, which isn’t always a bad thing. But when you spend so many hours a week watching variations on the same formula over and over again, it’s hard not to start feeling numb towards the characters as the whodunit/what’s the mystery this time format subsumes them.

This episode felt so wonderfully, briskly fresh for being different. There were no patients dying of mysterious, impossibly obscure illnesses, but the emotional stakes were as high and enthralling as they have ever been. I give major props to showrunners David Shore and Katie Jacobs and Fox for committing to breaking out of the box. But this wasn’t just a well-written episode. It was flawlessly put together in nearly every regard, especially the editing, and the fact that it opened with Cuddy getting out of bed in the morning and ended in the same way provided a nice bookending effect.

That’s the whole conceit of the episode: spend a day in the House universe with Cuddy and experience it entirely from her point of view. It’s perhaps a quintessential portrayal of the 21^st century career woman that makes House an important—but peripheral supporting character—in his own show. Get a chance to see Cuddy do things we never get to see her do, and interact with other people at Princeton Plainsboro we weren’t aware of. It could have been boring if it were just any day, but Cuddy has a lot going on today. Her infant daughter is sick. Her boyfriend Lucas is being a pain in the ass. Oh yeah, and her entire career might be on the line.

Why? She’s at the end of an eight-month contract negotiation with AtlanticNet, the key medical insurance company Princeton Plainsboro brokers with and that the great majority of their patients use. Since they are the big guys and Plainsboro is a comparatively small hospital, they seem to have all the leverage and, therefore, their top priority is screwing the hospital by giving them as crappy of a contract as they can legally get away with. They don’t care that Cuddy runs the best diagnostic center in the country. They keep waiting for Cuddy to give in and accept their sub-par 4% increase while Cuddy keeps insisting on 12%. But after all these months of tortured stalemate, the hospital board—made up of mostly men of course, with one or two shrews thrown in for good measure—are running out of patience.

When AtlanticNet presents Cuddy with the same—to quote Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich—lame-ass offer, she presents them with an offer of her own: give her the 12% by the end of business or she terminates the contract. The weasel negotiator guy is stunned at the proposition. It’s almost as cool as when good old Mel Gibson—back when he was still good old Mel Gibson—turned his son’s ransom money into a bounty on kidnapper Gary Sinise’s head on national television in Ransom. But the weasel doesn’t take the bait and walks out with his confidence intact, certain that Cuddy will give in.

If Cuddy doesn’t close this deal, the hospital board makes it clear she’ll get the boot. Never mind that she’s right. Never mind that she had to climb an unforgiving and misogynistic mountain to get to her position in the first place. They’ll can her ass if she doesn’t close. So now we’ve got great, solid dramatic constructs in place. We’ve got a ticking clock and we’ve got Cuddy smack dab in the middle of a moral doozy. Does she cave in to the slimy corporate bigwigs and accept a sub-par deal in order to save her job, or does she hold out for what’s right and risk losing everything? If you know Cuddy at all you know which option she’ll go for, but that doesn’t make the journey any less compelling.

As if all this weren’t enough, she has all the insane everyday-isms to contend with. She has to put up with House’s infantile power plays and veto his every move. She has to referee a million different fights. She has to find out why her babysitter won’t return her calls. She has to deal with a lawsuit being brought against the hospital by a carpenter suing because they sewed his thumb back on when all he wanted them to do was stitch it up because the bill would have been cheaper. And she has to confront a seven-year model employee she suspects of forging DEA prescription pads and stealing drugs from the hospital. And did I mention that this employee turns out to be more of a sociopath than the chick from the other week?

What’s great about this episode—besides Edelstein—is that everything is done so well that you really actually believe that Cuddy is going to lose, that the little guy (or gal, in this case) can get trampled by the big dog. Even House tells her that “Sometimes the bigger they are, the harder they kick your ass.” The other thing I really appreciated was that the writers didn’t have House swoop in and bail Cuddy out. It would make sense. Contract negotiations are all about manipulation and House is the master manipulator. But to have had him rescue her, while maybe being fun, would have cheapened who Cuddy is. She kicks ass on her own, and by the end of the episode, if you haven’t cheered a couple of times then you’re made of stone.

For another take on this week’s episode, check out A One Woman Show by Stephanie Jaar.

Season 6, Episode 13: 5 to 9 (originally aired February 8, 2010)

For more on House, click here.

Mondays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and IMDbPro.

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