Spy series Burn Notice (USA, Thursday, 10/9c) builds from the same blueprint that neo-detective dramas Life and Life on Mars follow: our hero competently pieces together his job’s puzzles while trying to solve his own greater mystery. But Zen and the nature of reality, time and consciousness—the respective obsessions of those programs’ metaphysical detectives—don’t concern Burn Notice’s Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan). He’s a protagonist fit for the New Depression, just a workingman trying to work, scraping together new freelance projects as he tries to figure out why his old long-term contract went bad.
Michael was a covert CIA operative until he was “burned”, spook-speak for downsized. Stripped of his cash and credit along with his profession, he finds himself back in his Miami hometown, hiring out his spy skills to the highest bidder as he tries to learn who got him ousted him from the world of intrigue—and why. The first season leads up to the answer to the who: he was burned by the mysterious “Carla” and her cohorts, who then force him to work for him, threatening to harm his family if he ditches the job. The second season is spiraling closer to explaining exactly who this who is—but why is still in the distance. With two episodes left, it seems unlikely that we’ll get a full explanation before well into season three.
Meanwhile, Michael will surely keep working on the cases that come his way, investigating art theft, thwarting con artists, busting kidnapping rings. It’s all in a day’s work for a self-employed spy. And after a day’s work—well, this isn’t Law and Order with its self-contained workplace in which the protagonists’ personal lives are revealed slowly, through a cumulative and casual build-up. Michael’s personal and professional lives are inextricably intertwined, meshed in a way the rest of us might aspire to, or maybe fear. His spy work is the crux of his identity. Learning why he was burned—and potentially returning to high-stakes international espionage—is a search for self. He wants to regain his place in the world and return to the image with which he identifies. And, as he struggles to reclaim this public identity, circumstances force him to also confront his roots and his personal life, or lack thereof.
Washed up in Miami, Michael is embraced by the neurotic, pushy mother he’s avoided for years, Madeline (a spirited and sparkling Sharon Gless, who imbues what could have been an annoying stock character with more charm than seems possible). He has a loser brother to contend with—and the legacy of an abusive father to sort out. Mom’s interference and his brother’s escapades mean Michael’s work and family lives inevitably intersect, and he’s ended up working with some old colleagues with close personal connections. Dangerous Fiona Glennane (Gabrielle Anwar) was an IRA operative, and an ex-girlfriend. Ragged Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell, finally grown from a brat into a likable character actor) is a former Navy Seal, and Michael’s only friend. They have their issues to work through—Michael once abandoned Fiona, Sam was briefly spying on Michael—but it’s nothing that this expansive protagonist can’t bring to light.
Film noir this is not. Blue skies, swift low waves, sweeping aerial shots—Burn Notice’s Miami is clear and bright, not a place of shadowy vices or dark ambiguities. Michael as often as not encounters his enemies out in the open on bright days. When the show retreats to indoor shots or night scenes, things are clearer still, the action and explication unfolding under even lighting that’s as revealing as yet a respite from the searing truth.
And Michael is no film noir tough guy, no ambivalent keeper of justice with a dark or amoral streak. There’s little romance or grit to him, just a solid competency ad professionalism that mask a sensitive yogurt-eater. His personal issues aren’t quiet core flaws; his interpersonal problems aren’t static givens. They’re things he’s working through—to become a better man, and, not incidentally, to become a better worker.
He’s not a metaphysical sleuth of the Life/Life On Mars mold, but a self-help or self-actualizing sleuth. His place is alongside The Closer’s Brenda Leigh Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick): she heads a high-profile homicide unit, but the show focuses as much on her relationships with her parents and with sugar, and her wedding is the center of the season finale. If noir played out the cold war and moral upheaval, these shows are trying to understand what we’re worth.
