TV Review: Burn Notice Season Seven

Burn Notice Season Seven created by Matt Nix

Burn Notice is a television series about CIA agent Michael Weston (Jeffrey Donovan) who was "burned" or dumped from active service because he was suspected of wrongdoing. He wound up in Miami where he reconnected with some old friends (an ex-IRA girlfriend (Gabriel Anwar) and an ex-Navy Seal best friend (Bruce Campbell)) and his mom (Sharon Gless). The story started as a semi-comic drama about his life helping out people as he tries to find out who burned him so he can clear his name and lead a normal life. Of course, if he does find the person and clear his name the series would end, so he never quite manages it. By season seven, the show lost most of the comedy (but not all of it, possibly due to Bruce Campbell being there) and fell into a rut where Michael would infiltrate some secret organization by working with some semi-crazy person. That person would get killed when Michael found out about and started working for that person's slightly more crazy supervisor. Some seasons had him go up quite a few levels to get to the big boss at the end of the season.

By the start of season seven, Michael and his family and friends have been imprisoned by the CIA. Michael agrees to work for them so that his people can get out of jail. His assignment is to infiltrate a terrorist organization running out of the Dominican Republic (so at least they get out of Miami for a lot of episodes). He works his way up the chain throughout the season. It is a bit of plot recycling much like the last few seasons of Alias and was a little disappointing to me. The story does take Michael to the point where he might actually join the terrorists, giving a lot of melodramatic scenes for the cast. Sometimes the cast does a good job of selling those scenes, sometimes they don't. The last two episodes of the series are very exciting and give a dramatically satisfying end to the series, also much like Alias. Unfortunately, viewers need to watch the episodes leading up to those last two. The plot is so complicated that it might be hard to understand what's going on without all the set up. If you think the Alias finale was worth watching the last season, this last season of Burn Notice is worth it (and only half as long at thirteen episodes).