Monday, July 20, 2009

What I’m Watching: Burn Notice

Burn Notice: Season 3, Episode 6 “The Hunter” (B)

It’s always fun to see how Michael can get out of a jam, and especially thrilling to see how he communicates his situation to Fiona and Sam so that they can come help rescue him. It’s also nice pairing Michael with a hapless other who seems at first intimidating and then turns out not to be so brave, but sometimes it gets in the way. Michael’s very good at dealing with situations, and having an incompetent there often distracts from his accomplishments. Michael’s having enough trouble figuring out where he stands in the spy community; he doesn’t need his own supposed allies messing up in the midst of a mission. Sam and Fiona’s constant bickering is amusing, but the highlight of this episode is Madeleine. Sharon Gless has hardly ever had so much screen time, and in this case she uses it to infuse Madeleine with a whole lot of attitude we knew she had as well as a very take-no-prisoners approach to interrogation. Her successful intimidation of their prisoner was entertaining, and it would be wise for Madeleine to take a bigger role in the missions in the future. Her best line followed her disclosure of information to Sam and Fiona – “Do I have to go rescue my son too?” The opening fighting scene was also great, watching Fiona take out her anger at Michael’s endless job hunt on him in a physical way.

1 comment:

G1000 said...

The best episodes of this show are the ones that deviate from the standard formula (Michael helps someone with a problem, while getting a little bit more info on who burned him and why, etc.). As such, I enjoyed this one a lot. It doesn't rank with the best episodes of the series (my personal favorite was the season 2 finale), but I thought it might have been the best episode yet of season 3. B+