Burn Notice - season 6 rewatch
Apr. 28th, 2023 02:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiggymalvern
My rewatch of season 6 didn’t change my take on any of the main events. It did prod me into a few other thoughts, though, mostly about what isn’t there.
It made me curious about Sam’s family. Seven years, and he only refers to his blood relatives twice – first when he tells Michael about how he stole an air rifle when he was ten, and his dad had the cops put him in a cell to teach him a lesson. Then when Elsa’s son is talking to him about how hard it is trying to deal with parental expectations when you’re not what they want you to be. That’s all we get. And maybe Sam’s parents are dead, maybe he’s an only child (less common in that generation than now), but no talk of aunts, uncles, cousins, anybody? We get Jesse’s tragic backstory and why this disaster of a found family are all he has, but Sam’s situation seems to be the same and nobody mentions it.
This is a man who’s turned being likeable into a professional skill. He cultivates an entire network of people who’ll risk their careers, and in some cases jail, feeding him confidential information, because they think he’s a nice guy. But apparently his own relatives don’t like him, or he’s avoiding them. There has to be something bad there, right?
And honestly, it fits my headcanon perfectly well, because my Sam is bisexual, and if his family discovered that in the 1970s or early 80s, that would explain everything. But I’m curious if the writers ever had any thoughts on it, because we have some very specific details on background, childhood and family for the other three main characters, while Sam’s just a big blank space for everything except his career.
The other thing notably missing is any interaction between Madeleine and her adopted ducklings after Nate is killed. They all show up for the funeral, but otherwise they’re entirely conspicuous by their absence. Which is understandable, because she’s furious, and not just with Michael (she specifically says there’s enough blame there for everybody) and nobody would be enthusiastic about putting themselves into that line of fire. But at the same time, Madeleine’s flailing, and Michael’s flailing, and every time he tries to mend fences with his mother she vents her anger on him, and everyone just steers clear and leaves them to it? That’s... harsh.
And not just on Madeleine and Michael, because a stressed out and emotion-driven Michael isn’t particularly pleasant or safe to be around. Sam definitely knows that, and Fiona must too. Jesse might not – yet. And honestly, he’s getting a pass from me because he hasn’t known Madeleine for as long as the others, so he’s not best placed to be running interference. But Fiona and Sam? Trying to mitigate and defuse the tensions between the surviving Westens would almost count as self-preservation, given the alternative of leaving Michael struggling to deal with it all. In many ways, they have a better relationship with Madeleine than Michael does, because they’ve really only known her at her best – they don’t have all the years of baggage and failed trust with her that Michael has.
Fiona has a good enough relationship with Madeleine that she keeps in touch with her even after she’s given up on Michael and she’s living with someone else. How many people still hang out with their ex’s mum? Sam lived with Maddie for a while, which is more than adult Michael ever did – Michael turned up in Miami broke and homeless, and went around begging favours from anyone he knew rather than go to his mum’s house. And Sam could probably get away with a bit more on the Nate front because he had nothing to do with it, he was with Maddie and Barry the whole time.
But if they make any attempt to help Madeleine and Michael in their grief and guilt and recriminations, we don’t see it. Apart from the funeral, we don’t see Maddie with any of her ducklings until after all hell’s broken loose (hello, stressed out and emotion-driven Michael!) and they’re all literally running for their lives. After Maddie’s told Michael that she has to forgive him (and by extension the rest of the gang) or she’ll lose him too.
So did they actually all ghost Madeleine all that time, or did they try and we weren’t shown it? Because if they did just keep their heads down and wait for it to blow over, they are godawful friends.
On medical stuff – I have SUCH a love/hate relationship with the cruise ship episode. This is the Pearce I really wish we’d seen more of, because she’s awesome when she’s allowed to take a big role in Burn Notice shenanigans. But the ep also drives me up the wall, because nobody is remotely consistent on whether they’re talking about bacteria or a virus. And no, that’s not how a Gram stain works. Or what it does. The writers went to so much trouble for that scene where Michael’s rehearsing how to fake being an infectious disease specialist – trying to learn all the CBCs and PLTs and PTTs – they obviously looked some of that up. So why didn’t they double check the basics? AAAAARRRRGGHH.
Sometimes they obviously checked. When Sam gets shot, most of the detail there is pretty good. Not all of it, but I’ll accept there’s a limit to what you can show, and what you can mock up for Network TV. But the consequences of delaying treatment for an abdominal gunshot wound, that’s all nailed. Even when you’re not bleeding significantly, if you delay surgery for 24 hours, the survival rate drops to 50% because the septic peritonitis kills people.
Probably, like everything else on these shows, it came down to time, and the writers didn’t have enough of it to look up everything. But seriously, they could have given the cruise ship script to someone with any kind of medical or microbiology training for an hour and had it fixed. A vet tech/nurse could have made those edits.
It made me curious about Sam’s family. Seven years, and he only refers to his blood relatives twice – first when he tells Michael about how he stole an air rifle when he was ten, and his dad had the cops put him in a cell to teach him a lesson. Then when Elsa’s son is talking to him about how hard it is trying to deal with parental expectations when you’re not what they want you to be. That’s all we get. And maybe Sam’s parents are dead, maybe he’s an only child (less common in that generation than now), but no talk of aunts, uncles, cousins, anybody? We get Jesse’s tragic backstory and why this disaster of a found family are all he has, but Sam’s situation seems to be the same and nobody mentions it.
This is a man who’s turned being likeable into a professional skill. He cultivates an entire network of people who’ll risk their careers, and in some cases jail, feeding him confidential information, because they think he’s a nice guy. But apparently his own relatives don’t like him, or he’s avoiding them. There has to be something bad there, right?
And honestly, it fits my headcanon perfectly well, because my Sam is bisexual, and if his family discovered that in the 1970s or early 80s, that would explain everything. But I’m curious if the writers ever had any thoughts on it, because we have some very specific details on background, childhood and family for the other three main characters, while Sam’s just a big blank space for everything except his career.
The other thing notably missing is any interaction between Madeleine and her adopted ducklings after Nate is killed. They all show up for the funeral, but otherwise they’re entirely conspicuous by their absence. Which is understandable, because she’s furious, and not just with Michael (she specifically says there’s enough blame there for everybody) and nobody would be enthusiastic about putting themselves into that line of fire. But at the same time, Madeleine’s flailing, and Michael’s flailing, and every time he tries to mend fences with his mother she vents her anger on him, and everyone just steers clear and leaves them to it? That’s... harsh.
And not just on Madeleine and Michael, because a stressed out and emotion-driven Michael isn’t particularly pleasant or safe to be around. Sam definitely knows that, and Fiona must too. Jesse might not – yet. And honestly, he’s getting a pass from me because he hasn’t known Madeleine for as long as the others, so he’s not best placed to be running interference. But Fiona and Sam? Trying to mitigate and defuse the tensions between the surviving Westens would almost count as self-preservation, given the alternative of leaving Michael struggling to deal with it all. In many ways, they have a better relationship with Madeleine than Michael does, because they’ve really only known her at her best – they don’t have all the years of baggage and failed trust with her that Michael has.
Fiona has a good enough relationship with Madeleine that she keeps in touch with her even after she’s given up on Michael and she’s living with someone else. How many people still hang out with their ex’s mum? Sam lived with Maddie for a while, which is more than adult Michael ever did – Michael turned up in Miami broke and homeless, and went around begging favours from anyone he knew rather than go to his mum’s house. And Sam could probably get away with a bit more on the Nate front because he had nothing to do with it, he was with Maddie and Barry the whole time.
But if they make any attempt to help Madeleine and Michael in their grief and guilt and recriminations, we don’t see it. Apart from the funeral, we don’t see Maddie with any of her ducklings until after all hell’s broken loose (hello, stressed out and emotion-driven Michael!) and they’re all literally running for their lives. After Maddie’s told Michael that she has to forgive him (and by extension the rest of the gang) or she’ll lose him too.
So did they actually all ghost Madeleine all that time, or did they try and we weren’t shown it? Because if they did just keep their heads down and wait for it to blow over, they are godawful friends.
On medical stuff – I have SUCH a love/hate relationship with the cruise ship episode. This is the Pearce I really wish we’d seen more of, because she’s awesome when she’s allowed to take a big role in Burn Notice shenanigans. But the ep also drives me up the wall, because nobody is remotely consistent on whether they’re talking about bacteria or a virus. And no, that’s not how a Gram stain works. Or what it does. The writers went to so much trouble for that scene where Michael’s rehearsing how to fake being an infectious disease specialist – trying to learn all the CBCs and PLTs and PTTs – they obviously looked some of that up. So why didn’t they double check the basics? AAAAARRRRGGHH.
Sometimes they obviously checked. When Sam gets shot, most of the detail there is pretty good. Not all of it, but I’ll accept there’s a limit to what you can show, and what you can mock up for Network TV. But the consequences of delaying treatment for an abdominal gunshot wound, that’s all nailed. Even when you’re not bleeding significantly, if you delay surgery for 24 hours, the survival rate drops to 50% because the septic peritonitis kills people.
Probably, like everything else on these shows, it came down to time, and the writers didn’t have enough of it to look up everything. But seriously, they could have given the cruise ship script to someone with any kind of medical or microbiology training for an hour and had it fixed. A vet tech/nurse could have made those edits.
