tiggymalvern | Entries tagged with rewatch

Current Mood: thoughtful

I finished rewatching season 7 of Burn Notice a couple of weeks ago now, and on second watch, it worked better for me than it did the first time. The first time, the ending felt rushed, and I didn’t entirely buy into Michael’s switch of allegiance; but knowing it was coming, and watching the details more carefully, it seemed more realistic. And I’ve been pondering over it since, poking over what I felt were flaws on first viewing, and it holds together a lot better than I thought.

It always made sense that Michael would turn against the CIA, given how they treated him and everyone he cares about, given the corruption he uncovered among them. On first watch, though, I didn’t buy that turning against the CIA would immediately mean siding with James. There had to be a third option.

Except there pretty much wasn’t, from Michael’s perspective. He didn’t know that the rest of the gang were already working on the ‘get the hell out of the country’ plan – and even if he had known, the last time they all tried that, it went appallingly badly.

Michael’s first choice for getting out was to die. He expected James to shoot him in the head, and he was so done with everything, he was fine with it. But James didn’t – instead he exploited Michael’s weakness. He knew that Michael was doing everything to keep the people he loved out of prison, and he offered Michael another way to do that. When Michael was in the world’s shittiest frame of mind and not likely to be making good choices, James dangled a carrot in front of him. And Michael being Michael, if he decides he’s going to do something, he goes for it 100%. That’s always been one of his primary strengths, but applied in the wrong circumstances, it becomes a massive flaw.

In Nature of the Beast, Michael admits to Sam that he’s struggling, that he likes James and Sonya despite who they are, and he says he’s relying on Sam to help him. Two episodes later, when Fiona confronts him about it, he’s all, ‘Nope, I’m fine, nothing to worry about here.’
I don’t think he would have said that if he and Fiona had still been an item. But he knows that she’s moved on with Carlos, and there’s a combination there of Michael not wanting to dump his crap on her when she wants nothing to do with the spy world anymore, and Michael not wanting to rely on her when he’s no longer her priority. It’s a case where he’s protecting both of them from each other, I think, but it results in him turning away from support even though he knows he needs it.

And he turns away from it more after some of the things he has to do. After he has to kill Roger Steele, after he watches James shoot the useless dude. Michael’s got some pretty bad self-loathing going on at that point, and he’s deliberately dodging the rest of the team because he doesn’t want them judging him too. When he needs help the most, he won’t ask for it anymore.

It's been apparent for a long time that Michael’s the most dangerous of the Burn Notice crew. Fiona’s dangerous because of what she might do when she’s furious, in a particularly bad moment. Michael’s dangerous because of what he might do when he’s cold and semi-rational. Because of that Larry-like part of him that’s he admits is in there. Michael might do terrible things when he’s not actually all that rational, but he thinks he is, and that can be so much worse.
Sam and Jesse, meanwhile, are the stable ones of the group. Which isn’t to say that they can’t get angry enough to want to murder someone – they absolutely can. But they nail that shit down.
It’s most obvious with Sam when they’re interrogating the guy who tells them how he took Sam’s friend out into the Everglades and shot him in the back of the head. At which point Jesse and Michael grab Sam and haul him out of there – good call, guys, you should absolutely do that. But literally a minute later, Sam’s back inside asking the guy who paid him to do it. Which makes sense, because you don’t make the cut for a SEAL team if you can’t get a grip on yourself under just about any circumstances. And Jesse somehow manages not to murder Michael after he figures out Michael was the one who destroyed his life. Those two guys are reliable pretty much anywhere and anywhen – they’re the stability Michael needs to be utilising and isn’t.

Another big flaw of Michael’s is that he’s willing to hurt people he cares about to protect them. He tells his mother early in season two that he ghosted her for ten years because he wanted to keep her away from his world. He knows the rest of the gang will vehemently disagree with what he’s doing, but Michael’s convinced himself he’s right. In his own head, he’s not turning on the gang, even when he is. When he and Sam climb out of the water after their fight, Michael leads his threat with, ‘Because we’re friends,’ - still present tense, even when he’s warning Sam to stay the hell away from him.

And that fight on the bridge is SO perfectly done. We’ve seen disagreements between these two turn physical before when Sam’s tried to stop Michael from doing something stupid. With the stakes so much higher this time, neither of them were going to back down, and it was always going to get ugly. Sam knows that in a straight fight he’s going to lose, so he plays it smart and gets them into the water. It takes him a couple of tries, though, because Michael sees it coming. They’re both smart.
And it works. Sam has the advantage, and if he’d wanted to kill Michael, he could have. He loses because killing Michael is the absolute last thing he wants to do, and because near-drowning is so unbelievably dangerous. He has to loosen his grip and head for the surface the second Michael goes limp, and so Michael fakes him out. They both played to their strengths and their understanding of each other, and Sam really couldn’t have done anything differently.

After the first watch, when I was thinking about it later, I found myself wondering why Sam hadn’t talked more. Words are Sam’s first weapon of choice, and he knows every weakness Michael has, every place that a verbal attack will hit home. When Sam says, “What happens when someone gets in your way?” the immediate and obvious follow on is, “What happens when I get in your way?” Given what the Burn Notice crew spend their days doing, it’s not that big of a reach. And it is, of course, the argument that ultimately works when Fiona hits Michael with it later, on the roof.

What I would have expected Sam to say is, “What happens when I get in your way? Will you shoot me yourself or have someone else do it?” It would have gone straight into one of Michael’s weak spots – he’s seen Sam get shot and nearly die, and he was a wreck. So this time I was watching for that moment – and it’s right after Sam says, “What happens when someone gets in your way?” that Michael turns and starts walking. And Sam goes after him and tries to stop him, and then they’re off, and it’s not a conversation anymore. Sam didn’t get the chance to say the rest of it, the thing that might have got through. It was scripted flawlessly.

There are a couple of things in season 7 that don’t really work. First of them is that it takes Michael any time at all to make his decision on the roof. Sonya vs the woman he’s been in love with a decade – he really shouldn’t have to think about that. Even if Fiona tried to move on emotionally, it’s obvious all season that Michael hasn’t. Dramatic tension and all, but... nope.

The big thing that bugs me is James’ change in security protocol. Sonya vouches for Michael, and then Michael gets put through days of sleep deprivation, drugs and interrogation before James will trust him. Which makes sense in a vile way. But then James takes Fiona, Sam and Jesse on trust because Michael trusts them? Meets up with them more than once, lets them see his face? Since when?
It’s not even necessary for them to ever meet James. Michael could have worked with the rest of the gang exactly as Michael worked with Burke and Sonya prior to meeting James, all at one step removed. That’s what I would have expected. Yes, they have to be able to recognise James when they see him with Michael at the end of the series, and know that Michael’s lying to them. But they didn’t ever have to meet James for that. By then, they’ve already got James’ full name and background and details from his ex-colleague at the mental hospital, so they’d only need photos to recognise him. If James had stayed away from everyone but Michael and Sonya, that would have been consistent behaviour and changed nothing about the overall plot.
The only detail that would have been different is that the others wouldn't have been there to see James kill the useless dude. But that could have been worked around. The others could have been all, 'Hey, where's useless dude these days?' and Michael wouldn't have wanted to explain. And they'd figure out he's dead quickly enough, and maybe they even start to speculate that maybe Michael killed him...

Season 7 still has its glitches, but fairly minor ones in the overall plot arc. The writers wanted to send Burn Notice out with a dramatic bang, and they certainly did that.

Current Mood: contemplative

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.

Current Mood: busy

In the first episode, when Michael tells the CIA dude that he insists on taking ‘his team’ along, CIA dude immediately assumes he means Sam and Fiona, and Michael confirms that yes, that’s exactly who he means. Sorry, Jesse, you don’t make the cut.
I noticed that on the first watch, but then when I did the season write-up, I couldn’t remember whether Jesse had already returned to Miami, or if he didn’t show up till the end of the ep. But he was there right after the opening credits; it’s just that nobody’s including him on the list of Michael’s permanent attachments yet. Poor Jesse forgave these people a massive betrayal, then walked away from his career and came back to the only place he had friends, and it’s still not enough to count. You have to put in the years with the Burn Notice team, no short cuts.

Bloodlines still hits like a truck the second time around. Brilliant writing, brilliant acting from Jeffrey Donovan and Sharon Gless. All the family trauma laid out hard.

I wish Pearce had played more of an active role in season five. I didn’t notice her much on the first watch of this season, being more focussed on the main characters and the plot, but I really liked her by the time she left in season six, so this time I was specifically paying her more attention. She does have some great moments in season five – sticking up for Sam when Minaro’s being a dick about him, giving Michael his chance to prove his innocence after she arrests him – but too much of the time, she’s only there for a scene or two advancing the plot. When she is given the chance to play her part and show her personality, she’s great. People like Pearce, who are dedicated and smart and want to do the right thing are so much of the reason Michael wants his job back, why he wants to do the work again. And then later he gets stuck with Tom Card instead…

Fiona’s so quick to suggest that she should turn herself in when Anson starts blackmailing Michael. I’d forgotten how early she decided that was going to be the only way out. She really has come a million miles from the selfish, irresponsible nightmare she was at the start (and she basically says it in her letter).

It’s interesting that Michael doesn’t know the details of Sam getting kicked out of the navy, about Beatriz. He knows the first part, about the pissed off Admiral, then the next thing he would have heard would be that Sam suddenly decided to take early retirement, and Michael wouldn’t have believed that for a second. So he would presumably have asked Sam, but Sam signed an NDA, and he takes those things seriously (along with the very serious threat of jail).
I wonder if Michael was ever tempted to poke around and see if he could find out? Or if he just rolled his eyes and figured that whatever it was, it would have been one of those very Sam things? Probably the latter. I get the feeling that pre-Burn Michael was much better behaved from the CIA’s perspective than post-Burn Michael - which isn’t to say that he was a particularly great person, as we gather from Larry, just that he would have been more inclined to follow orders and not risk sticking his nose into classified things that weren’t his assigned mission.

Several times over the years of Burn Notice, we’ve seen old friends of Sam emerge looking for help, and each time, Sam is all, ‘This person saved my life, I have to help them.’ And he tells Michael the same thing here: ‘Beatriz saved me twice, I’ll do anything to help her.’ Except this time, we know that story. We know Sam extricated himself from those situations twice, then walked back in because he wouldn’t leave behind the twenty or so civilians he’d collected along the way, and that’s why he needed a Beatriz. Sam blew up his career and his life for people he met two days before, and the only part he tells other people is how Beatriz saved him.
And Michael listens to that and then works with the person who’s blackmailing him, because Sam asks him to. Because Michael knows Sam, and can probably start filling in some of the gaps for himself.

I’m a little sad that the thing about Sam being a suspected Russian agent disappeared after the end of that ep. It would have been funny if it had cropped up again; Sam would have been absolutely livid. And there might have been a time or two when it could be useful, when they actually are dealing with Russians…

Because I’m ~~something~~ a lot of a detail-oriented critter, and it’s always interesting to see how things do or don’t retro-fit, I was curious about Sam’s habit of chewing gum, after hearing his explanation for it. So this time through, I was trying to pin down when we first see it. Various characters he’s played have chewed gum, but I discounted those. Currently I think the first time we see Sam chewing as Sam is 5x11, when he’s running surveillance on the man who killed Max with Pearce closing in on them. Which fits, because that would be stressful.

Current Mood: lazy

The season four rewatch didn’t change anything for me, only reconfirmed all the impressions I got the first time through. It really hits hard that it’s Fiona of the three of them who’s most concerned for Jesse right from the start, insisting they have to help him. Fiona started the series so recklessly irresponsible and utterly selfish, and now she instantly transfers her experiences with Michael over the last three years and everything he’s been through onto this stranger she’s never met, who she only knows as a name. Her transformation is incredible.

It's not that she wasn’t capable of that kind of empathy – she always had an extremely low tolerance for people enacting violence on people she considers innocents, on people who aren’t capable of fighting back – she was just incredibly selective about where she applied it. She suppressed it because it wasn’t useful; it was an active hindrance to her life. And now, after three years of helping random people, of seeing that it matters, she won’t self-censor any more, even when it puts her into conflict with Michael.

Madeline adopts Jesse so fast. Once he’s in her house, he becomes one of her ducklings, and she knows enough about the negative aspects of her son's life now to piece things together immediately. Once she knows Jesse’s been burned, she knows everything.

I’ve talked before about the Burn Notice team creep problem, that having done something once and got away with it, it becomes part of their standard bag of tricks. And here’s Madeline putting that into some very blunt words aimed at Michael and Sam. “It amazes me the things that become normal to you people.” Yes, Maddie, yes it does. She loves both of them, but she also knows lunacy when she sees it. And she knows that in some people it's incurable, and since she loves them, she just has to roll with it.