Wizard's Blog

Burn Notice: The End Game book cover

The first book must have done well enough – Tod Goldberg‘s writing another Burn Notice novel - Burn Notice: The End Game is coming out in May!

To be honest I don’t know a lot about it yet, but the fact that it’s Burn Notice is enough

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• Behind the scenes of the Burn Notice books

Burn Notice: The Fix book cover

Right now I’m reading Burn Notice: The Fix by Tod Goldberg.

Let me begin by saying that I’m a huge fan of Burn Notice.  It’s among my favourite TV shows¹, so I bought the book as soon as I knew it existed (I did the same think with the Monk books).

I’m such a fan of Burn Notice that I would buy, read and enjoy any book they released, but I couldn’t help but noticing that Burn Notice: The Fix needs more editing.

I found the first mistake on page 4 – instead of Miami-Dade it says Miami-Dad.  And it’s not just spelling – on page 182 it says Overhead, planes were taxiing into and out of Miami International.  Really?  They were taxiing overhead?  Were you buried under the airport?

On the other hand, since the TV show uses first person narration in Michael Westen’s voice, the book being written in the first person feels just right.

I was surprised that there are mentions of sub-prime loans and bank collapses in the book – although our current economic problems have been looming for a while, I didn’t expect to start seeing them in fiction quite so quickly.

So far there has been one really good quote in the book:

“What do you normally eat for breakfast?”

“Al-Quaeda,” I said. “Or yogurt.”

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1. Monk, Psych, Dexter,  Chuck, House, Bones, Life, Pushing Daisies, Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica, The Closer, The Middleman, Eureka, Reaper, How I Met Your Mother, True Blood, My Name Is Earl, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, The Big Bang Theory.  Looking at that list, I guess I watch too much television – that’s only the top ones and only ones that are still being made (bring back Firefly!). [↩]

Burn Notice soundtrack

The Burn Notice soundtrack is now available. Interestingly it seems to only be available for mp3 download, not as a CD – wave of the future I guess.

Regular readers (if there are any) will know that I’m a massive fan of Burn Notice, but although the songs go well in the context of the show I don’t think I would listen to them on their own.

Burn Notice DVD cover

First of all – Burn Notice season two!  Yay!  Watching it live because of my DVR malfunction, but I’d probably watch it live anyway because it’s so cool!

Second of all, how did he get the Cadillac out of the truck?

Gabrielle Anwar‘s starting to look a bit old   Sorry babe

I like Jeffrey Donovan‘s English accent

The bullet between the legs was cool

Michael Westen‘s mom has always pissed me off.  I guess that’s the point of her character…

I don’t trust Jimmy the hacker guy, I think he’s a plant.  Why are they trying so hard to convince Michael that they have the guy’s family?

I like Sam’s “can count  <something> on the fingers of one hand” recurring joke.

Why is the mercenary dude supposed to think the boat blew up?

Wow, after chasing him for a whole series, Fiona just dumps him?  And now he wants her?  Whaaaat?

Six from Battlestar Galactica – must be a main character.

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Image via Wikipedia

My DirecTV DVR (R15) is messed up – it just keep rebooting, failing to find the satelite and rebooting again.

They’re sending an engineer out to look at it, but the earliest available time was Saturday afternoon.

This had me a bit worried because the first episode of Burn Notice season two is on Thursday evening and there is no way I’m missing that.

Fortunately we do have a spare (non-DVR) receiver, so I won’t miss Burn Notice but it’s a bit of a shock trying to make sure we’re watching the right channel at the right time.  It goes to show how used to the DVR we’ve become.

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Image by Victor de la Fuente via Flickr

The first season of Burn Notice is on again, starting tonight, and I’m watching it live. Not recording it on the DVR and fast-forwarding past the commercials, but live. If you knew me, you’d understand just how unusual that was. I hate being sold to, especially as 99% of the things they put in commercials are things I’d never buy (I don’t care how great your tampon is – I will never need one). Anyway, I’m actually putting up with the commercials to see this again.

I had worried that it wouldn’t be as good as I remembered, but it is. Holy pork, but it is.

Sometimes the truth hurts. In these situations I suggest you lie.

I love those little narration bits.

Gabrielle Anwar‘s Irish accent isn’t as bad as I remembered, and in any case this time around I know that it only lasts one episode.

I had forgotten that Michael Westen kills two bad guys in the first few minutes of the first episode. For censorship purposes they don’t show anything, but it helps establish that he’s a badass early.

Westen is like James Bond – really cool to watch but in real life I think he’d stand out too much to be a real spy.

I’d forgotten that the premiere was an hour and a half long – it’s a strange length, I was expecting one hour or two. And the 11pm to 12:30pm time slot? I didn’t think it was that adult – no swearing, nudity or explicit violence… Although having said that, I think I heard a god damn and I definitely heard a tits.

Jeffrey Donovan has little scars on his face, you can see them in the close-ups. They go well with the Michael Westen character but I wonder how the actor got them. IMDB probably knows but I can’t be bothered to look right now.

Huh, the caretaker in the first episode is Angel Batista (one of the cops) from Dexter – another one of my favorite shows. I don’t understand why the caretaker’s kid is so bloodthirsty. Maybe he’s a stand-in for the audience

Holy crabs – the rich guy in the first episode is the Devil from Reaper – yet another of my favorite shows! Crossover city.

What’s with Weston’s sunglasses? It’s one of his signature moves – he always puts them on when he’s leaving somewhere and I just noticed that he puts them on when he’s about to lose a tail. No wonder the first part this episode is sponsored by a glasses company. Maybe it’s just to emphasize that it’s bright because it’s set in Miami?

His other signature move is the huge white smile, usually fake. I don’t know why, but it’s cool.

I don’t think I’ll delete this episode when I’ve finished watching it – when my wife gets back from England on Saturday I may not be allowed to watch it over and over but until then…

Got the midnight munchies – must resist the nummy food… must resist… oh ok, I give in. Food time. Toast and Welch’s Grape Jelly – marvelous. You can not get that stuff in England.

What’s with the AT&T commercial with Meat Loaf? Anyway…

For a job like getting rid of the drug dealer next door, I’ll take a hardware store over a gun any day. Guns make you stupid. Better to fight your wars with duct tape. Duct tape make you smart.

I think that bit was sponsored by a hardware company the first time around

Oh cool, the bit with the airbag is in the first episode. Here’s a more accurate quote of the narration bit:

Airbags save a lot of lives. But they also put you out long enough to get your hands cable-tied to the steering wheel.

P.S. As soon as I added the words “James Bond” to this post, all of the picture suggestions and most of the article suggestions Zemanta made changed to something relating to him, even though that’s not what the post is about. Still needs work.

Last year a new series called Burn Notice started on the USA Network.

I love this show. Basically the main character (Michael Westen) is a spy who gets “burned”. That basically means that his bosses don’t trust him anymore but they won’t go as far as killing him. He’s dropped off in Miami (because that’s where he was originally from) and told that he’s not allowed to leave. So basically the show consists of people asking him for help, and the local scumbags having no idea what they’re dealing with. FBI agents sent to keep an eye on him and hitmen sent by old enemies provide more of a challenge in case the locals are too easy. The larger story is who burned him and why.

It sounds like it could be a bit difficult for the writers to arrange believable situations where people need help, and he agrees and he wins, but it all works extremely well. The acting and directing are also superb. In fact, I can’t say there’s anything I don’t like about the show.

It’s billed as an “action comedy” which is a category I can’t say I’ve heard of before, but explosions and one-liners – who could ask for anything more

It’s difficult to say what I like so much about the show. I think part of it is that I enjoy it when a main character is really really good at whatever they do. I think of it as a Sherlock Holmes type character – someone who’s never wrong, who’s always a step ahead, who sees what everyone else misses.

Having said that, Westen does mess up sometimes and gets beaten up and bleeds, which is realism that I appreciate. I know, it seems like I want opposing, incompatible things from the show, but it delivers anyway.

I also really like the little voiceover bits he does. Basically he gives you tips on how to be a spy, and it’s usually something related to what’s happening in the episode. For example in one episode he hijacks a car, paying special attention to the fact that it doesn’t have airbags. Then he drives as fast as he can, head first into a bad guy’s car (which does have airbags). The bad guy gets knocked out by the airbag, and as Westen ties the man’s hands to the steering wheel with cable ties, his voiceover says something like “An airbag can save your life. But it will also knock you out long enough for someone to cable tie your hands to the steering wheel.” That had me laughing out loud.

None of the people I know have even heard of the show, which is a real shame. Possibly this is because the show is on USA which is a smaller network(?) I don’t really understand how American TV channels work. In any case, USA also make Monk and Psych – two other shows that I love – so I think they deserve more attention than they get.

Come to think of it, both Monk and Psych also have main characters that have that Sherlock Holmes feeling to them…

Another odd thing – Jeffrey Donovan (the actor who plays Michael Westen in Burn Notice) played the bad guy in a Monk episode (Mr. Monk and the Astronaut) so there’s a weird crossover.

Anyway, the Burn Notice season one DVD is out in the middle of June – I’ve been waiting for this ever since I saw the first episode

Can’t wait for season two…

P.S. This is my first post using Zemanta, which explains the new links to Wikipedia and the Related articles section.

It seems pretty handy so far – Zemanta automates the part of the blogging process where you look for pictures to go with your post, choose tags and linkify key words and phrases. Although I haven’t used any of its picture suggestions because it insists on putting them at the top of the post rather than next to the paragraph to which the picture refers.

Also its new suggestions make the old suggestions disappear, which could make it a pain to remove links after you’ve added them…