A quick review of last night’s “Burn Notice” coming up just as soon as I score 1420 points at canasta…
As the lead-in to the summer finale(*), “Blind Spot” had a bit of an obligatory feel to it. It brought John Barrett (played by the impeccably-cast Robert Patrick) and his private army to Miami, and it finally clued Jesse in to Michael’s responsibility for burning him. But we knew both developments were coming, and the latter was one that always kinda rankled me. I knew all season for a moment like the one between Jesse and Fi in the climax, it still frustrated me at times this season that Michael never let Madeline, Fi or his own common sense talk him into confessing to Jesse. No, it wouldn’t have worked at the beginning, but there came a point in that relationship where Jesse liked and trusted them, and where if Michael had framed the explanation in the right way, Jesse might have accepted it and continued helping Michael take down Simon, or Barrett, or Vaughn, or whoever we’ve decided is the real bad guy this week. But Michael never realized that, mainly because the plot demanded that Jesse turn on him at some point. I’m not a fan of what Roger Ebert calls the Idiot Plot – where the plot only works if the main characters are idiots – and I particularly don’t like it when it’s applied to a show whose hero is defined by his intelligence.
(*) In case you missed the news the other day, after next week’s summer finale, the show will be back on Nov. 11.
The standalone story was fine. I appreciate a Chuck Finley appearance as much as the next “Burn Notice” fan, particularly at the end when he revealed to Charles everything he had done to him, and Jeffrey Donovan had fun playing Michael’s greedy corrupt cop character. And given the previous hints the show has dropped about Jesse’s attraction to Fi, I was actually glad that his feelings about their makeout session got derailed by his discovery that she and the others have been lying to him. Jesse’s professional relationship to the gang interests me; Jesse as romantic obstacle to Michael and Fi does not, particularly since the series is often ambivalent at dealing with them as a couple at all.
While I didn’t love this one, Matt Nix and company always tend to kick things up a notch in their finales, so I’m looking forward to whatever comes down next week, even if our hero had to be kind of dumb to get there.
What did everybody else think?