Burn Notice: Season Two – Blu-ray Review

The Show

I’ve always loved movies about super-spy-special-ops types that help ordinary people out with not so ordinary problems.  Television masterpieces like The Equalizer, Air Wolf, Knight Rider, and The A-Team were just a few of my favorites.  So it should be obvious that I’m a fan of Burn Notice.  Because if you break it down to its essentials Burn Notice is extremely similar to the above mentioned The A-Team.  Let me illustrate my point before I delve into why I love this show.  

First I’m going to break down The A-Team’s characters and then compare them to those of Burn Notice.  The A-Team’s awesome cigar smoking leader Col. John “Hannibal” Smith knew exactly what to do in every situation and would utter the awesome catchphrase “I love it when a plan comes together.”  The next madman in this crew of motley masterminds is Capt. H. M. “Howling Mad” Murdock, the crew’s pilot, then there’s Sgt. Bosco “B.A.” Baracus, the crew’s muscle, and finally there’s prettyboy Lt. Templeton “Faceman” Peck the fast talker.  In the ’80s you couldn’t create a show like this without including a memorable vehicle and for this show it was B.A. Baracus’ black Chevy van.  Alright, now that I’ve broken give anyone that has never seen The A-Team a basic breakdown of the characters, and for those of you who have seen it a quick refresher let me point out the similarities it shares with Burn Notice.

Instead of utilizing four main characters like those in The A-Team, Burn Notice only has three main characters.  I’ll start with the easiest and most obvious parallel, Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) who is a cross between Hannibal and Face.  He’s the leader that always knows what to do, the pretty-boy fast talker, and instead of chewing on cigars he eats yogurt, and utters the catch phrase “I’ll see what I can do.”  Then there’s Fiona Glenanne (Gabrielle Anwar) the weapon and explosives expert that loves a good fight is a perfect replacement for B.A. Baracus, and Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell) is the group’s Mad Murdock, only instead of crashing at the local looney bin he crashes with any rich hottie he can con into paying the bills. Oh, and instead of a Chevy Van Westen drives a Dodge Charger.  

So there you go.  How could anyone not enjoy The A-Team, err…I mean Burn Notice?  I love this show, not only can I draw parallels to one of my all time favorite television shows, Burn Notice stands on its own and kicks major butt.  Donovan is perfect as Michael Westen and Gabrielle Anwar is megahot, but I have to admit that the reason I started watching the show was because of the chin himself, Bruce Campbell.  The man, the myth, the legend with the chin of steel totally rocks as Sam Axe and is reason enough to watch the show week after week.  

The only thing I didn’t enjoy about re-watching this awesome show on blu-ray was how terrible it looked on blu-ray.  At first I thought that my blu-ray was defective so I popped the disc out and put a different one in, but the only thing that proved was that the Burn Notice: Season 2 blu-ray looked terrible.  There is simply no excuse for how terrible the transfer looked on this disc so my advice would be to pick up this awesome show on standard definition because the show doesn’t benefit form the blu-ray transfer at all.  Basically what I’m saying is that Burn Notice: Season 2 is absolutely a killer film, but not a killer blu-ray.

The Blu-ray

Audio/Visual – Unfortunately, the audio is on equal standing with the blu-ray transfer.  Neither is up to par.

Special Features 

Commentaries – I didn’t really care for this commentary track.  The show’s creator Matt Nix and Bruce Campbell were fun to listen to but the rest of the folks were pretty boring.  Also Michael Westen himself Jeffery Donovan was no where to be found on any of the tracks.  

Deleted Scenes – Some of these deleted scenes deserved to be deleted, but there were also a few that I really enjoyed.  Worth checking out.  

Nixin’ It Up – Matt Nix gives a detailed account of what it’s like for him to direct an episode.  By far my favorite of all the extras.

Boom Notice – A cool parody of the show featuring a boom operator that has been fired and helps an actor with a personal problem.

Gag Reel – My second favorite feature on this disc was this gag reel.  I really enjoyed these line flubs and mistakes.  

I loved this series, but didn’t love the blu-ray, so do yourself a favor and buy the standard definition version instead of this one.  

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