The Show:

USA Network was once a basic cable channel with reruns of classic, yet cheesy movies, old TV shows and professional wrestling. Now their identity has changed. They still have professional wrestling, but they are known for their original programming. From shows like Monk and Psych to Royal Pains and Covert Affairs. One of their most popular shows is a spy show known as Burn Notice. The show has just started it’s sixth season, with four season out on DVD and Blu-ray.

Burn Notice tells the story of former spy Michael Weston (Jeffrey Donovan). He’s a former spy because he’s been, what’s called, burned. That’s when the CIA fires you, but they can’t just give you walking papers. A burn notice is given to a former spy who is believed to be unreliable. Their accounts are froze, their work history is deleted, essentially they do not exist. While on a mission, Michael is informed he’s burned and after being beaten by his enemies, he wakes up in Miami. Not a bad place to be burned in. That is if his ex-girlfriend and partner, Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar), former friend and ex-FBI agent Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell) and mother Madeline (Sharon Gless), didn’t also live in Miami. In order to have some form of income, Michael takes cases to help people out and uses his training to do so. He also has help from Fi, Sam and Maddy. Along with helping these regular people out, Michael is trying to find out who burned him and why he was burned.

Season 4 starts with Michael meeting his new handler, the person who will give him his jobs to do in order to get him closer to the answers he seeks, Vaughn (Robert Wisdom). The job that Vaughn has for Michael is to take out a terrorist, Simon (Garrett Dellahunt). On the way to find Simon, Michael is duped into burning another spy, Jesse (Coby Bell).  Once Michael gets to Simon, he is told that Vaughn was one of the people that helped burn him, and Simon provides Michael with a tape proving this. Michael decides to turn on Vaughn during the season and steals what Vaughn wanted, but for his own use.

After Jesse is burned, he comes to Michael. Along with trying to find out who burned him, Michael also helps out the average person who’s been wronged. This is why Jesse comes to Michael. He wants his help in trying to find the person that burned him, unaware it was Michael. Jesse ends up joining the team of Michael, Fi and Sam in helping others, all the while trying to figure out who burned him. As the season goes on, Jesse learns that it was Michael and he tries to kill him. In the second half of the season, Michael tries to get Jesse unburned while trying to answer the same question for himself.

This season of Burn Notice was a really good one. The addition of Jesse to the team was a great one. While the show was always fun and exciting, sometimes it needs something to kick it in the butt and change up things a bit. The addition of Jesse breathes a breath of fresh air into the show. Watching Michael, Fi and Sam (and sometimes Maddy) got a little redundant. Having Jesse come in, and fall a bit for Fi, made the stories more interesting.

For those that don’t know too much about the show, it’s a mixture of the 80s shows The Equalizer with a bit of MacGyver. The acting is pretty damn good, the writing is very witty and well done and the action is high. There is enough here to drawn both male viewers (action, Miami location) and female viewers (sex appeal) and keep everyone coming back. The main cast, Donovan, Anwar, Campbell, Gless and Bell all have wonderful chemistry together, even with Bell coming on during this season. If there is anything wrong with the show, a lot of times it’s the bad guys. At times they can be a little too dumb. Michael goes undercover to infiltrate different gangs or befriends the bad guys in order to take them down. Why do they go along with that this guy says even after only meeting him a few days before? Other than that, it’s a great, fun show.

Audio/Video:

The show looks sharp here, but it looked great on TV. There is no change to that here. The same goes for the audio. Luckily when putting a show that’s produced now on to TV, not much has to change in the presentation.

The Extras:

Sam Axe’s Guide to Ladies and Libations: This was a fun little feature. It was an interview with Bruce Campbell talking about his character, Sam Axe. Bruce talked about being the “ladies man” on the show and about how his character is always drinking but never gets drunk. Just fun.

Best-Laid Plans: The Stunts of Burn Notice: The stunt coordinators talked about the stunts that the actors and stunt doubles do during the filming of the show. This was taken from a panel that was done by the people behind the show. Another fun little feature.

Burn Notice Roasts White Collar: Rivalry of the Writer’s Room: This was a feature where the people behind Burn Notice talked about the differences between their show and White Collar. White Collar at the time was a new show, and USA tends to pair their shows up that are similar, and these two shows had many similarities. The crew of Burn Notice put over their show while taking digs at the characters and writing of White Collar, all in a fun way.

White Collar Roasts Burn Notice: Rivalry of the Writer’s Room: This was the same as the last feature, but it was the people behind White Collar taking their digs at Burn Notice. Seems like everyone was just having fun with these.

Gag Reel

Deleted Scenes: Nothing too special here. Typical deleted scenes that were deleted for a reason. It was only a few scenes.

Audio Commentary on the season finale Last Stand

The pilot episode for another USA Network hit show, White Collar is available on the DVD set as well.

Show Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Extras Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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.  

Show:    Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Blu-ray: Rating: 1 out of 5 stars