Great to hear! I love Burn Notice. Just be aware that they decide to [thankfully] completely abandon Fiona's Irish accent. The hilarious part, though, is that you'll continue to hear it twice in the intro before every single episode thereafter

Hung became meh for me. But Breaking Bad is amazing.

I wanted to keep watching Breaking Bad, but the cancer stuff rang incredibly true, and while that's the biggest compliment I can pay the show, it was too much for me to take personally. I stopped a little after season one.

I give them all the credit in the world, though, and the main guy in that show is phenomenal.

Burn Notice: Fiona occasionally busts out with a bit of accent, but I agree it's odd that they cut it completely. Of course, they also cut the mom's hair.

Breaking Bad: I'm not spoiling anything by saying that the main character survives. Eventually, the cancer issue fades into the other plot complications.

Ah, well, maybe I'll watch again some day.

Bruno asked about Justified. I've started it, though I'm only two episodes in. I like it, but it's tough for me to get into because I don't immediately gravitate to shows that aren't fantasy-based I do watch a few normal dramas, but not many. I mainly started this one because I'm a big fan of Timothy Olyphant, but I have a big complaint about him. Mainly, I think that in Justified they asked him to play the exact same character he played in Deadwood, but I thought he was kind of dull in Deadwood. So far I haven't seen him match the extremely charismatic performance he gave in The Girl Next Door.

Anyway, I think the show's pretty good, though a little slowly paced.

I just took a quick peek at the NBC line-up... They should really bring back Leno at 10pm. Apart from 4 comedies on Thursday nights, NBC has nothing. I don't yet know what their fall schedule looks like though.

Leno is bombing either way. He had horrible ratings at 10pm, and now he has abysmal ratings back in his old spot. I read a story last week about how one show matched a low point from '93. I'm not sad about it at all. He's terribly unfunny, and just didn't handle the situation right.

Team Conan! CoCo!

I'm now on episode 6 of Burn Notice and so far I like it. Probably a bit less than Leverage, but that may change. One thing that bothers me about it is that everyone is a little too politically correct and gentle. Fiona with a passion for guns and violence is far too tame. Michael as a spy does the calculated risk thing well, but IMO, he should also be willing to go the extra mile - eliminate and dispose. There have been a few times where I expected to see a body count. It would have been the simplest thing to do in solving the situation. Especially in the previous episode (#5, the gun smugglers). The lead also has quite a blase attitude with regards to his burning. He's not driven enough by it. Compare it to the (main) character Charlie Cruze in Life for instance. Or Jason Bourne... The show reminds me a lot of 80's shows like the A-Team. In concept, not necessarily execution, this is way better of course.

I've watched both episodes of Rookie Blue and I'm still undecided. It's watchable, but a little too generic. It takes place in Toronto which caught me by complete surprise. They haven't yet mentioned the city's name, but the cars and uniforms are modeled on TO's police force, it's filmed in Toronto, they use only Toronto street names and of course Canadian money. I know that I'm not a big fan of police shows based on beat-cops, but I'l watch a few more to see where this goes. I do find the Toronto thing a little distracting, but only because I'm from the area.

I've been watching a lot of TV this week since I'm down with a terrible head cold - likely one of the 5 worst I've ever had. It's left me completely useless. UGH. It's also insanely hot outside and I can't take that for more than about 5 seconds.


EDIT: Figures that Burn Notice's main character would get a little more proactive about his burn in the episode I watched right after posting...

The aspect of "Burn Notice" that burns me is that, for a guy who takes on a new "client" each week, nobody's ever actually paying him any money. If he never gets paid, how is he supposed to afford all those nice firearms and explosives that he's always got laying around?

I have had the same concerns, but to be fair there are a few "outs." In one episode he takes a stack of cash, that if composed of $100 bills, would be over $100k easy. Or at least $20k if it's 20's. Fiona makes money herself and we're supposed to believe that Sam does as well, at least by mooching off the ladies. Though he also got a pile of cash the same size as Michael's in the same episode (#6).

I think you summed it up perfectly, Bruno, though I'd go even further and say that it doesn't matter to the show all that much. Burn Notice rarely gets caught up on the story details, and that's never bothered me. I figured he knew how to get the things he needed, and much of the time Michael works with what he has already, and doesn't always need guns and explosives.

And Bruno, you didn't mention what you thought of Sam. Bruce Campbell was made for that role

There's also no reason to believe that they show us all of his clients. It's reasonable to assume that he also has run-of-the-mill security consulting gigs that are not exactly TV-worthy.

Yeah, but...

The exact time scale of any given season of the show is a bit squishy, but it seems to be tracking in mostly real time, i.e., one episode = one week of real time, at least based on the progression of the larger plot arcs, which seems quite compressed. And then Weston is picking up a new client every week.

I really enjoy the A-story / B-story structure of Burn Notice, but it's clearly not intended to be something you take too seriously. If the Russians have taught us anything, it's that deep cover foreign agents are a whole lot less like James Bond / Jason Bourne / etc. and more like Ward and June Cleaver.

Back to something I mentioned previously... In the finale of Season 1, Michael and Fiona are seen putting together a decent collection of guns in preparation for their mission to go save Sam. In the narration Sam mentions that commandos are all about surprise, yadda yadda, and that this type of mission can still easily end in failure - something he'd also mentioned earlier. Two baddies depart leaving 3 up top on the boat and the main baddy below deck. Michael sneaks below deck and Fiona is perched with a rifle in a perfect position to eliminate any threats on deck.

When Michael finally jumps the main baddy below deck he has a completely dominant position and complete surprise on his side. Does he shoot him with one of the many guns he has? No. DOes Fiona start taking out the guys on deck? No.

That bothered me. Obviously the show is fantasy, but for even partial credibility's sake, they needed to kill all four guys. There's no way that leaving any of them alive would have been an option, otherwise their client would continue to be in danger.

Error on the bad guy's part? He only sent 2 dudes to go meet/eliminate Michael and Fiona. At this point he already knew they were serious threats, so that's also not a very realistic move.

I'm not looking for body count for the sake of gore, but if the plot requires it, leaving these guys still standing just makes the characters unbelievable.

Uh, yeah, like Dan said, I really don't take the show very seriously when it comes to stuff like that. I think they want to make Michael out to be as nice a spy as possible.

Basically I'm saying is that it doesn't bother me, but I can see where it might bother you. I'm also very used to the tone of USA shows, which are never really interested in the fine details...

seek out 6 part mini-series called "Luther". Really good cop drama.