The Spy Who Loved His Mother, Barely
Jun 29, 2007 Burn Notice
The lighter side of espionage has pretty much fallen by the wayside. Something about 9/11, secret C.I.A. prisons and the poisoning of former K.G.B. agents in Europe has cast a pall on spy spoofs.
And that’s why the casual irreverence of “Burn Notice” is a little
unsettling; the USA Network’s new series is a jaunty, tongue-in-cheek
drama about an American spy who gets kicked out into the cold.
In tonight’s premiere a wisecracking agent for hire named Michael
Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) recounts his covert intelligence work in a
cool, sarcastic voice-over, like that of a pulp-fiction private eye.
“Know what it’s like being a spy?” he asks. “It’s like sitting in your
dentist’s reception area 24 hours a day. You read magazines, sip coffee
and every so often someone tries to kill you.” Michael is in the middle
of a secret operation in Nigeria, bribing thuggish warlords to lay off
an oil field, when his employers inform him that he has a “burn notice”
in his file and is blacklisted.
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