New Show Review: Burn Notice

      I've heard mixed review about this show. My brother says it sucks, my dad likes it, my friends have never seen it (or at least have never talked about it). Sounds like a job for TV Time Waster.
     I watched the pilot and then I watched a couple random episodes on one of my favorite pirating sites, and I can conclusively say this about Burn Notice: "Ehh". It's not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it's definitely not great. Overall, I'd say if you need to kill an hour and you don't want to broaden your mind by reading a book, you could do worse than Burn Notice.
      In the pilot the female lead, Fiona, has an awful Irish accent (she was a member of the IRA). But in the other episodes I watched the accent was totally gone, but in the opening credits of every episode, there she is with the Irish accent again. It's inconsistencies like that that bring this show down a level from its potential. If you make a show and realize your lead can't deliver on the accent, that's understandable, but at the very least take the casting mistake out of your theme song
      As far as badassness, Michael Weston, the main character, delivers pretty handily. He doesn't get by using brute force, but he can when necessary. Usually he outwits his opponents into making a mistake that leads them to get caught by the cops. He also gives tips about cool spy tricks, some of which are on youtube, like this one, or this one, and then one more. The tips he gives in episodes are much better than those though.
      This show also utilizes an unbelievable amount of sex appeal. There is a pretty girl in a bikini in nearly every scene. Couple that with the easy to follow, hokey dialogue and constant explosions, it is clear that the intended common denominator for this show is men anywhere between 12-40 with very few plans on a Friday night.

1-10 Likelihood I Will put Burn Notice on my must Tivo list:  4       It's a little cheesier and formulaic than I would usually go for, but I don't always need intellectual thrillers with 2 different universes (Hello Lost and Fringe). Sometimes its nice to just sit back, look at fake tanned girls getting more fake tanned on television, while learning how to bust a lock and watching shit blow up. Also, at 22 I fall right in the middle of the target demographic. I won't be setting Tivo, but if I'm bored I'll watch this show.