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Burn Notice: Reckoning (2013)
Fitting end to a classic summer show
Was this the best show on television? No, not by a long shot, with The Wire, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Game Of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Sherlock, etc. airing during the seven-year period of this show. However, it was superb summer entertainment, and it occasionally surpassed its summer slot to become compelling prime-time-worthy character drama. I watched the show for three reasons: 1) the relationship between Michael and Fiona (one of my favorite female characters on TV, though a bit simplistic in the long run), 2) the relationship between Michael and Sam Axe (without question my favorite bro-mance on TV), and 3) the relationship between Michael and his mother, Madeline Westen. That last reason is probably the main reason I tuned in - it was so easy to see Madeline's survivor strength in Michael that I have a hard time figuring out whether that is because of the genius of Sharon Gless' performance or the writing from Matt Nix. Probably a little bit of both in the end.
In any case, the interplay between the main characters (Michael, Fiona, Sam, Madeline) rang true to an extent that I am convinced this is the reason the show lasted seven years and became the pioneer of the current USA critical renaissance. The spy and action stuff almost became secondary to this core. In later seasons, it became clear that the show had lost its creative juice - plots were recycled (Fiona's multiple ex-boyfriends), characters re-hashed old footsteps (Michael gets in too deep pyschologically and has to be brought back to reality by his support system), and the show became repetitive. This happens to most shows after year 5 on the air - it's really tough to manufacture new and innovative situations with the same bunch after a certain amount of time. Law and Order fans can suck a lollipop because the show lived on recycling ADAs, cops and yanked-from-headlines-plots after basically year 3 (of the original and all spin-offs).
That much being said, I liked the finale, and the way Matt Nix managed to work in the intro lines for each character - Fiona: 'Shall we shoot them?', Sam: 'You know spies, ...', and finally 'My name is Michael Westen, I used to be a spy...' at the very end. I would have liked to have seen Jesse get a chance to say 'That's how we do it people', but he gets a great sequence in the middle of the episode telling Maddie how he's found a new family. I teared up during that scene, and during the last convo between Michael and Maddie, and Maddie's last line: 'This one's for my boys.' What a perfect way to exit, stage left, for one of my favorite maternal characters on TV, ever. Some things about the ending weren't surprising - you had to figure Michael and Fiona would end up together (especially after Carlos was almost unceremoniously dismissed a couple eps prior), and in a remote location (I guessed beach, we get snow-covered cabin). Frankly, I thought someone would die, but I guessed Sam Axe making a sacrifice (a la pseudo-Chewbacca style) to convince his best bud Mike to end things for good. Maddie blowing up a few guards struck me by surprise (and I'm not the only one, it seems).
Sharon Gless' joke at the end was that there were no spin-offs in Maddie's future - and in a cynical way, it's hard to argue. Frankly, any spin-off / reunion TV movie is better served with her absence and the presence of the main core (Michael, Fiona, Sam) than any other variation. It's just that her presence grounded the whole endeavor - she was always the savvy civilian in the whole fiasco, and her real-world sensibility always acted as an anchor to the covert-craziness suggested by the others. Now we have no balance / check for when Sam or Fiona wants to go off half-cocked to bust some heads. Well, anyways, I'll be first in line if a reunion movie happens and Sam / Jesse gets reunited with Mike / Fiona / half-grown Charlie on some crazy mission to reunite the Dalai Lama with the long-lost Zen Spear of Chaos. I don't like that the finale split the team apart, and I suppose that's the sign of a good finale - the quoting of Emily Dickinson: 'Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell'.
Blech. I will now be drinking some whiskey to wash that out of my head... darn these emotions.