The stories we want, the stories we tell
Monday, 24 August 2015 12:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59The Universe Is Made Up Of Stories, Not Atoms.*
-:- -:- -:- -:-
I loved Burn Notice from the first. I'm not sure I started with the pilot—I caught it in a marathon, and was immediately captivated by the humor. (It's always the humor.) Michael Weston was competent, uncomfortable with emotion, and had a hilarious, dry sense of humor. He was in love, but didn't know how to be; he had a friend, but didn't know how to have a friend; he had a mother he couldn't cope with at all. He knew how to work, and he was excellent at his job—only he didn't have a job anymore. He was a man who had gone from superspy to persona non grata in a matter of seconds. He had to get his life back!
(He actually says this many times throughout the show's seven year run.)
He's dumped in Miami, his hometown, with only the cash in his wallet, and bruises and contusions from a beating he got when he couldn't fulfill his last job. His ex, Fiona, is there, kind of hoping to watch him die, kind of hoping to get him back. Just in case he doesn't die, she's called his mother, because he needs to suffer some more.
Michael manages to get work with an old friend, Sam. Sam's ex-CIA, now living on the kindness of the women he sleeps with. He gets a car from his mother, even though it means actually having her in his life. He starts doing small jobs for people with problems too small for a big PI agency and too weird or shady for the police. And he keeps trying to find out how he got burned, why he got burned, how to get back to that thing he loved so much, that place where nothing and nobody touched him.
He finds out, but he can't get back.
But he forges a strong bond with Sam. He makes peace with his estranged brother. He learns how to love Fiona. He develops a relationship with his mother that doesn't include hiding when she calls him. He even makes a brand new friend.
They become a well-oiled machine, with mother Maddie stepping up in emergencies. For five years, in between trying to get Michael's old life back, they help people. They are Robin Hood and his merry men, and it's delightful.
That's the story I was watching, the one about the guy who was learning to have a different kind of life, even if he didn't know it.
But it's not the story Matt Nix was telling. He's the creator of Burn Notice, and I don't think the idea that Michael would see what he had and enjoy it ever occurred to him. He fixed Michael's life—really, everyone's life, because Fiona was happy, Sam was happy, Maddie was happy, Jesse (the new friend) was happy. Their lives were smaller, but productive, and they were a family.
And then Matt Nix blew it all up.
Which, you know, he's the creator. He can do that. I'm sure he thinks that the show had a happy ending because Michael and Fiona ended up together, but he tore the family apart. Things got so dark, I was hunting for spoilers, honestly afraid he was going to kill Sam. (If he had, I would have quit watching.)
I think Matt Nix is as blind as Michael Weston: neither of them could see what was right in front of them, the pleasure and satisfaction to be had from a small life lived well. And that's sad, because he took it away from all of us.
Still, you should watch the first five years of Burn Notice. You can go further if you want, but don't say I didn't warn you.
*Muriel Rukeyser
-:- -:- -:- -:-
I loved Burn Notice from the first. I'm not sure I started with the pilot—I caught it in a marathon, and was immediately captivated by the humor. (It's always the humor.) Michael Weston was competent, uncomfortable with emotion, and had a hilarious, dry sense of humor. He was in love, but didn't know how to be; he had a friend, but didn't know how to have a friend; he had a mother he couldn't cope with at all. He knew how to work, and he was excellent at his job—only he didn't have a job anymore. He was a man who had gone from superspy to persona non grata in a matter of seconds. He had to get his life back!
(He actually says this many times throughout the show's seven year run.)
He's dumped in Miami, his hometown, with only the cash in his wallet, and bruises and contusions from a beating he got when he couldn't fulfill his last job. His ex, Fiona, is there, kind of hoping to watch him die, kind of hoping to get him back. Just in case he doesn't die, she's called his mother, because he needs to suffer some more.
Michael manages to get work with an old friend, Sam. Sam's ex-CIA, now living on the kindness of the women he sleeps with. He gets a car from his mother, even though it means actually having her in his life. He starts doing small jobs for people with problems too small for a big PI agency and too weird or shady for the police. And he keeps trying to find out how he got burned, why he got burned, how to get back to that thing he loved so much, that place where nothing and nobody touched him.
He finds out, but he can't get back.
But he forges a strong bond with Sam. He makes peace with his estranged brother. He learns how to love Fiona. He develops a relationship with his mother that doesn't include hiding when she calls him. He even makes a brand new friend.
They become a well-oiled machine, with mother Maddie stepping up in emergencies. For five years, in between trying to get Michael's old life back, they help people. They are Robin Hood and his merry men, and it's delightful.
That's the story I was watching, the one about the guy who was learning to have a different kind of life, even if he didn't know it.
But it's not the story Matt Nix was telling. He's the creator of Burn Notice, and I don't think the idea that Michael would see what he had and enjoy it ever occurred to him. He fixed Michael's life—really, everyone's life, because Fiona was happy, Sam was happy, Maddie was happy, Jesse (the new friend) was happy. Their lives were smaller, but productive, and they were a family.
And then Matt Nix blew it all up.
Which, you know, he's the creator. He can do that. I'm sure he thinks that the show had a happy ending because Michael and Fiona ended up together, but he tore the family apart. Things got so dark, I was hunting for spoilers, honestly afraid he was going to kill Sam. (If he had, I would have quit watching.)
I think Matt Nix is as blind as Michael Weston: neither of them could see what was right in front of them, the pleasure and satisfaction to be had from a small life lived well. And that's sad, because he took it away from all of us.
Still, you should watch the first five years of Burn Notice. You can go further if you want, but don't say I didn't warn you.
*Muriel Rukeyser
(no subject)
Date: Sunday, 27 September 2015 02:27 am (UTC)But those last two seasons were so dark, with virtually no humor, and deaths, and all their friends getting caught in various crossfires--it was horrible. I cannot imagine watching them ever again.
I love a good marathon, but I can't wait for a season to be over to start watching something. The marathon was one USA was running that first season, to get new people watching caught up. It might only have been three or four episodes, but they showed them twice. *g*