MODERN HERO, NOT PEJORATIVE:

'Burn Notice': Firearms and Foreplay (BRENDAN BERNHARD | July 8, 2008, NY Sun)

Returning to the small screen this Thursday for a second season, "Burn Notice" certainly celebrates a very American "modern hero." Here, it's Michael Westen, the compulsively helpful CIA spy turned freelance operative played by Jeffrey Donovan with a style that's as crisp as his uber-cool suits. Like most shows on USA ("Monk," "Psych"), this one can border on the cartoonish and is rarely if ever believable, but its thematic core is rock-solid. [...]

Westen's voice-over narration remains one of the show's major selling points; he provides us with his views on air bags in cars (a nuisance during twisty, stop-start evasive maneuvers), how to pass yourself off as someone you're not, how to get someone to divulge how his security system works (you criticize it, and in reaction he starts defending it, and thus explains it), how to drill through a floor without electrocuting yourself, etc.

Westen's first job for Carla is to steal a computer database from a private military company (that is, mercenaries). This, somewhat unfortunately, involves Westen pretending to be an English client with an unconvincing Cockney accent, though it seems to pass muster in Miami. Still, it's one of the few times in the series when Mr. Donovan's limitations as an actor have been exposed. On the other hand, it does lead to a particularly enjoyable sequence in which Westen is forced to pretend that Fiona and Sam, who are doing surveillance for him and have been spotted by the mercenaries, are complete strangers whom he's ready to start shooting. He knows that if Fiona and Sam see him fire a gun at them, they'll realize he's using them to make his cover story more convincing and act accordingly.

"It takes a good marksman to shoot you at 50 feet from a moving car," he informs us. "But it takes a great marksman to miss, while making it look as if they're trying to hit you — or markswoman, as the case may be."

The markswoman would be Fiona, who neatly shoots a bullet that lands between Westen's feet. He responds with a shot of his own that no doubt misses her lovely Irish brow by about 3 inches. It's gunplay as foreplay, and they're both enjoying it enormously. As for the mercenaries, they're finally convinced that Westen is who he says he is. Job done. Time for Westen to go over and fix Mom's coffeemaker.