By Ned Jordan
Burn Notice showed some potential in its first season, but it also seemed a
little unsure of itself at times. In Season Two the show has come into its own,
shaking off its self-aware awkwardness and maturing into a confident series that
know how to have fun with itself and its audience while still delivering the
guns, chases, and cross/double-cross twists and turns that are all a part of a
day at the office in the covert world. The series' central conceit that it's
main character Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) is a covert agent who has been
"burned" (completely cut loose from his job as a covert agent for reasons
unknown to him) is a tough one for a series to carry. Move the storyline too
quickly and you either need to end the series or change its character. Move too
slowly and the audience will become frustrated and lose interest. In Season Two
the series seems to have a handle on this delicate balance, with Michael's
ongoing quest to find out who burned him and why taking just enough of a
backseat to his hobby of using his skills to help good people in desperate
situations to keep your interest going. Besides, the solutions that Michael
comes up with to these people's problems, along with his running narrative that
ties each of his actions back to skills that he learned as an agent, are usually
interesting and entertaining enough to make you sometimes forget that his
primary focus is to get to the people who burned him. The show's mix of action
and humor, and a strong supporting cast in Gabrielle Anwar, Bruce Campbell, and
Sharon Gless, make Burn Notice Season 2 well worth watching.
While the episodes themselves receive good marks, this Blu-ray release does
not. On the positive side the menu system is pretty slick, and special features
rate as average, with some audio commentaries, deleted scenes, and a gag reel.
However, a big downside is that the Blu-ray picture is not high-def and is in
fact grainy enough to be really noticeable. The picture is presented in
widescreen, but it appears that it was upscaled from a standard definition
picture and that the upscaling was not down with state of the art techniques.
You pay extra for the hi-def picture that Blu-ray provides, but when it's this
poor of a transfer you may as well save your money and go for the DVD release
instead.
Final Rating:
- The episodes themselves
would earn four stars, but a star was lost for the Blu-ray release's picture
quality...
