Saturday, September 22nd, 2007
10:30 Corner Gas
11:00 Burn Notice
I love television. At the end of a long stressful day you can sit down to something new that you know will be funny, and something new that you know will be exciting. In 22mins or 44mins (minus ads) you can get a story-fix that will take you anywhere you want to go, and suit any mood you happen to be in. It's new because you've never seen it before, and it's familiar and comfortable because it's just the latest story in your favourite series. No other form of storytelling can manages that.
Corner Gas. Season 3, Episode 18. Truckers came to town on this installment of Corner Gas. Since nothing much ever happens in the small Canadian town of Dog River, this event in quite unusual. Word has apparently made it's way down the "trucker pipeline" that Lacey serves good food. While all this was going on, some of the regulars were involved in fund raising for repairs to a local children's play park. At various times during the episode (whenever the children's play park was mentioned) there was a quick cutaway to some misfortune or other befalling the poor children of Dog River. Hilarious. But, the best joke - by far - was timed to coincide with the "Directed By" credit. Another recent episode had a boom mike fall on Wanda, and in this episode Wanda wasn't happy with a joke she'd just deliever and asked Brent if she could do it again. Brent, of course, being the director for this episode. Ah, meta-humour, gotta love it.
Burn Notice. Season 1 Finale. Not much humour to be found on the season finale of USA's big summer hit Burn Notice. Michael has spent the season doing two things: helping ordinary people, and tracking down the man who issued the "burn notice" in the first place, and got Michael kicked out of the spy business. This superb season finale deviates from that formula in a couple of ways. Michael is too busy to help this week's "ordinary people" (two girls being black-mailed by drug runners) and it is his best friend and ex-girlfriend who step up to take on the bad-guys. Why is Michael busy, you ask? Chiefly because he's finally found the man who issued the "burn notice" and he spends the first hour of this episode playing cat and mouse until they are finally face to face...
What can I say? Burn Notice has been a singular joy to watch. Not only is Michael Westin of the best action-heroes that TV has ever given us, he is quite possibly the cleverest. The way his mind works, as relayed to us by voice-over, is one of the (many) strengths of the show. The cast are pitch perfect and the characters are easy to love. This episode's twists and turns put everyone in peril and it wasn't always a sure thing that all of Michael's group would survive.
As the action really heated up in the second hour I must confess to being a bit befuddled by the criss-crossing plots. This episode packed in a lot of bad-guys: bad guys to get the various going, bad-guys to betray the first sets of bad-guys, and bad-guys to bring the episode to a close. When two minor characters got blown up in a car bomb, I confess to being confused for a few seconds as to what was going on. Which set of bad-guys, from which plot, did it? I wasn't exactly sure until after the resulting chase sequence (set to very cool music).
Michael and Fiona have extraordinary chemistry. The long silent scene of them making a bomb together was like watching two lovers making love. And their brief "goodbye" was heartbreaking. And the final shot of Michael driving along that massive bridge was majestic and lonely in about a million ways. Michael doesn't realise yet what a great family he had around him in Miami, but we - the viewers - do. And, for that reason, it was difficult to watch him being shut up in a dark box and taken away from them.
Burn Notice is a perfect example of why I love television so much. Every year there's always one or two new shows that brings new characters into your life and into your heart. Characters that become real, and that you care about. Television storytelling does this in a way that - I believe - no other form of storytelling can manage. A few months back I had no idea who Michael, Sam and Fiona were...
Now?
Now, I care about them...
And that's why I love television.
Corner Gas, Burn Notice
