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If you’re like me, you don’t watch much television on USA (characters welcome). One of the most popular shows on USA is (apparently) Burn Notice. About a year ago I house-sat for my parents while they were on vacation. I took the liberty of browsing through my family’s DVR to entertain myself and noticed that it was practically bulging with recorded episodes of Burn Notice. I watched the pilot and a year later I can remember almost nothing about the show. In fact, these are the only points that I can recall with any degree of certainty:
- The show takes place in (I think) Florida. Probably Miami.
- It stars Some Guy as a character (we at Octavarius HQ have affectionately named him Jacob Burnnotice) who used to work for the CIA or something.
- Without warning, he finds that he has been “burned”, and from what I understand this means the (I think) CIA fires him without warning, drains all of his accounts, and sends people to kill him or something.
- Jacob Burnnotice has a friend named (probably) Bruce Campbell, played by Bruce Campbell.
- There’s a girl or something.
Burnnotice, LOOK OUT!!!
Based on that limited knowledge, I’m going to try to help all of you out there in TVTopia who have yet to catch this presumably adequate show by giving you a quick synopsis of every episode of Burn Notice’s first season. Also, I’m going to do absolutely no research other than looking up the episode titles on Wikipedia. If you’re a fan of Burn Notice and would like to either correct my synopses or tell me how spot-on I am, feel free to leave some love or hate in the comments sections. Here we go:
1-1: Pilot
Jacob Burnnotice wakes up in his swanky Miami hotel room to find a message on his answering machine. The message says in a digitally-altered voice “Jacob Burnnotice, you have been burned.” He searches his hotel room to find that everything that identified him as a CIA agent is gone: his badge, his gun, even his CIA t-shirt! Panicked, he goes to a beachside café to meet with his friend Bruce Campbell. Over a delicious medianoche sandwich, they decide that the best course of action is for Jacob to call his former lover Maria, who is still active in the CIA. He calls Maria, who already knows about Burnnotice’s burn notice. The episode ends by Maria saying “I know why you’ve been burned…but if you want to know why, first you’ll have to discover your Identity.”
1-2: Identity
Jacob is distraught about being burned, so he decides to drown his sorrows at the bar. Upon entering the Miami Slammy (the rootinest, tootinest bar in Miami), he realizes that he doesn’t have his driver’s license. In fact, the CIA took all of his identification. ALL OF IT. Over a delicious plate of braised chicken, Bruce Campbell tells Jacob that he should at least try to get a library card. Jacob, who has never been able to overcome his fear of literature, can’t bring himself to enter La Biblioteca del Sol. Instead he goes back to his hotel room and drinks himself stupid on $400 worth of teensy bottles of Malibu and Kahlua.
1-3: Fight or Flight
Jacob wakes up in his hotel, hung over. He remembers that the CIA drained all of his bank accounts and can’t pay for his minibar expenses. He evades hotel security by climbing out of the window. Jacob goes to Bruce Campbell’s swamp shack to hide out from the police (who have been called by the hotel to apprehend him), but they know it isn’t safe there when Bruce discovers a black mint on his pillow. The two of them leave the shack, whereupon they are met by Jacob’s former lover Maria. She knifes Jacob in the hand before telling him “We need to talk.”
1-4: Old Friends
Maria rushes Jacob, to a secure hospital in her unmarked fanboat with Bruce Campbell while she explains the situation. She says that the only way Jacob could have avoided the clutches of the hotel’s police squadron and the CIA is if he were to leave South Miami and head north, and the only way she could get him to comply was by injuring him. She also explains that the reason that Burnnotice got burned was to “cover up something big…something that most viewers wouldn’t be able to comprehend”. They arrive at the Hospital Del Norte; by this time Jacob has passed out due to blood loss. When he comes to, he looks at his injured hand and sees that the stitches form the word “BURN”. Jacob looks up at the doctor, who takes off his surgical mask and says “Hello, son.”
1-5: Family Business
Jacob looks at his father/surgeon, whom he has not seen in fifteen years nor was aware of his license to practice medicine. The episode flashes back to Jacob and Charles Burnnotice’s past, when Jacob was just fourteen years old and Charles was a thirty-eight-year-old CIA agent. They fired guns together, they had long conversations over delicious pulled pork sandwiches, and they slept in separate beds in the same room of a South Miami condo…until one day when Charles disappeared. There was no note in the condo, no sign of a forceful removal…only a single black rose left in the bathtub. The show flashes back to the present, and Charles tells his son “I’m afraid we have some Unpaid Debts.”
1-6: Unpaid Debts
When this episode first aired, the feed consisted of a plain blue screen for the entire time slot. Whether it was an act of laziness on behalf of the writers or negligence on the part of USA (characters welcome), a complete episode was not aired on time and has never been rerun, explained, or otherwise apologized for. The cast and crew have maintained an absolute silence on this episode during interviews, and further pressing has only resulted in more silence and nervous glances around the room.
1-7: Broken Rules
With the lockbox in hand, Bruce Campbell is seen strolling out of the Florida State Police compound in full disguise. He walks two miles to Maria’s safehouse and gets in his car to deliver the package to Jacob. On the way to the youth hostel, however, it is revealed that he is being pursued by a black helicopter with a delicate red flame pattern. After a lengthy chase through highway and swamp, Bruce Campbell’s car veers into a ravine and lands upside-down. The camera zooms into the helicopter’s window, where a mysterious hooded stranger is seen piloting. Next to the pilot is none other than Charles Burnnotice, whose left eye is still bleeding down his face.
1-8: Wanted Man
Meanwhile, Jacob has been masquerading as the new janitor of the Hostel de los Jovenes del Sur, a job that he acquired with the forged birth certificate and social security card that Maria printed from the library in Episode 1-6. He cleans the floors during the day and scours the Internet for clues about the identity of his burners by night. Jacob gets by for four days this way until one day when a college-aged backpacker strikes up a discussion with him about the history of Miami. At some point Jacob turns his back and when he turns around the backpacker is gone. Jacob discovers a black rose in the back pocket of his jumpsuit and knows that the hostel is not safe. The camera shows the college hippie using the bathroom stall to change out of his outfit and into more sinister attire.
The show cuts to the ravine, where Bruce Campbell is seen crawling out of his wrecked car. Forgetting completely about the lockbox, he staggers the six miles to the hostel, using bushes, umbrellas, and larger animals as cover. When he arrives at the Hostel de los Jovenes del Sur, he sees that the mysterious hooded stranger has Jacob tied up and at gunpoint. Bruce tells the stranger, “Let’s all just calm down, Dennis Campbell…my brother.”
1-9: Hard Bargain
It is revealed through a series of slow, forced flashbacks that Dennis Campbell volunteered two years ago for the Army of the United States of America (characters welcome). He went MIA during basic training, but in reality he secretly joined the CIA on special mission. He was briefed by Agents Black and Black on the burning of Jacob Burnnotice. When the show cuts to the present, Bruce and Dennis begin to negotiate the terms of Jacob’s possible release. Bruce Campbell goes into details on how to find a safe containing $300,000 and says that once he finds the safe and Jacob is unharmed, Bruce will give Dennis the combination. When Dennis reaches on to shake Bruce’s hand on the agreement, Bruce responds by striking with lightning speed and snapping his brother’s neck.
1-10: False Flag
This is the controversial “crying episode” of Burn Notice, in which Bruce Campbell sobs uncontrollably over his act of murdering his own brother. Famously, there is no dialogue other than sobbing, shouting, and seven instances of the word “fuck” that had to be censored for USA (characters welcome). Aside from Episode 1-6 (which many refuse to count as an episode), this constantly ranks at the top of critics’ lists of worst episodes of television ever aired. Curiously, this was the first and only episode of the show to be guest-written by Bruce Campbell.
1-11: Dead Drop
After Bruce Campbell’s crying fit (which writers insist only happens within the span of three days in the show’s timeline), Jacob and Bruce make funeral arrangements for Dennis Campbell. Since they are now both on the run from the CIA (and the hotel’s untiring police squadron), they must schedule funeral in North Miami under pseudonyms (Terry and Joseph Fuego burying their brother, Dennis Campbell). The funeral takes place the next day and is surprisingly well-attended. As Bruce Campbell finishes delivering the eulogy and the body is being lowered into the ground, a shot whizzes by Jacob’s face, missing by two inches to the left. Charles Burnnotice is seen sniping from a tree fifty feet above the grave. Jacob’s former lover Maria shows up from behind a mausoleum and shoots Charles in his one good eye. Charles drops, dead, into the open grave. The funeral attendees applaud and cheer uproariously, and the grave is covered with both bodies inside and no questions asked.
1-12: Loose Ends
Most of this episode takes the form of a clip show, recapping the entire storyline as told by Jacob, Bruce Campbell, and Maria at a Miami café over a delicious plate of roast duck. The decision to retell the whole season frustrated many loyal viewers who had previously lost friends and made enemies by sticking with the show for so long. Maria has in no way revealed to Jacob the reason for his burning, and he seems to be content with that since they are shown briefly holding hands. With two minutes left in the episode, two waiters bring the three diners their check. It is revealed to be Agents Black and Black, barely disguised as the café’s wait staff. Agent Black holds up the long-forgotten lockbox in his hand and says to Jacob “You really thought this was all over, didn’t you?”
CREDITS
"Nailed it, Tinz!"
