The Best Show on TV....

Remember way back when I was gaga over Heroes?  Yeah not so much anymore.  It lost it's spot as "Best Show on TV" awhile ago.  I still watch it, and this season it's getting better, but it's just not the same.  I think they need to wrap it up soon before it becomes irrelevant.  Hell, the network it's on already is irrelevant.  NBC tried an experiment that has ended up sending them reeling for something to save their asses.  If you don't know, it was when they took Leno off of the Tonight Show and let him have his own variety type hour at 10 pm....the slot normally reserved for more mature dramas just before the nightly news.  It sucked, and frankly it wasn't the time slot....it is all about Leno just not being funny.  Period.  This is the same network that chased off David Letterman...yeah I be they are smacking themselves silly still over that move.  Anyway, back to the point of this entry; namely the Best Show on TV. 

(Drum roll please......)

Burn Notice.   Hands down one of the most fun hours of TV you will enjoy.  Interestingly it's on USA, which is a division of NBC Universal.  I just don't get how the same company can churn out gold on USA, Monk, Burn Notice, White Collar, etc, and crap on it's main Network?  Boggles the mind honestly.  For those that haven't seen Burn Notice, and honestly why haven't you....., it's a show about a former CIA Operative named Michael Westin who was "burned" by his bosses.  This means you don't exist anymore and if they want to they can off you at a moment's notice.  For now the CIA is content to strand Michael in Miami.  He gets by as a kind of Robin Hood who helps folks in need by employing elaborate schemes and uses all his skills as a CIA Spy to get the job done.  He has two partners that help him out, Fiona GlenAnne and Sam Axe.  Fiona is his ex-girlfriend and a former member of the IRA.  Her solution to most things is by shooting or blowing up the problem.   In one episode when they are trying to figure out how to handle something Fiona says "Can't we just shoot them?"  Sam is a former Navy SEAL and now mooches off retired widows with money while wearing pretty much nothing but Hawaiian Shirts and drinking lots of Mojitos.   Sharon Gless, of Cagney and Lacey fame, plays Michael's Mom.....she's the cigarette smoking, hard drinking kind of Mother who still has her Motherly side.   The banter between the characters is well done, and there is genuine chemistry that makes it chuckle producing.   Many a time we have laughed out loud watching the show.  The show employs great little bits that help the humor.  Michael Westin narrates at various points (played by Jeffery Donovan who was the star of a series I liked alot but was cancelled.  It was called Touching Evil.  Look it up, it was a really interesting series.) and the comments he makes are damn funny.  Also present is the use of onscreen labels to point out who's who.  One episode I was just watching the characters were talking about two potential bad guys they were going to mess with in the episode.  Fiona says one is So and So, the annoying little weasel.  The Camera pauses and the characters name appears across the screen and underneath it says "Annoying little weasel".   Or when someone becomes the gang's client it says "Barry.  The Client."   It adds a small touch of humor to a show with plenty of humor and action in it already.  Fiona is played by Gabriella Anwar and Sam is played by Bruce Campbell (one of my favorite B Movie actors ever.....what honestly drove me to watch the show in the first place.)  It's a bit MacGyver, bit Equalizer, bit Rockford Files all combined.  Give it a try, you won't be disappointed.