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Nov. 19th, 2011 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickSo I've been watching Burn Notice. (Yes, yes, behind on my pop culture. Currently on a spy kick, hence the Bourne movies a couple of weeks ago.)
Couple of things about this experience have been entertaining me. It's kind of a fun show, really.
Fun thing #1: I adore the random, gratuitous, and excessive "hot body" shots between plot-advancement sections of the show. I agree that this is Miami, but there are still far too many women in minimalist swimsuits on this show who have no role besides jiggly scene divider.
Fun thing #2: I like the stupidly-rounded font used for the "Claire, The Client" swooping in descriptors. I also like how those descriptors have gotten more snarky as the seasons have progressed. (Now on Season 4.) Also a selling point for me is Michael's voiceovers telling us quiet little plot points about the finer points of spy stuff. Makes me feel all involved and in-the-know, except when the things he says are, y'know, wrong. (In one episode, they had M. climb up into a suspended ceiling as a means of escape. I've WORKED on suspended ceilings. They are not sturdy enough to hold a person, even a very clever spy person. They're also not more than about six inches below the crap ass ceiling that the suspended ceiling is supposed to cover up, so fitting in that space is something of a challenge, too. And the ceiling tiles are IN NO WAY stable enough to sustain the weight of a person. A ninety-year-old grandma could karate-chop them in half. I was yelling at the screen for that one, you betcha.)
Fun thing #3: I am personally amused by the extensive flammability of alcohol in the Burn Notice universe. What the HELL are they drinking down there in Miami, kerosene? Real alcohol for drinking, like Bacardi Rum, does not burn real well. It especially does not burn with a bright yellow flame that photographs well. It burns with kind of a damp blue-ish flame. How do I know this? I have some Bacardi, a pyrex custard cup, and a cigarette lighter. D'oh. I would not assert to you how alcohol burns without actually verifying my information.
Fun thing #4: I keep wanting to feed Fiona. She's so artistically skinny. I think she needs an intervention.
Fun thing #5: I'm willing to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $20.00 for a season of Burn Notice on Amazon's instant-watch thing. Once the price gets above $30.00 for the season, yo ho! (Networks, take note!)
Fun thing #6: We have four seasons here (thus far) of remarkably static television. Michael is burned, he winds up doing shit on a season-long arc for some big bad in which he learns nothing and is not any freer than when he started by the end. He randomly helps people along the season in an episodic Client-of-the-Week format so that casual viewers will have something to watch. Plot fails to advance: communication with his mother doesn't improve. Relationship with Fiona never gets better. Getting un-burned is dangled just out of reach. His brother continues to be an idiot. Sam goes through a series of dumb rich women, though reasonably kindly. I like it. It's very unfulfilling. I like that.
Fun thing #7: Show is decidedly non-equal-opportunity on the skin front. We see random jiggly women rather a lot and we also get to see that Fiona has porn star nipples (usually when she gets wet doing something) but we don't get to see male skin very often. It's a male-gaze show.
Fun thing #8: Due to the client-of-the-week format, I get to see a lot of television actors that I've seen elsewhere. Cuddy's boyfriend from House (the private eye) showed up in one episode. Alex Kryczek showed up in another. This sort of thing makes the fanfic in my head ever so much more entertaining. (The fact that Michael's mother (Sharon Gless) was also Michael's mother from the US version of Queer as Folk is just freaking hysterical. She says "Michael" the same way in both shows.)
Couple of things about this experience have been entertaining me. It's kind of a fun show, really.
Fun thing #1: I adore the random, gratuitous, and excessive "hot body" shots between plot-advancement sections of the show. I agree that this is Miami, but there are still far too many women in minimalist swimsuits on this show who have no role besides jiggly scene divider.
Fun thing #2: I like the stupidly-rounded font used for the "Claire, The Client" swooping in descriptors. I also like how those descriptors have gotten more snarky as the seasons have progressed. (Now on Season 4.) Also a selling point for me is Michael's voiceovers telling us quiet little plot points about the finer points of spy stuff. Makes me feel all involved and in-the-know, except when the things he says are, y'know, wrong. (In one episode, they had M. climb up into a suspended ceiling as a means of escape. I've WORKED on suspended ceilings. They are not sturdy enough to hold a person, even a very clever spy person. They're also not more than about six inches below the crap ass ceiling that the suspended ceiling is supposed to cover up, so fitting in that space is something of a challenge, too. And the ceiling tiles are IN NO WAY stable enough to sustain the weight of a person. A ninety-year-old grandma could karate-chop them in half. I was yelling at the screen for that one, you betcha.)
Fun thing #3: I am personally amused by the extensive flammability of alcohol in the Burn Notice universe. What the HELL are they drinking down there in Miami, kerosene? Real alcohol for drinking, like Bacardi Rum, does not burn real well. It especially does not burn with a bright yellow flame that photographs well. It burns with kind of a damp blue-ish flame. How do I know this? I have some Bacardi, a pyrex custard cup, and a cigarette lighter. D'oh. I would not assert to you how alcohol burns without actually verifying my information.
Fun thing #4: I keep wanting to feed Fiona. She's so artistically skinny. I think she needs an intervention.
Fun thing #5: I'm willing to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $20.00 for a season of Burn Notice on Amazon's instant-watch thing. Once the price gets above $30.00 for the season, yo ho! (Networks, take note!)
Fun thing #6: We have four seasons here (thus far) of remarkably static television. Michael is burned, he winds up doing shit on a season-long arc for some big bad in which he learns nothing and is not any freer than when he started by the end. He randomly helps people along the season in an episodic Client-of-the-Week format so that casual viewers will have something to watch. Plot fails to advance: communication with his mother doesn't improve. Relationship with Fiona never gets better. Getting un-burned is dangled just out of reach. His brother continues to be an idiot. Sam goes through a series of dumb rich women, though reasonably kindly. I like it. It's very unfulfilling. I like that.
Fun thing #7: Show is decidedly non-equal-opportunity on the skin front. We see random jiggly women rather a lot and we also get to see that Fiona has porn star nipples (usually when she gets wet doing something) but we don't get to see male skin very often. It's a male-gaze show.
Fun thing #8: Due to the client-of-the-week format, I get to see a lot of television actors that I've seen elsewhere. Cuddy's boyfriend from House (the private eye) showed up in one episode. Alex Kryczek showed up in another. This sort of thing makes the fanfic in my head ever so much more entertaining. (The fact that Michael's mother (Sharon Gless) was also Michael's mother from the US version of Queer as Folk is just freaking hysterical. She says "Michael" the same way in both shows.)
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no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 10:46 pm (UTC)Regarding #2 - the incorrect techniques may be wrong deliberately (aside from the usual reasons of A: it's wrong because the writers don't know any better or B: it's wrong but it looks tons cooler than whatever the right thing was), in that the show's producers have said they have no desire for their entertainment program to be a cookbook for wannabe saboteurs.
Love the snarky captions too: NOT MICHAEL'S NEW BEST FRIEND.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-22 01:50 am (UTC)The incorrect techniques mostly do not bother me except when they run into areas I actually know about. The flammability of alcohol (demonstrated more realistically on TV in House's bachelor party for Chase, ep. 5x20) is one such area.
I know fuck-all about guns, though, so Burn Notice gets a complete pass from me on the gun front. Anything they say about guns is A-OK in my world.
Cars do seem to explode more than I think is rational, but I like exploding cars, so yay.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-23 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 11:47 am (UTC)