B-movie icon Bruce Campbell has developed quite a cult following on the strength of his work in television series The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. and Jack of All Trades and films such as Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series and the more recent My Name Is Bruce. But his biggest success to date has been as sidekick to an out-of-work spy on USA Network's Burn Notice.
The series focuses on Michael Westen (portrayed by Jeffrey Donovan) as a spy who is suddenly "burned" which means that his employment as a spy is suddenly terminated. He gets dumped in Miami with no money, no job, and, most importantly, no idea of who burned him or why. Westen has no choice but to turn to his few friends for help determining who was responsible for burning him.
First, there is his ex-girlfriend Fiona Glenanne (Gabrielle Anwar) who has a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later. Then there is ex-Navy SEAL Sam Axe (Campbell) who in the early episodes spent as much time informing on Westen to the Feds as he did helping his friend. But as the series has developed, Sam has become more of a loyal sidekick and is willing to stick with Michael until he gets his life back.
But Michael also has family issues to deal with and most of those revolve around the relationship with his mother, Madeline (Sharon Gless). His brother, Nate (Seth Peterson), also has his own set of issues and often it's up to Michael to bail him out of trouble.
During a recent conference call with several online media outlets including Blogcritics, Mr. Campbell explained why the show appealed to him so much.
“My basis for accepting this script when it came across my desk was I loved the fact of what it wasn’t. It wasn’t a cop show, it wasn’t a doctor’s show, it wasn’t a lawyer show. There’s plenty of stuff that goes on, but this is basically the human side of spies and I went, right, I can get into that. And I really enjoyed the fact that it’s a good blend of a show that does have strong main characters, and not a lot of them. It’s got four main characters. And that’s what the emphasis is. And oh yes, stuff blows up and every week there is a caper where you defeat the jerk of the week. But I think it’s mostly you watch these characters from week to week, and that’s what I enjoy. And that’s what appealed to me and that’s what keeps me interested in the show is it’s not really about the explosions, it’s about the people who are doing the explosions.”“There’s always going to be two things going on,” said Mr. Campbell. “One is the problem at hand, which is somebody needs help and it’s worthy enough for him to help someone in the middle of what his overlying problem is, is who is causing all these problems for this guy. And so that’s, the one is the constant, but the other one, the overall problem that he has is going to, that’s going to be ratcheted up consistently throughout the [next] seven episodes to its final explosion point, where it’s a point of no return.”
Article comments
1 - Fitz
Great article! Love Bruce and Burn Notice. Very happy we have a few more new episodes starting this week!
2 - El Bicho
"his biggest success to date has been as sidekick to an out-of-work spy on USA Network's Burn Notice."
How is that quantified?