Burn Notice and information revealed

Burn Notice did something in this week's episode that I thought was subtle but clever. First of all, that show tends to do all kinds of clever things. They regularly cut between wides and close-ups in the middle of a line of dialogue and often find interesting camera angles for what would otherwise be a plain old two-shot.

Anyway, on this particular episode, a character named Jessie is supposed to be running surveillance when he sees two mob guys beating up a dock worker. His team tells him to let it go to preserve his cover, but he just can't. He saves the guy, blowing his cover but protecting an innocent man.

Now that's cool. You like the guy. He can't stand by and watch an innocent man get hurt.

But a few scenes later Jessie tells a woman that his mom was killed in a robbery while people on the street stood by and watched. That's when you realize why he can't stand by and watch someone get hurt. They didn't harp on it, didn't remind us about what he did, instead assumed we'd make the connection on our own.

I like a show that doesn't assume I'm stupid.

I think most shows would do it the other way around. He'd tell us all about his dead mom, and then when he saw someone in trouble you'd think yeah, he's got to save this guy because of his mom. Instead they did it the other way around. Much stronger. It's a good lesson in playing with the order in which information is released.