USA's got a new show called Burn Notice. It stars Jeffrey Donovan who used to be on the short-lived and vastly underappreciated Touching Evil, and the great Bruce Campbell in a story about a fired spy who's stuck in Miami and forced to solve mysteries while he tries to figure out who sabataged his career.
I love Jeffrey Donovan and Bruce Campbell so of course I watched the pilot. I watch all the pilots.
The pilot for this show was cute but had a few annoying little quirks. The mom was way too whiny and over-the-top and the ex-girlfriend's Lucky Charms Irish accent (The actress is British) was grating. Some of the dialogue was too on-the-nose as well, like the way Mike (Donovan)'s mom let us all know Mike's dad was dead by the complete nonsequitor comment about it.
But there was enough adorable quirkiness to the pilot to convince me to check into the second episode to see if it got any better.
And boy did it ever. Whoever gave this show notes really knew what they were doing. The annoying mom has been greatly softened to the point where I'm not sure she's the same actress. She's much less annoying but still maintains an edge. The girlfriend has completely changed accents in an odd but ultimately pleasing way (although she really should eat more food since in one scene you can clearly see her spinal column), and the dialogue has improved.
Good job, Matt Nix. Way to adapt.
is it possible that the studio gave the notes that made the pilot bad and that once the studio was appeased all the way through the pilot, the showrunner got to go back to work and do things in a way that is more sense-make-ish?
ReplyDeleteIt's possible. But I prefer to be optimistic.
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