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I've got three episodes to go to finish season 7. So far, I hate it. The entire season has been a betrayal of all the characters that were built up for the previous 6 years. It's like I'm watching a completely different show.

I think this show jumped the shark when the Anson story line reached its conclusion.

It's just that the tone totally changed. When I watched The Shield, I expected it to be dark week after week. No laughs, just deeply disturbing. The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones audiences tune in knowing anyone could die and they shouldn't expect Superman to show up and save the day.

Burn Notice was never that show. It was light, funny, packed with action, but the main characters had a bond and did everything in their power to not kill. It even got a little "A-Team" ridiculous at moments with the lack of a body count. Did people die? Yes. Were there serious moments? Yes. However, everyone remained true to their character. Meanwhile, the overall story line had Michael taking down a massive entity and he won (that's not a spoiler, you know the good guys always win). But then it's as if they were asked to make more seasons and had no idea what to do, so they began inventing new people who there was never a whiff of previously. Shoehorning them into the story to try and further the series.

The problem with doing that is they also completely abandoned the identities of the main characters to make the new villains work.

This turn for the worse reminds me of MASH when Alan Alda got more involved behind the camera and turned the show from a comedy into anti-war propaganda. For fuck's sake, a show that had a guy dressed up as a woman to try and get a section 8 had a mother smothering her own baby to death for survival. That's the kind of odd turn Burn Notice has taken in Season 7.

I'm not looking forward to the final three episodes this evening.

Yeah, Season 7 ... didn't need to be. I can't really remember it other than my comment above, but I felt like S6 was a good ending true to the show.

I remember by the end I was hate-watching it, but persevering.

GORDON wrote:I remember by the end I was hate-watching it, but persevering.

That's exactly how I feel about it right now.

Not that it's bad, but because it completely betrays the show I watched for six seasons prior to this one.

It ended back in the same tone as the first 6 seasons, so that was nice. They made sure to call back to certain lines everyone watching the series knew inside and out.

I enjoyed the fact that two of them had no clue how to deal with a third in the final scene. That was a nice detail.

I also liked that they explained the voiceovers and gave them context.

Fucked up that one person died and then you never heard another thing about it.

There was a grave stone shown, but yeah no other mention. The moment was well done though.

Still, season 7 felt like a betrayal. That season was not the same show we watched for 6 previous seasons. The show we watched for 6 seasons got me vested in people who all deserved happy endings. That's not the show we were given in season 7. End of the day, I also think the good guys that died were victims of lazy, predictable writing. Think about who died versus who lived. Weak sauce. The whole Fiona-Carlos thing was just absolute crap. It made no sense and made her character look terrible.

Burn Notice was at its absolute best in seasons 1-4. Was it formulaic? Yes, but it was ok because there was an overall story line that was still solid, and not an obvious patch job to extend a show that should have already ended. It also had a cast with phenomenal chemistry, humor, action, and a great style.

I'd still highly recommend it, but would advise people to really enjoy those first couple of seasons before it tries to become a spy version of The Shield.

Has Michael Westin been in anything else I've seen? I want to say I've seen him elsewhere but can't remember, and am too lazy to type imdb.com into the url bar up there.

Sicario is the only thing I can think of without imdb.

Blair Witch 2.

He's had small parts in a bunch of things like Hitch and several other ongoing TV shows.

Apparently he has a show on Hulu or Amazon now.