I Spy...I Wish

Note: the first season of Burn Notice expires at the end of tomorrow on hulu.com. Further note: watching 75% of the first season of Burn Notice in one day will give you dreams that you are in trouble with both organized crime and the FBI. But I wouldn't let that stop you.

It had been a long time since this particular obsession reared its covert head: the first time I saw a Bond movie, when I was eight or nine, I suddenly wanted to be a spy more than anything in the world. (It narrowly edged out detective, and indeed, there was a surveillance section in my copy of–I kid you not– The Hardy Boys' Detective Handbook.) But I lacked the mathematical nimbleness to do complicated codes, I'm a terrible liar, and...let's just say if I'd attempted to be a school shooter, the affair would have been known to history as the Southside Tidewater Foot Massacre. Not good signs for a would-be spook.

And so the impulse went latent until this summer, when I saw the Get Smart remake.

I didn't review the film here, partly because it wasn't a scary movie (the realization that Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson isn't really a bad actor is more unsettling than scary) and partly because it wasn't very good. It tried to be an "action-comedy" and only succeeded in being "action, then comedy, then action..." And yet I was obsessed with it: partly because of some interesting questions it brought up, as both main characters love their jobs so much they submit to drastic physical alteration in order to keep working, and where should the line be drawn on that even if you are a spy?–and partly because my Spy Thing had suddenly risen from the depths of my unconscious and wanted me to learn to climb walls and outwit villains.

That would be about when everybody and his brother started telling me how wonderful Burn Notice was; maybe the secret-agent lust showed somehow.

I'm possibly the last person in America not to have noticed the show by now, but just in case: spy and master of improvised solutions Michael Westen is summarily and mysteriously booted from the service. Stranded in Miami with his family, ex-girlfriend, and contact/sidekick Sam (played by Bruce Campbell: his character is supposed to have gone to seed, but I'd still rather look at him than Michael, who resembles those cheekboney guys who show up in superhero movies to have their girlfriends stolen by the protagonist), Michael tries to figure out what happened and make it right while also doing side projects and repairing sabotaged weapons with paper clips. It's very good, and I highly recommend it. But it still won't get you a double-O number.