‘Burn Notice’ season 5,‘Burn Notice’ season 5 premiere,burn notice season 5 episode 1, watch burn notice

‘Burn Notice’ season 5 | ‘Burn Notice’ season 5 premiere | burn notice season 5 episode 1 | watch burn notice

Tag : ‘Burn Notice’ season 5,‘Burn Notice’ season 5 premiere,burn notice season 5 episode 1, watch burn notice

The Burn Notice season 5 premiere removes almost all familiarity that fans of the series expect, and unfortunately takes with it the core reason for why the series exists in the first place: to find out why Michael was burned.

With a set of unfamiliar characters (Grant Show) and awkward scenery, the season 5 premiere of Burn Notice opens in a manner much different to what was expected from those who fought their way through the season 4 finale.

As the introductory scene continues, not only are we presented with Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) in a new environment, but we’re also shown why the series has worked so well with its familiar series format and Miami-locale.

While seeing Michael Westen in new environment was an interesting prospect, the lack of familiarity serves to provide an awkward setting for the fifth season of USA’s hit series to begin. To add insult to this proverbial injury, the given plotline of Michael on the hunt to capture the last remaining member of those who burned him was presented in such a way that the actual importance of this storyline was all but lost.

Besides proving that Michael’s rag-tag team of Sam and Fiona can pull of an operation better than anything the government may officially sanction, the majority of the premiere feels like we’re watching The Sam Axe Movie 2 – and not in a good way. Even though Sam and Fiona are able to become a part of the CIA’s “off-the-books” style of missionary endeavors, the overall feel of the series is noticeably different.

"This season, we’ve had to throw out a lot more episodes because we’ve realized that we were treading on familiar ground," Nix says. "That’s one of the reasons it’s been nice to do more intelligence community-based episodes because that’s a whole new set of problems."

One issue that presented itself during the course of production was Dylan Baker's role as Michael's friend/handler Raines, first seen in the fourth season finale. (Baker booked a role on DirecTV's Damages, ironically, as a CIA guy.)

"We originally planned on having this character work in a particular way this season," Nix says, adding that Baker came back to reprise his role -- with a beard (a requirement for his Damages role). "He wasn't really available to do the story line exactly as we'd conceived it."

So instead, the writers made an adjustment. "We ended up reconceiving his role in the season and adjusting to that in some ways," Nix tells THR. "If you'd asked me at the beginning of the season, it might've seemed like a pretty big deal. Right now, I've been living with it for so long, it doesn't feel like anything. It's like, 'Oh yeah, that's all we wanted to do.' "

Nix added: "In our original conception, it was kind of like he was the intelligence community. He was Michael's point of contact and in addressing that creative challenge of 'we can have him but we can't have him all the time,' what we ended up doing was expanding Michael's range of contacts in the intelligence community."