TV is the new reading

‘Burn Notice’ is a great part of hot summer lineup

Part of the joy of summer is the return of gloriously well-written summer short-timers. They’re only a dozen or so episodes each, but that’s part of their charm, given how well they’re written and how brilliant they are.

Sharing the joys of the season are “Saving Grace” and “The Closer” on TNT, and “Monk,” “Psych” and “Burn Notice” on USA.

“Burn Notice” returned two weeks ago with Jeffrey Donovan as benched superspy Michael Westen. The second season opened where the first season left off, with Michael trapped in a box trailer he’d been forced to drive his friend’s car up into in a chase on the open highway.

The truck he was trapped in stopped and there was a lot of shooting outside. The dust cleared to reveal a frightened computer technician who Michael’s new handler – a voice he knows only as Carla – needs to get some information from – or rather, from inside the tech’s organization.

And Michael is trapped. First, getting information from one paramilitary organization and giving it to another is a truly iffy enterprise. How’s it going to be used and who’s going to get hurt by it? After all, no one as well-armed and well organized as Carla’s people is using the information to build a better ice cream cone.

Secondly, what influence did Carla have in getting him burned – Michael’s spy status is suspended as long as he’s “burned” – and how can doing her bidding get him reinstated?

These are all lovely philosophical questions Michael has absolutely no time for because he’s been given impossible deadlines and no reasonable alternate leads. And when he finally does meet Carla, he realizes it too late to demand the answers he needs.

Heading into the second season, Michael is not significantly better off than he was in the first season. His support structure of friends and family and the colorful community of South Beach, Miami, provide a great backdrop for capers and adventures while he tries to get reinstated as an International Man of Mystery, but for now, he can’t leverage any answers out of either his former bosses or his newest best contact.

So all Michael can really do is get the computer guy through the job and reunited with his family so as to at least limit the amount of damage he’s doing in the process.

However, the closer he gets to having answers, the more mysterious they seem to be, and there’s plenty of explosions, adventures and excitement along the way, so I for one am intrigued to see where they’re taking the story next.

“Burn Notice” airs at 9 p.m. Thursdays on USA.

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'What's this button do?'
Acknowledged technophobe confronts her neo-Luddite tendencies, one signal at a time

My “malfunctioning” televisions are no longer malfunctioning. It seems that their owner — me — is    simply a Luddite.

I probably should have figured out a long time ago that it would not make good economic sense for TV manufacturers to make not one, but TWO,  televisions that could not pick up the signals for the ABC and FOX stations when a much older TV made in the mid-1990s could.

But, no. Instead, I purchased ever more powerful amplified antennas, one for the nicer combination TV/DVD player, and one for the new TV/VCR with the dinky screen I bought when the first TV couldn’t pick up all the channels. I figured the antennas would help the TVs pick up what must be a weak signal. None of them did, but I kept trying.

Or, I thought, it had something to do with the position of the ancient TV/VCR (which eats VCR tapes, so I can’t use the VCR) that could get those channels. Since I moved to an upstairs apartment and placed it in the kitchen, it has been getting better reception. The newer TVs only showed static when I switched to channels 14 and 24, though they did seem to get channels 10 and 13 with varying clarity. I moved both of the newer TVs into the kitchen to try them out. Still nothing but static.

This went on for three years.

Then one night last week I took a closer look at the remote control for one of the TV sets. Hmmm. What could that little button called “menu” be for? I’d used it to program the VCR that went with the television, back when I had programs that I felt like recording. Lo and behold, there was a setting to switch the television from “cable,” which I no longer had, to “on air,” which I now did. I clicked a button to “on air.” Miraculously, channel 14 came in clear as a bell.

Sadly, the only thing on my newly discovered channel was “I Survived a Japanese Game Show.”

Don’t ask me what I’m going to do when the big switcharoo to HDTV happens next February. It’ll probably take me a decade  to figure it out.

Andrea Johnson is a staff writer for The Minot Daily News.