Season return of USA's ‘Burn Notice’ struggles at start

The writers on “Burn Notice” have really started mailing in their “When you’re a spy ...” voiceover observations.

There was one that informed us of the value of remote surveillance. It lets you keep tabs on people while maintaining a safe distance. Who knew, right? And there was the note while Michael Westen’s partners-in-spy were searching the apartment of Jere Burns as Anson Fullerton, the baddie du jour, about how spies often needed to be sneaky, so the target wouldn’t suspect they’d been spied on.

You don’t say!

In this case they were searching for the evidence Anson had on Fiona, which if Michael kills Anson, the police will get the evidence and Fiona will go to prison.

First, in order for that particular trigger to work, the “evidence” -- whatever it might be; I mean, Fiona’s blown up vehicles and blown walls out of buildings, so she’s certainly on the hook for something -- this evidence needs to be mobile postmortem, so Anson wouldn’t likely have hidden it in a wall safe.

As the fifth season gets back under way, we find Michael connecting with old friends we’ve never heard of. They’re really super tense because the mutual friend just got gunned down by the Magic City Overlords -- yeah, I know, right? REPRESENT! -- because of $1 million that went missing. But because of the friend’s history -- he’d just gotten out of prison eight months before and hadn’t contacted Michael -- his friends figured the police wouldn’t help find the killers.

Super spy Michael Westin leaps into action!

Well, let’s start there. Michael became a spy and his friends became drug addicts, ex-cons and get gunned down by gangs like the Magic City Overlords (incidentally, this same episode there was a walk-on character referenced briefly called “Dakota” so I wonder who wrote the episode).

Now, I’m not saying people don’t take remarkably different paths in life as they grow up, even best friends. But it’s hard to believe that the kid who wrecked one of Maddie’s rose bushes with a homemade go-kart growing up and who then replaced it, grew up to be the man they describe. Or that the man who grew up and served a stretch inside and got out eight months before would reconnect with the friends who helped get him into trouble in the first place.

But all of this is completely irrelevant. Michael tracks down the real killer and together with Sam, Fiona and Jesse, puts together a little scam complete with funny voices and a presentation at a college – no hope this would actually work, presenting weapons that belong to some other gun runner as his own while the other gun runner is, somehow, conveniently nowhere to be found.

They fuss around this B-roll nonsense for far longer than we as viewers should’ve been subjected to it while people we don’t know and have little sympathy for counterplot Michael’s strategy and nearly ruin his plans for framing the gang leader and getting him stuck in solitary for his entire sentence.

OK, so ... what happened to the $1 million that was at stake? Oh, even the writers didn’t care anymore by the end. The whole story rotated on avenging the death of someone I never had much sympathy for and I suspect this is one of those scripts they wrote while showrunner Matt Nix was distracted -- perhaps working on the scaffolding necessary to construct Bradley Whitford’s mustache in his canceled FOX series “The Good Guys.”

This was so far from his best work. In fact, it’s probably the worst single episode of “Burn Notice” I’ve seen, and I saw Richard Schiff -- also of “The West Wing” ­-- show up for the “Full Reveal” on Michael’s burn notice at the end of Season 1, only to get shot in the head.

This one was right down there with the Western episode on “Psych.”

As for Anson, he had these brilliant insights to share: That Michael’s mom told him in session that Michael would try to rescue her from his drunken abusive father, and then she’d just get beaten worse -- so that’s nothing he should even be aware of (and it’s probably a lie), and also that as a spy, Michael is proficient at social engineering. Getting people to do things and go places and share information they’re not otherwise inclined to.

In other words, as a spy, Michael presents all the characteristics of ... wait for it ... a SPY!

I’m not convinced Anson can’t simply be shot through the head. Lord knows no other “Ultimate Top Mastermind Behind the Conspiracy to Keep Michael on the Burned Spy List” we’ve met yet has been the be-all and end-all, and Jere

Burns as Anson Fullerton doesn’t present nearly the charisma or the capacity to be the Big Bad of this series.

“Burn Notice” airs at 10/9c Thursdays on USA.