Summer of 2020 and Burn Notice
yes, the spy show
Burn Notice first came on TV in 2007, my senior year of high school when I still had time to watch TV and was able to watch the first season. As the intro of the show aptly explains, the titular character, Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) used to be a spy until he was burned, aka blacklisted. The intro goes on to explain, "When you’re burned you’ve got nothing. No cash, no credit, no job history. You’re stuck in whatever city they decide to dump you in,” in his case, his hometown of Miami. He continues, “You do whatever work comes your way. You rely on anyone who’s still talking to you… A trigger-happy ex-girlfriend…An old friend who used to inform on you to the F.B.I… [and] Family too… if you’re desperate…Bottom line as long as you’re burned you’re not going anywhere.”
I rewatched the show, long after its initial run and my senior of high school, over the summer of 2020. In the backdrop, there is a pandemic, protests against police brutality, a looming Supreme Court decision on the latest DACA case, and a very tired and depressed Me. The first season feels familiar enough to not spike my anxiety. Michael is stuck in Miami trying to figure out who burned him and why so he can get his job back, but to survive, he takes jobs along the way. Each case of the week involves him using his spy skills to help the people of Miami. Sometimes his cases help him get the information he desperately wants and sometimes he is talked into simply helping by his friends and family.
The first seasons move along smoothly. The episodes are funny and action-packed while the characters are charming and easy to root for. There is usually a happy resolution at the end of each episode. But every once in a while the underlying plot of Michael’s goal to return to the CIA becomes the main plot. Over the first few seasons, he comes close but never close enough to figuring out who burned him. But as the seasons move on, he gets more frustrated and starts taking on riskier missions endangering himself, his friends, and his family. Eventually, in season 4, a desperate and frustrated Michael unwittingly burns another spy, Jesse.
It is a this point that the show begins to feel a bit darker and more frustrating. I begin to get angry at Michael. Very angry. The more desperate he is, the more he pushes away his family and friends, and his on-again, off-again girlfriend. I begin to wonder, why Michael is working so hard to go back to the life he had before he ended up in Miami instead of being happy with the one he created since?
On June 18, 2020, the Supreme Court released a rather surprising ruling on the DACA case. It ruled that DACA could not be canceled and those that already had DACA could continue renewing their permits. The ruling wasn’t a real win because it left an opening for DACA to be canceled later on ( and it is still in the courts). Like many other DACAmented people, I allowed myself the luxury of basking in that victory, as short-lived as it was. But a win was a win and I released the deep breath I had been holding since the 2016 election. The moment quickly went from cathartic to maddening. It was maddening to realize how not okay I was. I had known I was depressed, but it was that lucid moment in the midst of my debilitating depression that I saw that I could not go on living like that because I was not living.
As Michael fights hard to get his spot back in his government job after said government abandons him, it is not difficult for me to put two and two together and realize why I am so frustrated with his choices. Michael has a very toxic relationship where he is constantly compromised by his own government (i.e. sent to jail in one season only to then be made a consultant the next) and he keeps going back for more rather than figuring out a way for him to move forward. Eventually, his brother, Nate, is killed during one of the missions. As the last season comes to a head, Michael also loses his mother, after she sacrifices herself for him. It is only then, that Michael sees clearly. In order to finally be free, he must fake his death along with Fiona. They go on to adopt his brother’s son, and live his Happily Ever After in the cute cottage from The Holiday with the closing line, "My name is Michael Westen. I used to be a spy." BUT AFTER HE LOST HIS WHOLE FAMILY! I watched the finale just to see the end but seething at what it took to get him to see the light.
I am not saying that watching Burn Notice over the summer made me want to leave the US after 21 years, but it certainly made me come to terms with how frustrated I was. For so long, I had been pushing along just trying to make it through that minute, that hour, that day. When one is in survival mode, it is hard to look forward to a different future, but I think that watching the show pushed me to look past the moment. I had been contemplating leaving the US since November 2016, but I needed to realize I didn’t want to keep going the way I was. I didn’t want to look up one day and see how much of myself and my life I had lost to the stress caused by my immigration status. By October of 2020, I had officially decided I was leaving that following Spring and I started telling my job, family, and friends. I have not rewatched the show since, I honestly don’t know if I ever will. So much of my hurt is now a part of it, especially in the later seasons. But I think of the show a lot. I think of that summer and my frustration and how my stress these days doesn’t compare with what I felt back then.