TVSquad

Here's a neat idea: the Burn Notice promotional kits that USA Network sent out to Emmy voters were written in invisible ink! You needed a UV flashlight to read the words, which was included in the kit. The Denver Egoist has all of the details and several pics from the kit, created by TDA Advertising in Boulder, CO.

The kit, which contains 12 episodes of the show on four DVDs, is set up to look like a classified file, and though some of the words are legible, you need the flashlight to read the others. Very cool and very spy-ish, though I wonder if they should have done it a different way. Isn't the preferred method of getting secret messages to Michael via a crossword puzzle? They should have included a secret message about the show inside of a crossword too.

I guess it's something that a show like Burn Notice has reached a certain kind of significance in the culture that even The New Yorker stands up and takes notice of it. I'm just not sure if the reviewer likes the show or just tolerates it.

Nancy Franklin is often good in her analysis of a TV show or a TV genre, but she seems to have gotten tired of Burn Notice already. While she likes the Miami location and loves Bruce Campbell (deservedly so), she thinks the show is already getting tired. She's not buying the tension between Michael and Fiona, and she thinks the mom/Michael stuff is just too much. She also compares Jeffrey Donovan to Frank Gorshin's Riddler from Batman, which isn't fair (she also gets a fact wrong - Sam is not secretly reporting on Michael to the government, Michael knows about it).

I'd like to think that I'm the kind of person that gets in on cool things at the start, you know? There's just something about jumping on the bandwagon that's less attractive than being able to say, "Oh, yes. I was into that from day one." So, while I can proudly declare that I was a charter member of the Mad Men audience, I was late to Burn Notice. I missed the boat on Burn Notice, okay! There, I said it.

Fortunately for me, I've had the chance to catch up. I even got to visit the set. The USA Network rebroadcasts and occasional marathons have helped -- hooray for DVRs -- but I really think it was the Burn Notice Season One DVD set that filled in all the blanks. Reasonably priced and recently released, the set has become one of my favorites, as had the tale of Michael Westen, professional spy who has been inexplicably fired -- burned -- and dumped in Miami. There's a lot to like in this show, and in this DVD set.

(S02E02) "Who's the puta now?" Me after Sophia revealed herself to Raul.

As I watch Michael have his meeting with Carla, I can't help but wonder what I would do in his situation. On the one hand, like Michael, I would really be obsessed with finding out who burned me and why. When you've been a spy as long as he has, it's impossible to let that kind of thing go.

On the other hand, Carla seems to be a good number of steps ahead of Michael at all times, so maybe the best thing to do is just follow her instructions and play by her rules until she finally comes across with the information. It's got to be damn frustrating to be outsmarted by her every time.

I'm going to share my Emmy thoughts, but there's so much to digest, I figured I'd space it out a bit. If you missed the announcement, check out Bob's live blog.

First thought: Why do I feel like I did when the Daytime Emmy nominations were announced? Oh yeah, because all these nominations are predictable! Where's the surprises, where's the nominations from out of left field? These nominations lack the element of shock, at least to me. Here's my thoughts, plus I dug through the whole list and found some other interesting items...

Part James Bond, part Jason Bourne, all Jeffrey Donovan. That's the recipe for the coolest spy on TV today, Michael Westen on Burn Notice. Meeting Jeffrey Donovan recently, I was impressed with not only his charm, good looks and dedication to his craft, but also his determination to shoulder the responsibility and reward of his very own primetime series.

Nobody's handed anything to Jeffrey Donovan. He's been at it for a while, doing notable turns in CSI: Miami and Monk, playing recurring characters in The Pretender and Touching Evil, and practically stealing Hitch from Kevin James and Will Smith by playing a nasty S.O.B.

Like his alter ego, Jeffrey Donovan is a very cool customer. He never lets you see him sweat, even when he's got ever right to in the glare of the spotlight, the heat of the Miami sun, and the hardball questions of the media roundtable he was facing. Okay, we weren't all throwing hardballs, but as this Q&A shows, Jeffrey D. can handle himself in any and all situations.

On my recent visit to the set of Burn Notice, I had the pleasure of meeting the cast, including the irrepressible Bruce Campbell, the plucky Gabrielle Anwar, and the fascinating star of the show, Jeffrey Donovan. They were all wonderful and I was thrilled to participate in a round-table interview with them. However, when I had the chance to shake the hand of Sharon Gless, the Emmy-winning actress who starred in Cagney & Lacey, The Trials of Rosie O'Neill and played amazing characters on Queer as Folk and Nip/Tuck, I have to confess -- I gushed. I couldn't help it. She's Sharon Gless!

I discovered that as brilliant as she is a performer, Sharon Gless is also a class act with the media. She talked about another Cagney & Lacey, Tyne Daly, acting, playing villains, Kim Cattrall and much more. Read on and you'll see -- as I did -- why you'd gush to if you were face-to-face with Sharon Gless.

Miami in June is hot. Very hot. On the set of Burn Notice, however, everything is cool. In fact, when I arrive at the Coconut Grove studios where the USA spy drama is shot, I find myself smack dab in the middle of a full-fledged film studio.

The old convention center, where I remember going to an indoor flea market in the late 1970s, has been completely transformed. There are trailers, production offices, standing sets, all geared up and working to bring Burn Notice back for season two.

On USA's spy-action-comedy series Burn Notice, there are great actors all around. Recently, I had the chance to spend a day on the set of Burn Notice (more on that next week!), and share in round-table interviews with the stars of the show.

Here's one of those wonderful actors, the irreverent and brilliant Bruce Campbell. As Sam, Jeffrey's old friend -- and sometime nemesis -- from the spy wars, Campbell is having a ball filming in South Florida and stealing scenes like nobody's business. Oh, and he smells good, just like Old Spice.

Q: What is the character of Sam about?

Bruce Campbell: He's about 50. No, he's like the other characters in the show, damaged goods, which is why I like him.

Kim Cattrall is hot. Hot as in busy as well as in looking good. She's also smart, funny, observant and remarkably candid. Recently, I spoke with her for TV Squad about the success of the Sex & the City movie, her new HBO project Sensitive Skin, and a whole lot of other things, including Star Trek, aging, Universal TV in the 1970s and more.

Allison Waldman: When Sex & the City ended, you didn't want to do the movie. Now it's done and it's a huge success.

Kim Cattrall: It's extraordinary. I look back four years ago when this was a runaway idea, I just did not feel ready to do it. We had reached such a high point, I wasn't sure I had anything else to say. I also had incredible personal challenges. My marriage was coming apart, also, my dad was diagnosed with dementia. I really needed a time out.

AW: How did the movie come back around?

KC: Michael Patrick King called and said, 'I'm writing something and I think you're going to love it. ...I think you were right to say no when you did because of whatever reasons you had.' See, I had never been public about my reasons I felt that it was nobody's business.

(S05E12) "There are seven signs of the apocalypse, right? Not two?" - Christian

One of the things that I've always enjoyed about Nip/Tuck is the way that Sean and Christian are constantly compared to each other. No matter how much they fight, no matter how much the writing may lead you to believe that they clash, no matter how much you juxtapose them in any number of varying scenarios, they always turn out looking far more similar than different. This episode was a prime example.

In addition to the recent renewals and new episode orders for TNT's Saving Grace and The Closer, the USA Network has ordered up thirteen new episodes of Burn Notice.

Burn Notice is great summer fare: a series that doesn't exactly break new ground but is still fun to watch. USA's motivation in picking new shows has been to focus on strong characters, and that's exactly what keeps Burn Notice from being just another crime/detective/mystery series (even though it is just another crime/detective/mystery series). It's also what keeps me tuning into Monk after all these years, even though every episode is pretty much the same. The lead players, Jeffrey Donovan, Sharon Gless, Bruce Campbell and Gabrielle Anwar, work well within the sometimes cookie-cutter self-contained plots, elevating the series to something worth checking out each week. It's not the plots so much, it's the people.

• At 8, FOX has a new Cops.
• AMC has One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest at 8.
• At 9, FOX has a new America's Most Wanted.
• CNBC has a new Suze Orman Show at 9.
• TV Land has an Andy Griffith Show marathon starting at 9.
• Cartoon Network has a new Naruto at 9, followed by new episodes of Fantastic Four, Bobobo-bo Bo-Bobo, and One Piece.
• Also at 9: Sci-Fi has Supergator, about (you guess it) a giant alligator.
• At 10, Garrison Keillor is interviewed on a new episode of C-SPAN's Book TV.
• There's a new Design on a Dime on HGTV at 10.
• BBC America has a new Graham Norton Show at 10, with guests Sharon Gless, Tyne Daly (Cagney and Lacey!), and Natalie Imbruglia.

Check your local TV listings for more.

Four million people tuned into the series premiere of USA Network's Burn Notice two weeks ago, and they held on to most of those viewers last week.

The Thursday night show has become a hit for USA. Most shows get big numbers for their premieres, because of lots of advertising and curiosity (*cough* Studio 60 *cough*), but don't hold on to them. It looks like fans like viewers like Burn Notice enough to give it another shot.

Before you get a copy of this DVD you have to do two things: Watch the TV movie with Loretta Swit as Chris Cagney, and completely forget that Meg Foster ever played the part at all.

The DVD collection of the first season of Cagney & Lacey contains no episodes featuring Meg Foster. This comes as little surprise considering all the drama that accompanied getting C&L on the air in the first place.

As with most DVD collections, this one is really only for original fans of the show. The picture quality has been improved very little, if at all, and the episodes are dripping with '80s cop drama earmarks, but still you can't ignore the groundbreaking plot lines. Aside from the daily struggle Christine & Mary Beth face as female detectives, there are also episodes about drug abuse, date rape and struggles with alcoholism that, for the time, were incredibly ground breaking.