Catch Up with Matt Nix, Creator of Burn Notice, about Carla, Michael & Series Finale- March 5– Hint!

Burn Notice premiered on USA network a couple weeks ago and the thrills started right out of the chute as the episode opened up. This show explodes with action mixed in with serious quirky relationship as well as dry witty humor and it never stops. The man behind this series and the essential “father” of this high popular and evolving series is Matt Nix. Matt is the creator, writer, and executive producer of USA’s Burn Notice, which winds up with the Season 2 Finale on Thursday, March 5th at 10pm/9c on USA NETWORK!
In the explosive season finale, Michael learns some surprising facts about Victor’s past, and is forced to take on Carla in a final showdown.

Carla aka Tricia Helfer
This is a transcript of the interview with Matt Nix about the Burn Notice Season 2.5.
It’s just a small part of the transcript. Keep reading to hit the link to see the entire transcript.
matt8.jpg
Matt Nix, creator, writer, producer of Burn Notice,
Our next question comes from the line of Matt Fowler with IGN TV.
M. Fowler Hello, Matt. How are you doing today?
M. Nix I’m doing very well.
M. Fowler I don’t want to give away too many things because I just actually was privileged enough to see the premier a little early. I noticed that, Michael especially, I don’t want to use the word brutality, but he’s taking a more direct approach in this first episode. Is that something we can look forward to throughout the second half of the second season here? He seems to have grown a little weary of the finesse it takes to get these con jobs done, and is taking a little more route of the scare tactics.
M. Nix Well, I mean, I think that that’s something we thought a lot about with this episode. Let me put it this way. I think you’ll see the tension between the idea that taking a very direct approach might be the most effective thing in a situation, but it also comes at a significant cost. And I think in this premier episode, we were kind of looking at, you know, what does it mean for Michael to be shaken. What does it mean for – like, what does he do when he’s knocked off his game? What does Fiona do when she’s knocked off her game? Everybody is really thrown through a loop by what happened at the end of last season, by Michael nearly getting himself blown up.
And so, this first episode is kind of Michael off his footing, and so it was more about kind of exploring what does that mean, and it means Michael is not infallible. There’s a point in the episode, as you saw, where it looks like he’s going to make a really bad choice. And Sam, although he helps Michael with this more direct, as you put it, way of dealing with things, objects to it and says, I don’t like doing this kind of stuff, and I don’t think it’s a good idea. And ends up doing it anyway because Michael is his friend, but he’s really on edge.

And so part of the point of this episode was to examine what does it mean for Michael to be off his footing, and also, how does he find his footing again. Part of that is kind of Michael acknowledging for the first time that there’s something about helping people that he needs, that he’s not just a guy who is sort of wearily doing things for desperate people when he would really rather be doing something else. That there’s some part of Michael’s psyche that needs to do this stuff, that needs to be useful to people, that needs to be using his skills and engaging with the world in that way even though he isn’t really supposed to be doing that for his job anymore. That was really what it was about.
The answer is, for the rest of the season, is he giving up guile in favor of using his fists or kind of direct brutality? No. And the hope in this season premier was that part of what you see is him kind of starting in this shaken place where he is doing things in a more direct fashion, and then kind of returning more to form by the end of the episode. And so, that emotional tension is something that we explore for the rest of the season, but we’re kind of like exploring where are those lines, and how does Michael negotiate those lines, and what do these clients really mean to him, like why is he doing this? Does he really care that much about $6,000, or is there something more to it?


The next question comes from BethAnne Henderson with NiceGirlsTV.com.
B. Henderson Hello, Matt. Thanks for taking our questions.
M. Nix Of course.
B. Henderson We’d like to know how much of season three have you planned already? Where do you think you’re going to take us in season three?
M. Nix Well, we have planned a lot of it, so we’re working on it now. And I think, I don’t want to give too much away, but basically I think that season three, we’re going to find out a lot more about Michael’s past, and not just Michael’s past – Sam’s past, Fiona’s past. For various reasons, they are all going to be engaging with some of the ghosts of their previous careers.
And so that’s something that we’re really excited about, and it’s a way of exploring. We’ve done some of it, but it’s not really – it’s not something we’ve done for a season, and so we have Michael engaging with his past, so it’s not sort of the perpetual search for the name behind his burn notice. It’s a different thing.
And then, I think people are going to see in the second half of season two that we’re really trying to push the boundaries of what a Burn Notice episode is, like how he deals with things. What are new ways of – new kinds of clients, new ways of dealing with problems, new – you know, as we’ve gotten more comfortable with the format of the show, and as we all become more sort of facile with how Michael deals with problems, it allows us to spread our wings a little bit and have him deal with really new and really different kinds of problems. And I think you’ll see some of that definitely in the second half of season two where we’re doing things that we’ve never done before.
And then, season three, you know, it’s going to be a really eclectic and fun mix of episodes. I think we’ve got some really neat ideas, and we’re all really excited about them. But, you know, the thing for the show for a lot of us, and maybe I shouldn’t say this, but it’s true. Is it’s not as if there’s a whole – we’re kind of inventing a procedural format. You know, Michael is not a straight up PI. He’s not a doctor. He’s not a cop. He doesn’t have a way of doing things that has a lot of kind of procedural history on television, and there’s not really a book that you can go to and say, you know, how would a spy deal with this civilian situation? And so we’ve been kind of exploring and defining how to do that because, from week to week, Michael is dealing with some civilian situation using spy crafts, and that’s just not a sort of – I mean, there are shows that we could point to. I mean certainly Magnum had a history in intelligence. In the Equalizer, he was doing some of those things.
But we are so focused on the deceptive arts of spy craft in particular on really looking at what specifically did Robert Hanson do at the FBI, and how can we use that, you know, as a technique for a Burn Notice, and it’s a whole different kind of thing. So the more we read, the more we observe, the more we explore creatively, the more things we can do. So we have some neat episodes in the second half of the season. There’s an episode that’s nearly in real time. And then in the third season, we take that to another level.
I mean, it’s a little funny to talk about it because I’ve been living with all of these episodes from the second half of the season for months, you know, they’ve been done. And now I want to talk about them in referencing the third season, but I can’t do that. But suffice it to say that we’re really stretching the boundaries, and it’s very exciting for everybody here.

There’s a LOT more to the Burn Notice interview with Matt Nix on this blog. Check it out HERE. There are also video interview clips on the Burn Notice Website

Covert Ops — the online game for the BURN NOTICE SHOW!
Want to be part of the Burn Notice “fan group”?
Hit Facebook
\
Watch the Burn Notice Season 2 Finale on Thursday, March 5th at 10pm/9c on USA NETWORK! In the explosive season finale, Michael learns some surprising facts about Victor’s past, and is forced to take on Carla in a final showdown.
See the post on Thurs 3/5 for the trailer/sneak peak of the season finale of Burn Notice!
Stevie Wilson

Subscribe to RSS headline updates from:
Powered by FeedBurner




Blubrry player!
LA-Story Recessionista, Celebrity Style Slam Trademark/Copyright: KBP Inc. 2007-09