As a fan of the spy genre, and particularly the harder versions of it... though I can enjoy easily the more operatic fare presented as James Bond... I have been meaning to watch this show for some time. Since it showed up at the half price shelf recently, I picked up season one, then again, season two, and have been enjoying it mightily.
The guy cast as Michael Weston has the perfect fake smile. Utterly unconvincing, of course, which might appear to be the point. I do find his fake accent/tough guy personas when he is going undercover less than convincing, and frankly a little distracting most of the time, but the show is fun.
I caught an episode of season three the other night and I thought of something, a flaw in the writing, the characterization if you will.
In this particular episode a Ukranian has come to Miami to hunt down Mr. Weston over old grudges. This isn't the first time we've had hints that Michael has made enemies over the years, but this is the first episode I can think of where one actually shows up. Its also not the first hint that pre-burn notice Weston was a hard ass with a decent line of bullshit covering for his actions.
At the end of the episode, having been kidnapped, escaped and run through the swamps of Florida, he gets the upper hand on Chechkin, the bad guy... who is the sort to shoot his own men for being injured... and...
Captures him. Mexican stand off style. Rather than take him out quickly and escape, letting the mercenaries cut and run, as we've already established in the episode that there is no after death loyalty among this crowd... he captures him, and all the other nameless dudes to hand them over to rough justice.
I realized, watching this, that Michael Weston, as shown, is actually a creampuff who would never have done anything objectionable enough to get burned in the first place. Not because of this one time, but because this is the capstone on a series of episodes where he never actually does anything remotely objectionable to the audience. The writers want him to be a dark reluctant hero, doing good almost against his wishes, but they've taken so much edge off of him that you have to wonder how he could ever have learned to shoot guns, plant explosives, or whupped ass... because obviously he's just such a nice guy that actually learning any of that would have seemed pointless to him.
Okay, I exaggerate a bit for effect there.
I still like the show, don't get me wrong, but this idealized, tarnished saint of a spy is a little offputting. The hypocritical way he passes off the dirty work of actually punishing the often horrible people set up to be the villains of the week to nastier villains only makes it worse.
Still, snappy patter and clever writing that otherwise doesn't insult the viewers intelligence, and fidelity to the conventions of the genre and, to a lesser extent, a 'realistic' view of spying... more than make up for this irritant.
This does, however, also give me a good format for putting together a good modern spy game.