Matt Nix Talks Writing the Burn Notice Pilot

Posted on July 13, 2007

There's a fun new summer spy series that debuted a few weeks ago on USA Network that we like, called Burn Notice. Michael Weston is a CIA agent in the middle of a mission who gets "burned" -- that means the government has deemed him unreliable and cuts off his funding, freezes his assets, all with no explanation. Weston is stuck in Miami (which he hates) taking odd jobs while he tries to find out why he was burned and how to clear his name. His friends are Bruce Cambpell, an ex-spy, and an old girlfriend, Gabrielle Anwar. Sharon Gless is his nagging mother. It's sort of The Equalizer meets Alias, with a hint of Mission: Impossible.

The creator and writer of the show, Matt Nix is now blogging over at USA Network about how he got the idea for the show and the challenges of meeting the studio's demands for scripts. A movie screenwriter, this is Matt's first television show. He talks about writing the pilot.

In part of the post Nix says, "I have to say, though, it was fun discovering how an episode of Burn Notice would work. Getting into the characters more, exploring more detailed stories. In the pilot, we had to spend so much time on the spy business, there wasn't a whole lot of time to spend with the client or the bad guy. Now we needed to get into how a "case of the week" would work.

He also says, "I have long been fascinated with con artists as well as spies. As Michael says in the episode, they do a lot of the same things and have a lot of the same skills. They just do what they do for different reasons. I liked the idea of putting Michael up against a con artist and seeing if he could beat the guy at his own game. I also wanted to do something that would really demonstrate the difference between Michael and the average P.I. or cop."

Burn Notice airs Thursday nights on USA Network. The pilot is called "Identity."