Get ready to feel the 'Burn Notice'

I'm taking a few days off next week and am busy trying to get ahead, but I'll have at least one other post up later today. In the meantime, I'll point you to another of Mo Ryan's in-depth showrunner interviews, this time with "Burn Notice" creator Matt Nix. I particularly like this bit where he talks about Bruce Campbell:

Honestly, we were so lucky with Bruce, I didn’t believe we’d get Bruce. When they said that we might, I was like, “Really? How about Leonardo DiCaprio and a flying car too?” And then he said yes. I thought they were joking and they weren’t.

In some ways, he’s the heart of the show. He embodies the tone. He always strikes a somewhat ironic tone in his acting, but when you watch him, he’s fun to watch. There’s always a part of him that is clearly having fun. He brings that to the set. He brings that to acting. So when you put him and Jeffrey in a room together, they play in a really fun way.

I kind of don’t know what the show is without Bruce. We were incredibly fortunate to get him. That character [of Sam] is one thing, then there is that Bruceness to him as well. The Bruceness is irreduceable [laughs]. It’s hard to put your finger on. Sometimes I feel it’s easy to forgive the show [with him on it]. Things are tightly scheduled, it’s very challenging, there are a lot of things [to sustain], but when Bruce is on the screen, it’s like, “We’re all doing a show here!” I think he buys us a lot of goodwill.

He actually just pulled his hamstring doing a stunt, I just got a call, he’s on the way to the hospital. But that’s a great example of Bruce – he called me on the way to the hospital to say, “Here’s my idea of how we’ll write it into the show.”

I have the first two episodes of the new season (it's back on July 10, with Tricia Helfer as Michael's new "handler"), but haven't had a chance to watch them yet. Looking forward to it.