At times it wears the coat of being something darker or more complex but I have learnt not to be taken in too much by that as essentially the formula will be roughly the same most of the time. Yes it isn't stretching itself but the formula does work well enough for it to be solid light entertainment. It is the same show as it has been since the first season, albeit that the confidence of having a strong viewer base and several seasons green-lit for the future means that it is pretty comfortable and confident in what it does. Weston is nearly a parody of himself now with his 'when doing X it is important to remember Y' voice-overs but it is all good fun and I enjoyed it for what it is. Of course the good thing is that these are mostly enjoyable with plenty of TV-level action, a touch of humour and plenty of fantasy nonsense that is like bubble-gum for the mind. Instead it generally keeps things on the level of The A-Team, with weekly jobs making up the majority of the time. To me this is a shame because it means that the show never really grips me in the way that a story about spies, betrayal, covert missions and the like really should do. It tends to fill a small part of each episode just to remind us that it is there and then is specifically focused on for the fall and season finales so that the viewer has a cliff-hanger of some sort to come back for. As before the 'overall' thread is not as strong as it should be.

With this burnt spy (Jesse) on board with the team, the weekly missions helping others continue while the overall investigation into Simon's background reveals much more threatening forces and information out there – pitching former friends as enemies and former enemies as friends. Reluctantly Michael agrees but in the process of one mission accidentally burns another spy, condemning him to the same fate Michael himself is trying to escape.

Season 4 sees Michael approaches by Vaughan (an Agency man) who is looking for someone to help him uncover who was behind Simon's actions in the third season. So basically this is more of the same that we have already seen, but I don't mean that in a dismissive negative way – even if I could review this by copy/pasting from season 3. This is going to be really difficult because the fourth season of Burn notice sticks really close to its formula, focuses on its core strengths and doesn't wander into areas where it hasn't already found audiences that are happy. The challenge here is for me to try and get through my review of season 4 without writing 'hey, it is what it is'.

Burn notice cast final season