Burning Desire Notice

Not yet ready to throw over Uma or break things off with Gwyneth, but I can feel myself falling hard for Gabrielle.

I'm watching Burn Notice again tonight.  Season 1, Disc 2 came in the mail from Netflix today.  Episode I've got paused six minutes and fifty-two seconds in on my laptop.  Image on the screen is of palm trees and the Miami River and looking into the heart of the city.  Image I'm resisting backing up to, at two minutes and fifty-seven minutes, is of Gabrielle Anwar in a yellow tank top, her breasts rising as she sighs heavily.

Complication is that she---that is, Fiona, the character Anwar plays---is looking out a window at the Czech assassin who's waiting in ambush to kill her ex-boyfriend, our hero, the former spy Michael Weston, and it's not clear if Fiona's sighing because she's bored, sighing at some inner, secret sorrow, sighing because she's attracted to the assassin, or sighing because she can't decide what weapon she'll use to kill him when he makes his inevitable run at Michael, or all of the above.  With Fiona it could be any or all or various combinations the listed causes.

Fiona is, um, troubled.

Bill Nothstine has warned me away from her.  "Very high maintenance," is how he's described her.  I've replied that it's Anwar herself I'm smitten with, not the character, as if my feelings for either didn't represent a delusion on my part.  But I'm not fooling anybody.  It's Fiona.  I've seen Anwar in other things, most notably as Henry the Eighth's rapaciously libidinous sister in The Tudors, and I've managed to appreciate her charms and her talents without feeling my devotion to Uma and Gwyneth shaken.

It's Fiona.

And part of the attraction is the high maintenance.

There are many ways of being high maintenance and different high-maintenance types require different kinds of maintenance on different schedules.  And I hope you'll notice that I'm not using gender specific language here.  The worst type is simply spoiled who think the world revolves around them and you're there to prove it.  The second worst is spoiled and helpless.  There are others.  Fiona is not helpless and if she's spoiled it's in a very weird way---she demands to be kept amused not attended to and her favorite forms of amusement involve violence.  Long-time fans, do we ever learn anything about her childhood?  I hope not.  No, the maintenance a high-maintenance type like Fiona seems to want and need, is the kind that proves that you are as crazy about her as she is about you.  She also wants constant acknowledgement that she is what you have been searching for all your life. 

This would explain Fiona's constant need to be in and/or cause trouble, because in the middle of this trouble one of two very desirable things can happen.  She can show Michael how skilled she is at getting out of trouble and prove how useful she is to him or, if she can't get herself out of a jam, Michael will have to drop what he's doing and come to her rescue which he wouldn't do, would he, unless he really cared.

So, with the Fionas of the world, the maintenance that appears to be needed because it's all about them is really proof that it's all about you, that they are all about you.

What it comes down to, then, is that high-maintenance types of Fiona's type are attractive because they play right to your vanity, and admitting that I'm not immune to the type is admitting that I don't mind having my vanity played to, not one little bit.

Fortunately, for my vanity, because I'm vain about not being the kind of fool who lets his vanity get the better of him, my attraction to Fiona also depends on geography and fantasy.

Fiona is much more attractive for being surrounded by Miami than she would be if she was surrounded by Fort Wayne, Indiana or Lansing, Michigan, and she grows even more attractive when I forget who and what I am and start thinking I'm a highly-trained and super-competent former spy making a living by helping out people in trouble while I'm trying to track down whoever burned me at the Agency.

__________________

Once upon a time, I was did some hanging around South Miami Beach, like Michael Weston, only minus the helping people for hire while dodging Czech assassins business.  Also minus a Fiona.  But I spent a fair share of my time drinking in the glow of the neon at outdoor bars by the waterway at night and watching women in string bikinis stroll the sidewalks and beaches by day.  I was there because of this blonde chick.  She was there for her first job out of college.  I would come down when I could from Iowa where I was in grad school.  This was an inconveniently long commute.  So she took a job in the Midwest, as close as she could get to Iowa and to me.  Except that I was about to graduate, which meant that I was no longer "stuck" in Iowa.  I could go live wherever I wanted to.  Which of course would be wherever she was.

And that's how I came to spend five years in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where there is very little neon and  where very few women stroll the sidewalks in string bikinis.

Like I said.  There are all kinds of ways to be high-maintenance.

Comments

[Mike Schilling]

Michael Weston, the guy who played the private detective on House, had a girlfriend like that? That can't be right ...

OK, the character is Michael Westen, played by Jeffrey Donovan. And to confuse things further, Michael Weston once did a guest shot on Burn Notice. Glad we straightened that out.

But this show has both her and The Chin? Gotta check it out.

[Linkmeister]

The blonde had no string bikini?

[muddy]

On this week's episode there was some info regarding Fiona's family and earlier life. I won't spoil it for you except to say that you would never guess by the accent.

[Bill Nothstine]

Finally finding my way back through Facebook correspondence [which isn't easy], I find that I did call Fiona "high maintenance." But I think the Fionas of the world don't deserve something so dismissive.

With the benefit of hindsight, I think the correct characterization would be "High Maintenance, but thinks she's Low Maintenance" --as... Read More Harry Burns explained to Sally Albright, they're the worst. [Of course, by that time he was already in love with HMbtsLM Sally but hadn't figured it out, the putz. Watching "Casablanca" together over the phone? Please. The deed was already done.] Since Fiona, by her own admission, has a fairly small toolkit when it comes to dealing with relationship issues--the phrase "if you don't understand it, kill it" leaps to mind--she imagines herself, sincerely but mistakenly, to be Low Maintenance.

For further evidence, peruse Fiona's blog: http://tinyurl.com/nzg8uu First sentence: "So Michael thinks I should get a hobby." It's darkly funny and unnervingly endearing, but it makes my point: She retells stories of visiting some fairly nasty revenge on people for fairly small injuries and insults [often not to herself], but she ... Read Moreholds the picaresque conviction that her antisocial moments are always someone else's fault, never her own. [You have to use the drop-down menu on the left side of the screen to see other Fiona posts.]

I have my own history with High Maintenance--both those who knew it and those who didn't--and while my track record isn't great [my weakness was imagining that, because I'm a fairly clever guy, I was clever enough to think around the next corner before they did, and in that I was almost always mistaken], I can't deny the attraction. My ... Read Moreoriginal "high maintenance" remark was "I find that friends who like really REALLY high-maintenance women go for Fiona like a bee to explosive honey." Sometimes explosive honey is good; what can I say?

In sum, I'm not sure my purpose was to warn Lance off of Fiona [or the Fionas of the world], but rather to place a sort of Surgeon General's warning on her lean flank.

[Zach]

O, mr mannion, after this summer vacation i have to fear your brain has really pickled.

"..This would explain Fiona's constant need to be in and/or cause trouble, because in the middle of this trouble one of two very desirable things can happen. She can show Michael how skilled she is at getting out of trouble and prove how useful she is to him or, if she can't get herself out of a jam, Michael will have to drop what he's doing and come to her rescue which he wouldn't do, would he, unless he really cared.

So, with the Fionas of the world, the maintenance that appears to be needed because it's all about them is really proof that it's all about you, that they are all about you..."

Ah come on! Fiona is a *titanically* self motivated character --- thats the heft of her appeal. The backstory character here didnt run guns sucessfully in Ireland to please Michael, nor spend however many years accruing any of her olympic caliber terrorist / guerilla / spy skills to please Michael, or anyone else, not that we are ever shown.

She (in season 1) carries this intense, predatory, more that slightly troubling obsessive interest in and desire for Michael. But she shows off for him like a peacock : what you are seeing is flirting, not need. Sure she chases him around the game, and gets him to chase her.. thats the s*xual fun she gets from all this competence. Catch me if you can, Michael Phelps, Im as good as you are and you know you love it..

To be fair, the crazy does distort and obfuscate.. that of course is half the fun. Of watching. From afar. :)

Wistful for a former relationship? Sure, why else hang around and make nice to his family, back his plays, all that? But again, an old flame amplified through the crazy does not needy make.

The (crazy) joy she derives from playing on the Westen team is constantly, consistently internally motivated: she loves being good at what she does, exactly like he does. What troubles her personally is kept private, other than a love hook she has in this old relationship.

Fiona is written to be the unseen inside of Westen -- the unchained animal joy of that kind of competent power, the isolation of being that much better a survivor and killer than everyone around you.. the hunger that enormous denied emotions demand.. writ large, and on the outside. Its what we dont see under his famous deadpan demeanor. She knows it, he knows it, we get to watch.

Come on buddy -- the whole point of the penultimately competent violence in this character is to howl out '(this) womans beauty is her own, not anyone elses -- aint it great?'. Because she flashes it in no way should imply it was built or is run for your (or my) benefit!

Im just sayin. Helpless Fiona fan here as well, I do feel you.

[Lance]

Zach, please be patient with me. I've only watched five episodes of the first season so far. I'll catch up.

[Zach]

Yikes I appear to have gone all graceless and Fanboy on you. Apologies.

Interested to see what you think of the way this plays out over the balance of Season 1. As I recall in early Season 2 they do write her as a lot more grabby and one dimensional than before, and dont redeem that again for a while. Of course theres also Carla at that time, and I think the character is made to suffer in the service of contrast..

Carla is a really fun surprise I wont spoil for you. *Theres* a whole other world of high maintenance