Heh, Monk and Psych seem to be at the same level of seriousness to me though. I mean, Shawn and Gus' antics can get pretty silly at times, but so can Monk's neuroses (or his treatment of Natalie, how does she put up with him?!). Burn Notice is a little more serious than those shows, but not as serious as something like 24 or Alias.
So I was say its more like a less serious action show rather than a comedy with action. Its not as action packed as something like 24, but there's still a good deal of action. Actually, I think the show does take a few digs at 24 every so often, particularly the way Jack does things. The main character, Michael, is kinda the anti-Jack. I mean, he's still pretty bad-ass, but he prefers to accomplish things through trickery and subterfuge. Whereas Jack will just start busting heads and shooting people all, "Where is the bomb?!" or "Who are you working for?!" Michael will fool them into thinking he's an ally, secretly sabotaging them or turning them against each other.
Truthfully, I think the show is closer to Macgyver, if Macgyver wasn't a pacifist. I mean, its a lot like old school Macgyver, with the voiceover explaining some trick he's doing. He doesn't go into too much detail though, because they don't want people going out and doing a lot of stuff, but its stuff like making makeshift bugging devices or simple ways of disabling/getting past security systems, armoring up a car on a budget. I guess there's also some psychology/how to sell a lie/how to detect a lie sorts of things as well.
I think one example was when he was in a car chase and the bad guys tried blocking the road ahead of him, his vocieover started talking about how modern cars are safer with the airbags and wot-not, but that's bad for trying to ram through a roadblock, because the airbags will deploy. So, he spun the car around and rammed the cars with his back end. Actually, they did the airbag thing twice, I think there was another ep where he had to head off some assassin driving to kill a client, so he quickly looked for someone driving an old muscle car, since those don't have airbags. So he carjacked it, strapped in tight, and rammed the guy head on. The bad guy's airbags deployed, so he was kinda trapped, so Michael quickly got out and took advantage of the sitch. So they try to be a little more real world. Plus, he's also blacklisted, so he doesn't have access to a lot of the fancy stuff those other spys/government agent types have on their shows, which is another reason there's a lot of Macgyvering going on.
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So I was say its more like a less serious action show rather than a comedy with action. Its not as action packed as something like 24, but there's still a good deal of action. Actually, I think the show does take a few digs at 24 every so often, particularly the way Jack does things. The main character, Michael, is kinda the anti-Jack. I mean, he's still pretty bad-ass, but he prefers to accomplish things through trickery and subterfuge. Whereas Jack will just start busting heads and shooting people all, "Where is the bomb?!" or "Who are you working for?!" Michael will fool them into thinking he's an ally, secretly sabotaging them or turning them against each other.
Truthfully, I think the show is closer to Macgyver, if Macgyver wasn't a pacifist. I mean, its a lot like old school Macgyver, with the voiceover explaining some trick he's doing. He doesn't go into too much detail though, because they don't want people going out and doing a lot of stuff, but its stuff like making makeshift bugging devices or simple ways of disabling/getting past security systems, armoring up a car on a budget. I guess there's also some psychology/how to sell a lie/how to detect a lie sorts of things as well.
I think one example was when he was in a car chase and the bad guys tried blocking the road ahead of him, his vocieover started talking about how modern cars are safer with the airbags and wot-not, but that's bad for trying to ram through a roadblock, because the airbags will deploy. So, he spun the car around and rammed the cars with his back end. Actually, they did the airbag thing twice, I think there was another ep where he had to head off some assassin driving to kill a client, so he quickly looked for someone driving an old muscle car, since those don't have airbags. So he carjacked it, strapped in tight, and rammed the guy head on. The bad guy's airbags deployed, so he was kinda trapped, so Michael quickly got out and took advantage of the sitch. So they try to be a little more real world. Plus, he's also blacklisted, so he doesn't have access to a lot of the fancy stuff those other spys/government agent types have on their shows, which is another reason there's a lot of Macgyvering going on.