SEPTEMBER 20, 2007
BEGINNING OF THE END

I've written the final episode on a few of the previous shows I've worked on. Customarily, it's the show runner (usually the executive producer/creator) of the series who gets that honor. After all, it's their baby; so they get to wrap up the season. The finale is also one of the more high-profile episodes; so exec producers aren't likely to part with those scripts. So why did I get to write the finales on those other shows? Because those shows were getting cancelled, and the show runner didn't want to waste his time writing an episode that in all likelihood was never going to see the light of day.

So imagine my surprise when Matt asked if I'd like to write the Burn Notice finale. I felt a brief moment of panic. Had he heard something I hadn't? I thought the show's ratings were pretty good. We weren't getting cancelled, were we?

No. Matt just wanted to spread the writing workload. It didn't matter to him that it was the finale. His ego wasn't wrapped up in it. He's that kind of guy.

The problem for me, was that I was busy producing the "Hard Bargain" episode at around the time that the finale outline was supposed to be in the works, and the deadline for turning in the script was coming up fast. In fact, we were a couple of weeks from the first day of prep on the episode, and we had no story beats worked out. All we had was an idea: Sam is kidnapped by heroin smugglers, and Michael rescues him. And oh, yeah, we also had to come up with a conclusion to the burn notice storyline. "Uh...maybe we ought to write the final episode together," I told Matt. He realized how crunched we were on time and quickly agreed. We put on our thinking caps.

Several days passed, with many discussions with the network and studio about the conclusion to the series. They wanted something big and exciting and surprising. Sounded good to us. We batted around a lot of ideas, particularly with respect to how to resolve the burn notice story. We peeked at the calendar and realized we were down to seven days until we had to prep the episode. We still had no outline.

Matt came up with several plot points over a weekend: Fiona is trapped in a warehouse and Michael does something clever to rescue her; Michael tracks down the guys who have abducted Sam by approaching and threatening a big-time heroin dealer; and Michael boards the barge where Sam is being kept and uses a sticky bomb to rescue him. I liked where the story was going and made suggestions. We spent several hours working out the beats. The story fell suddenly into place. We had five days to write the outline and script.

Matt and I banged out the outline in a day and sent it to the studio and network. They quickly approved it. Four days to write the script.

We split up the writing duties. Matt took acts one and four. I took acts two and three. We didn't see each other's work until a few days later, literally a day before the script was due. We pasted our parts together and read...Wow! The script actually worked. We sent it off to the studio and network, and I headed off to Miami to prep the episode.

The problem with writing a big and exciting and surprising episode is that it will probably blow your show budget out of the water. And this episode came pretty damn close to doing that. Lucky for us, we had Terry Miller.

Terry is one of the best line producers I've ever worked with. Line producers are the guys responsible for getting the episode made on time and on budget. The crew reports to them. If a script looks expensive to produce, most line producers (the bad ones) will ask you to make changes to the script to make it cheaper. They usually want the pricey things cut out – like explosions or car chases – and they don't really care if it impacts the integrity of the story. All they care about is the bottom-line. Terry, on the other hand, will fight like mad to actually produce the script you've written. It's not that he doesn't care about the budget; he does. It's just that he cares about the integrity of the script, too. God bless him. He did a hell of a job of preserving most of the script that Matt and I wrote. It didn't hurt that we had Stephen Surjik directing the episode.

Not only is Stephen one of the most stylish directors I've ever worked with (Matt commented that he wanted to steal all of Stephen's clothes), he's also one of the most prepared. He actually storyboarded (i.e., literally sketched out) every shot he wanted in the episode. I was blown away by his sketches: they were like looking at a really cool comic-book version of the script. That kind of preparation saves time and money.

After a week of scouting locations, hashing out shooting schedules and meeting with production department heads about what we needed for the show, I headed home. Matt was supposed to supervise the shooting of the episode. I was exhausted, but also thrilled about we had accomplished – not only in this episode, but the entire season...

Most fun I ever had on any show.