Burt Reynolds Should Be a Recurring Character on USA's "Burn Notice"

Thursday night at 9 ET on USA's Burn Notice, Burt Reynolds guest stars as a retired spy targeted by a Russian hit squad. Michael and his crew come to the rescue -- in a crisp TV "buddy movie" so delightful, it all but demands a string of sequels...

Reynolds plays Paul, a former spy whose drunken posting on the Internet catches the eye, and sparks the ire, of a Russian special ops team, who descend upon Miami determined to find Paul, and kill him. At first, Jeffrey Donovan's Michael Westen presumes the Russians are coming for him -- but when he IDs the true target, he and his team decide to intercept the hit men, and save the old man.

The old man, meanwhile, loves the action: breaking into a safe, being chased by bad guys, drawing a gun again. He has two settings: grumpy old-timer and wide-eyed overgrown kid. Reynolds, of course, is great at playing both.

It's not surprising, but it is gratifying, to see Reynolds exude so much ease and comfort acting for television. After all, he started there -- and not just in the title role in 1970's Dan August, before attaining movie stardom in Deliverance and Smokey and the Bandit.

Burt Reynolds began his acting career on television more than 50 years ago, playing a one-episode role on M Squad in 1959. He co-starred as Ben Frazer for a season on Riverboat, opposite Darren McGavin (pictured) that same year, Reynolds' first recurring role. For the next decade, appeared on an exhaustively long list of still-familiar TV shows, including Playhouse 90, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Naked City, Route 66, Perry Mason, The Twilight Zone, Gunsmoke, Branded, Flipper, 12 O'Clock High, Gentle Ben, The F.B.I. and Love, American Style.

And now, here he is on Burn Notice, wisecracking effortlessly, safecracking laboriously, and making the most of his screen time with Notice co-stars Sharon Gless, Bruce Campbell and Gabrielle Anwar.

Especially, in this episode, Anwar, whose beautiful, trigger-happy, violence-prone Fiona instantly catches the eye of Reynolds' Paul.

Regaling her with an exciting tale of watching Michael fight and subdue a couple of bad guys, Paul tells Fiona, "They used to call it karate, but I think they got a new name for it now."

She smiles at him and replies, "Foreplay?"

"Hello!" he says, his eyes widening with unchecked delight.

It's the way Reynolds delivers that line, and so many others, that makes me hope Burn Notice finds a way to return Reynolds to the fold. He and Donovan have an obvious chemistry together -- and when it comes to Burt Reynolds, 51 years of television doesn't seem like enough.