Gabrielle Anwar and Jeffrey Donovan of Burn Notice
USA Network

Burn Notice: If you're all ready for tonight's third-season premiere, you're well ahead of me.

Tonight is the third-season premiere of USA's Burn Notice, a critically acclaimed show that has been crucial in the growth of the network's reputation as a genuine source of original scripted programs.

Please don't tell me what happens. Or what has happened since the pilot.

Because, in keeping with the great migration toward unconventional viewing habits, I've just started watching it. (I bought it online myself; you can also get it on DVD, if you are so inclined. And there have been marathons on USA the last two days, but it's already too late to get in on that action in a useful way.)

If you're not familiar with the premise, Jeffrey Donovan plays Michael Westen, a spy who wakes up one day to find that he's been basically banished — not just fired as a spy, but wiped off the map of creditworthiness and so forth — for reasons unknown. ("Burned," you see.)

So now he has all his spy skills, a beautiful associate (Gabrielle Anwar), and his old friend Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell). But no money and no job and no way to survive except — you guessed it — by his wits. The result, which makes him basically a very driven, very overqualified private investigator in Miami, is utterly delightful (so far), with exactly the kind of wry, self-aware narration that I very nearly demand in a show of this kind.

At least that's how things are as of the early part of the first season; if he's been abducted by aliens since then, or he's become a time-traveling space soldier, you couldn't prove it by me. I'd be sad, I admit.

It used to be that the third season of a well-respected show with a lot of rich back story was just too late to jump in. It's always been one of the big frustrations with good dramas — by the time they get going and the buzz gets to the point where you hear about it, you've missed too much. This is especially challenging now that there are far too many shows for even a devoted good-television aficionado to possibly keep track of.

But at the same time, that same irritatingly fractured landscape is supported by a variety of increasingly easy ways to bring yourself up to speed.

So I don't just suggest you keep an open mind about shows you've been ignoring and use the much-improved late-adopter options to improve the overall quality of what you're watching; I do it myself. Judging by my speedy catching-up habits with past shows, it shouldn't take me long to get to the new season. Until then, I'm keeping my eyes closed.