You don’t have to be the least bit interested in which clandestine government agency decided that Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) wasn’t worth his spy-craft cover story and his multiple identities, cutting him loose to wander the mean Miami streets full of wisecracks, paranoia, and Special Ops. All you have to do is enjoy his cynical take on the shadow world he navigates, the peculiar cases he takes on like a private eye to pay his daily freight—in the second season’s opener, for instance, the kidnapping of the wife and daughter of a computer techie—and the limber vamping of his gun-loving accomplice and erstwhile inamorata, Fiona Glenanne (Gabrielle Anwar), the shameless showboating of his two-faced best buddy, Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell), and the Sophie Portnoy meddlesomeness of his incorrigible mother, Madeline (Sharon Gless). Last summer’s biggest surprise is this summer’s predictably literate pleasure.

USA, Thursdays, 10 p.m.

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• Archive: “Television”
• Articles by John Leonard
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