Burn Notice, Season 2, Episode 3

No Tricia Helfer in the guest cast list, which was a little disappointing as I really like her as a character to hate on.

Just because Carla isn't there, doesn't mean that she's not part of the episode. To that end Michael heavies the head of security at the Pakistani embassy to give him information on her. The reasoning here is that the head of security at an embassy is usually secret service. Geographically the region known as Kurdistan, where Michael believes Carla has worked in the past, hence why she speaks Arabic with a Kurdish accent, does not share a border with Pakistan, but he sees them as the best secret service operation in the region. In any account they are able to provide with a heavily redacted dossier that does give him a little more idea what he's looking at with her.

The main focus of the episode is Fiona wanting to help a friend of Maddie's. Her son borrowed $200,000 to invest in a dodgy night club scheme, which was actually a scam, to provide for her in later life. The money is gone and now the loan shark he borrowed it from wants his money back and if he can't have that he'll take it out of the hides of the borrower and his mother.

I do have to question how smart this loan shark is. He sees Michael incapacitate two of his goons with a rolled up magazine and still wants to go to war with him. Just Michael's insane grin when he announces his intentions would be enough to put most people off.

Zeke, the front man for the scheme was actually played by Peter Fabian (familiar to me as Veronica Mars criminology professor in the 3rd season of the show), the characters were both dodgy so shared something in common.

Michael not only took this guy for what his client lost, but everything else he had in the safe as well.

Next he'll start to leverage Carla. A more formidable opponent may be the double team of Fiona and Maddie, who despite Michael's protestations to the contrary, want the two together.

Just an aside, Fiona used an over the top British working class accent in her role of charming Zeke and introducing him to Michael's gung-ho oil heir, for which he affected a heavy Texas accent. Gabrielle Anwar was raised in England and this was less grating than her Irish accent, but it still didn't sound quite right. My advice would be to ditch the accents unless it's absolutely necessary.