There's a lot happening in this episode, that and the fact that the season has 16 episodes, leads one to believe that this was probably the big half season climax episode.
Michael and Sam are going through all the Bill Johnsons in the Miami area to find the one Seymour told them got the sight from him. I find it interesting that Michael and Fiona and Sam regularly use aliases, yet they accept that Carla is using her real first name and that someone who has picked up a stolen weapon and sourced a sight from an illegal arms dealer would of course use his actual name. Going through one Bill Johnson's trash points to that person being a man who has something to hide. That something being a Russian sniper rifle.
Back at his loft as he's making his way through the nightclub crowds (glad to see we saw that again, it helps with continuity) a ghost from his past hails him. It's quite literally a ghost because Michael thought he was dead. His name is Larry and he was a mentor of sorts for Michael, they worked together in the Balkans in the early 90's. It was a pretty crazy time and Larry was a pretty crazy person. He was a stone cold killer then and he is now. However now he works for himself, not the CIA.
Larry is played by veteran actor Tim Matheson, he also directed the episode. Matheson has been a familiar face to TV and movie audiences since the 60's, but is best known for playing 'Otter' in Anima House, aside from guest appearances as Larry in Burn Notice, he also plays small town doctor Brick Breland in the dramedy Hart of Dixie.
Larry wants Michael to pull off an assassination. Michael takes the job, because he knows if Larry does it then the body count is going to be significantly more than one person and he can possibly even save the target.
The 'dead-ee' as she is described is a philanthropist, who's highly unpleasant step son wants her dead. The step son is Zachary Ty Bryan from Home Improvement, for once he isn't playing a high school or college student, but he's every bit as nasty as the characters he seems to have specialised in since leaving the show that made his name.
Michael can save the stepmother, but not the stepson. Larry kills him and then walks away, Michael warns him not to return, but you know that won't be the last time we see him.
Maddie also makes Michael attend another counselling session with her, even though it didn't work last time. It doesn't this time, either, although Michael finds out that it was Maddie who forged his father's signature on his enlistment papers, because she felt that the longer he stayed at home in Miami the more likely he was to get in serious trouble and the army was a second chance. So Maddie is indirectly responsible for his current lifestyle, which she loathes, but it's better than what he may have had.
This episode marks the first appearance of Campbell, Fiona's paramedic boyfriend. I felt a bit sorry for Campbell. Fiona used him to make Michael jealous only it didn't work, or if it did Michael gave very little outward sign of it. They regularly used Campbell's job to help them out and in the first episode he appeared in, he believed Fiona's story that Michael and Sam were soil specialists. I can't remember what she represented herself to him as.
The ending dove tailed into an earlier episode. Sam and Michael tail Bill to a building that can only be entered via a secure key card. The key card was the one that Michael procured as part of one of the first jobs he did for Carla, the one that the forger was killed over. So whatever is being planned, they're playing for keeps and they don't want to leave any loose ends. Michael Westen could be one of the those loose ends.
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