Burn Notice, Season 5, Episode 18

Season 5 of Burn Notice ended with more of a whimper than a bang, but it did bait the hook nicely for Season 6.

As they often do, all stops were pulled out with the casting. Both Kristanna Loken (Terminator 3) and Dean Cain (Clark Kent aka Superman from TV's Lois and Clark) with appeared. As well as Eric Roberts, the King of the B movie, although I felt he was rather wasted as a second level villain.

Michael gets to run his own team and have his own op as a reinstated CIA agent, oddly enough Pearce always said it was Michael's op and Michael's team, but she still oversaw it most of the time, even to the point of getting exasperated when Michael just took off halfway through to deal with what he termed was a family emergency involving his mother, but was actually to do with Fiona trying to get Anson's hold on Michael broken.

The episode and the season concluded with Fiona bravely giving herself up to the authorities. Once she's in jail she reasons that Anson can't hold anything over Michael and therefore breaks Michael free. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Anton will then tell Michael that unless he does as told he'll arrange to have her killed in prison, or extradited out of the States to somewhere else, or get her released as long as Michael behaves. There was even different ending music, it was a soft slow musical piece that is probably named Michael and Fiona's Theme.

Frustratingly they set Anson up so that Fiona could shoot him earlier in the episode. She foolishly allowed Michael to give the nod rather than take the shot herself and she had ample opportunity to put a bullet through his head. That's the one weakness in the whole thing, just kill him and the problem is solved forever.

As final episodes for this show goes it was relatively disappointing. Anson and Pearce aside this entire season was a little disappointing and it needs a significant lift in quality and less repetition of storyline to redeem itself. Fortunately the final 2 seasons do deliver that. I was at least happy to see that Pearce made it out of the season alive. Hopefully she gets transferred out of Miami, so she can stay healthy. Barry and Nate were both under utilised. I do like the show, but it's lucky that this season came after it was already well established. Jere Burns saved it for mine.