Burn Notice, Season 7, Episode 5

The last episode ended with Michael, Sam and Jesse stuck on an island, and with the very dangerous Sonya running about after having knocked out Jesse.

Michael works out that Sonya is trying to lay a false trail for them and tries to double back on her. She's smart enough to work that out and gets the drop on Michael instead. Unfortunately Alona Tal was forced to use a rather dodgy sounding Russian accent for this part. Maybe the accent wasn't that bad, but as I'm used to seeing Alona Tal playing all Americans (the actress herself was born and raised in Israel) the accent sounds kind of jarring.

She knows her stuff, she knows who Michael is, but because she's been in custody for a while hadn't heard that he apparently switched sides and was discovered drinking himself to death by Bourke. Usually I buy Jeffrey Donovan when he lies, but I couldn't here, yet Sonya fell for it and agreed to work with he and his team to get them all out of Cuba safely.

Back in Miami, Fiona finds Strong in her house. He wants her to help Michael with the mission. She refuses. He then tells her why Michael accepted the job and what the failure of it means for her and everyone else connected. I'm actually getting rather tired of that. It's become very tedious, and I can't work out how people who have worked with the CIA (for and against) can't figure out why Michael is doing what he's doing and why he made the deal he did. I think Fiona was the last that needed to have  it spelled out to her, so hopefully they've explained that to everyone now.

Strong then proceeds to make it next to impossible for Fiona to continue her life to force her to agree to help. This puts a major kink in her relationship with Carlos. I kind of like Carlos, for all that I'm probably not supposed to because he affects the show's OTP of Michael and Fiona. The problem I have with Carlos is that he just appeared, Fiona may have known him before, but the audience didn't and that makes it hard to accept that she's madly in love with him, and he's replaced Michael just like that.

In Cuba, the quartet are not only being chased by the local police, they also have a Russian agent called Oksana on their tail. She's basically a Russian version of Riley, although I felt Marina Benedict made an absolute dogs breakfast of the role. The accent was very obviously fake and for a hardass agent she was very jittery, not all that bright and she folded very easily. 

The scenes between Michael and Sonya were interesting. Apparently young Russian agents study him now. She took note of his low body count and while most felt that this was because of his meticulous planning and helped him spread his own legend, she thought that it may also be due to the fact that he didn't like unnecessary death and was therefore a little softhearted. She's closer to the mark than she realises, but I do wonder if that's true, and it does appear to be, why would the amoral Larry ever think Michael could be a kindred spirit? She also clearly worked from the Michael Westen playbook when they arranged their audacious escape.

Once on American soil in Miami, Sonya is still running the show and the gang are going to go after the Miami based hackers who betrayed her in the first place.

Burn Notice, Season 7, Episode 4

It begins with Michael. He's in what looks like a jungle setting at night, heavily armed and wearing night vision goggles. It crosses to Burke, who is questioning Serrano about a female prisoner held by the Russians. Serrano says he can't tell Burke where she is, the Russians will kill him. Burke shows him vision of Michael standing over a sleeping little girl, gun aimed at her head. It's Serrano's daughter. Serrano cracks and gives Burke the location. He says that now the Russians will come after his family. Burke tells him that they won't if he's already dead, he puts a pistol and a bullet on the table and leaves the room. Michael's monologue ends the scene, as a spy you sometimes have to do bad things, but you hope you won't have to. If Serrano hadn't cracked, would Michael have killed his daughter? He intimates that he wouldn't have, but his recent actions have said that he may have. Michael is as close at this point as he ever has been, of turning back into what he was before he was burned.

We see Michael again, he's back in his digs in the Dominican Republic and Sam and Jesse are still there. He has orders from Strong to do whatever it takes and he's been given permission to keep using Sam and Jesse as his team. Burke's also happy to continue to work with them.

Now they know where the girl; Sonya, that Burke wants is, they have to get her. The name Alona Tal appeared in the credits, and even if I hadn't seen Sonya's picture I would have worked out that was who Alona Tal played. I quite like Alona Tal as an actress, my wife and I refer to her as Jo/Meg, after the first names of her two best known roles in Supernatural and Veronica Mars.

The problem is that she's being held by the Russians, 3 guys, 4 if you count Burke, can't just storm the building and hope to get out alive and to bust someone out at the same time. Michael has the idea of getting them to move her, he can go to the Russians and tell them that a CIA strike is coming. Sam points out that because of his past, the Russians hate him more than anyone else, and will shoot him on sight. Jesse comes up with the idea of using a Russian former spy he knows of in Miami to help Michael sell his story.

Only they're going to be in Cuba (that's where Sonya is being held), and their guy is in Miami. They place a call to Fi. She tells Michael over the phone that she'll do this, but she can't keep doing it. She says that he lied to her about getting out, which I don't buy, but the reality of it is that she's highly unlikely to ever be able to carry on a normal life with Michael. There are just far too many skeletons in his closet.

Once he knows Fiona is on the job Michael goes to the place in Cuba. We know it's Cuba due to the proliferation of vintage 1950's and '60's American cars. They're initially sceptical, but he gives them the story about the GRU operative in Miami. They check it out.

Fiona has taken Maddy with her. Maddy asks why not Carlos. Fiona said that she can't tell Carlos she's still doing jobs for Michael. Michael and Carlos do not get along well, although I don't think they'd ever met prior to Michael's recent trip back to Miami. Fiona and Maddy work well, though.

The Russian tries to escape by asking Maddy for water, she helps Fiona recapture him by hitting him with the van, and then pouring out the water on the street. They cut this nicely, as the water starts to fall, we see Michael being waterboarded by the Russians, and that's when they get the information Fi and Maddy have set Ivan (the Miami based GRU guy) to take the fall for.

Sam and Jesse make the scene the Russians are directed to look like a CIA sting, and only manage to escape the Russian's agents by jumping out the window and landing on a bus. The Russians still aren't totally buying Michael's story and he's had to tell them that there's a mole inside. This forces Burke to tell Sam and Jesse to capture one of the agents and make it tally up with Michael's story.

To make matters worse the Russian commander finds out that a submarine is in Cuban waters, and they don't need to leave the car repair shop they've holed up in. Left with no other choice, Burke goes in, pretending to be a disgruntled CIA agent, with a laptop full of top secret information. He asks to see Michael, and tells him that no matter what happens he has to get the girl out. She's the answer to everything. He then blows himself and the Russians up with the 'laptop' which is really an explosive device. Michael runs out with the unconscious Sonya over his shoulder and piles into the waiting car with Sam and Jesse after a brief firefight with a couple of Russians. They'll have a boat waiting to get them out.

Back in Miami, Fiona and Maddy have been fed a sob story from Ivan about his girlfriend who he's trying to put through nursing school, so that's why he was stealing money from the Russians. Unusually enough for Burn Notice, the story is actually true. Ivan's life is forfeit due to Fiona and Madeline's actions. The two of them are far too soft to be spies, and they obtain fake id's for Ivan and his girlfriend and tell him to start a new life somewhere else. Odd, how they got these so easily, when it was such a hassle last season to get new ids for themselves.

Sonya wakes up while Sam and Michael are checking for the boat, she knocks Jesse out and takes off. So now they're all stuck on Cuba, Burke's dead and the girl they got out has taken off, believing them to be a threat to her.