Burn Notice, Season 7, Episode 9

I'm not sure if watching so many of these back to back has affected me or not, but I had very little interest in the main story of this episode. I'll cover it here just to get it out of the way.

James wants Michael and Co to ensure that a prominent middle eastern reformer is not assassinated while in Miami. They protect the target from gunmen, but not before he's been poisoned. This then sparks a chase to find the poisoner, because they can't reverse engineer an antidote. The whole mess gets resolved, but not before James' expert on middle eastern affairs throws Fiona under the bus by leaving her in a burning factory. Michael rescues her, and I don't think the relationship with Carlos will survive, because Michael and Fiona are definitely back on after this.

What interested me more were peripheral things to do with James. Firstly he rounded up Michael and the other 3 by having them met at their places of residence or about their daily business and taking them to a place of his choosing. So the job he wanted them to do wasn't really about a choice, it was about doing it or else. While what he does seems altruistic, his strong arm methods put Sam, Jesse and Fiona offside and even have Michael asking questions.

He also has Maddy under surveillance and makes threats against her and Charlie by turning up at her house. If he wants to lose Michael this is the way to do it.

Lastly the real James comes out at the end of the episode when he finds out what his man did with Fiona at the factory. His special forces training is all about not leaving anyone behind. Sam's said it about his SEAL days more than once and so has Michael about his own special forces experiences. James is cut from the same cloth, but he takes action that neither Sam or Michael approve of, and that's to shoot the transgressor dead without any hesitation whatsoever. He's too much judge, jury and executioner and like Simon and Card, he's not dealing with a full deck.

Burn Notice, Season 3, Episode 9

The voice over by Jeffrey Donovan at the start of episode 9 to bring newcomers or people who can't remember where the show left of kind of indicates that episode 8 was a half season show and there was some sort of break in between the two episodes.

Fiona's still definitely leaving, she's heading back home to Ireland. In fact people's pasts is a recurring theme in the show. Maddie's thinking of selling her house (she figures with Michael getting his old job back and Fiona moving away she doesn't really need it), and that stirs up a few feelings in Michael. He says he hates the house, but he does have memories of it, and they weren't all bad. Plus it's a great place for him to stash people.

Strickler was true to his word (surprise surprise) and has got the CIA looking seriously at reinstating Michael, something that Diego has advised strongly against. Diego really doesn't like Michael and I'm not sure why. He's also very worried that Michael worked for Tom Strickler.

Fiona's attempt to go back home is postponed by the arrival of her brother Sean (played by Gideon Emery, currently Deucalion in Teen Wolf). Fiona's wanted back home and a character by the name of Thomas O'Neill has come to town to kill her (O'Neill was played by Paul 'Harry Dresden' Blackthorne. Blackthorne has been in everything, he's currently playing Quentin Lance in Arrow, but he'll always be wizard for hire Harry Dresden to me).

Unfortunately the arrival of Sean and O'Neill means Michael Westen has to become Michael McBride again complete with dodgy accent. In fact both Gideon Emery and Paul Blackthorne also have to adopt fake Irish accents, and neither actor is Irish, Fiona gets to keep her American accent. Blackthorne's accent was particularly bad, it slipped all over the place. There is what is meant to be an amusing line when Michael says he'll use an American accent to approach O'Neill and Sean says that the accent sounds dodgy.

Michael does save Fiona from O'Neill, although she says that she doesn't want to be his 'client'. Doing it actually means totalling the Buick (I think the relationship between Sam and Miss Reynolds is over) and getting Sean shot. Fiona also gets winged. Maddie's living room resembles a casualty ward with both of them recuperating there, and she also decides not to sell.

Things get rather heated between Strickler and Michael, when he puts O'Neill onto Fiona, because he says Michael can't reenter the CIA with a former IRA bomber and current gun runner as a girlfriend. The meeting winds up with Michael shooting Strickler dead and Diego is also implicated and winds up dead before Michael can reach him.

Michael walks away from Diego's body thinking that the only thing worse than an enemy you can see is one you can't.