Burn Notice, Season 5, Episode 1

Yes, I'm back and so are Michael Westen and his merry band of mayhem makers.

I honestly don't remember this episode at all. I can remember one line, but I could have seen that on a previously on Burn Notice thing at the start to bring people up to speed if they missed an episode or two or can't remember what happened.

If you can remember when last we saw our intrepid hero the CIA had welcomed him back with open arms.

Yeah...well...sort of...not really.

Michael is working with the CIA and performing covert missions for them, but he's not actually on their payroll as such, he does what they tell him and under their auspices, but he's not really a CIA operative (which he never was from what he said at the start of the very first episode, he was a sort of go between). He performs his work with a fast talking smoothie by the name of Max (Melrose Place's Grant Show). I kind of like Max, I really hope he doesn't turn out to be evil. He gets totally thrown when things don't go according to the CIA's 'carefully' thought out plans, but he keeps on going and he can think on his feet, he just doesn't dance as fast as Michael, Sam, Fi and Jesse do.

Understandably Fi and Sam, Fi in particular, are a little bit put out by the kink Michael working for the CIA puts in their lifestyles. Fi spends her time whining and Sam is back living at Maddie's place and managed to find what was left of Michael's Charger and put it back together again. The engine works, but the body is going to need a whole lot of work before it's anything like roadworthy.

Much to Michael's surprise, and possibly chagrin, Jesse quit the CIA after he got back in. He found a job working private security. He preferred field work and while he doesn't agree with Sam that he pulls down big bucks, I am betting it pays better than driving a desk for the CIA.

Mostly what Michael does with Max is track down the people behind the organisation that burned Michael, this is important to the Agency, because it had tentacles inside the CIA itself, and possibly still does.

They go after a character called Kessler, he's holed in Venezuela and his guard detail is headed up by a Russian trained Cuban. Because Michael can't speak Spanish (I know he never learned because he hates Miami, but he spends a lot of time south of the border, so really should consider it) he has to pose as a Russian. They didn't want to subtitle everything, so the Russian Michael is pretending to be has to speak English. Unfortunately this means Russian accented English. I think I've spoken about Jeffrey Donovan and accents before. He does a number of extremely impressively authentic sounding US dialects, but once we move out of the continental United States we're in trouble. His British and Irish accents are dreadful and if anything his Russian one tops them. I kept expecting him to ask questions about moose and squirrel (a little Rocky and Bullwinkle reference there for those old enough to remember them).

He insisted on bringing Sam and Fi (or as the CIA called them 'the former SEAL and the girl') along for this one. I really didn't take to Fi this time. She whined her way through the entire episode. She whined about Michael working for the CIA and not spending a lot of time with her or letting her in on a lot of what he does. She whined about the travel arrangements with the CIA, the fact that they weren't calling the shots, the accommodation...Please Fiona, give it a rest! Admittedly Sam was rather put out when he was informed that he couldn't use Chuck Finley as his alias, but mostly he kept his mouth shut and got on with business.

Unfortunately Kessler killed himself before they could get him, so Michael really hadn't gained anything, but all indications are that Max had relocated to Miami and that was where they were running things from now on. Someone at the CIA must have decided that 'the former SEAL and the girl' were useful.  

A nice way to introduce Michael's new life and involve Sam and Fiona at the same time. Of course being based in Miami means that Maddie and Jesse will also get plenty of screen time.

Roll on Season 5!

Burn Notice, Season 4, Episode 1

Once upon a long time ago I was watching and blogging TV show Burn Notice, episode by episode. Then I finished Season 3 and went on a holiday to England. Things got kind of busy and now I'm back at the stage where I can watch a few episodes a week and share my thoughts.

Season 3 ended as the show tends to do on a cliffhanger. After saving Management's life and having Simon get away to continue creating havoc, Michael had a bag put over his head (he just loves it when that happens) and was taken to an undisclosed location, seated in a well appointed room, bag removed and he waited.

From the start Michael knows the room is a front, very nice, but still a front. The character that enters it matches the room. Expensively dressed and very urbane.

Vaughn Anderson (Robert Wisdom) is a contrast to the type of attack dogs that Management have set on Michael and even Agent Bly who tried threats before being sent off with a flea in his ear by Michael. I found it an interesting role for Wisdom, because he's a big scary looking guy and the last thing I remember him in was Supernatural, where he played an angel and not a good one at that.

Anderson doesn't threaten Michael or his family or his friends. He's reasonable and understanding. He even admits that the CIA don't play nice or by the rules, but he does make it clear that it is in Michael's best interests to play with them.

Because of the approach Michael decides to see what this is all about and before he knows it he and Vaughn are in some sort of rebel camp in a jungle in South America. I know it was South America, because there were squirrel monkeys there and they're native to that continent. Anderson's teeth come out when dealing with a gun runner played by Michael Ironside, and he shoots him callously in the leg. They can't get much more before the camp is targeted by a drone strike and Michael and Anderson are running for their lives.

Michael decides to throw his lot in with Anderson and is reunited with his old life and his family and friends. Maddie is happy to see him, but what the FBI told her when they took her into custody about him, bothers her and she's more concerned for him than ever before.

Next stop is Fiona. I was half expecting her to hit him, she generally does that when he returns from somewhere and she doesn't know if he's alive or dead. However this time she hugged and kissed him, then immediately went back to assembling the machine pistols she had laid out on the table.

So Michael is once again pulled back into his regular job of white knighting around Miami. In his absence Sam and Fiona agreed to help out a lawyer who was being heavier by a local biker group called The Breakers. They did it because it was what Michael would have done.

By the time the trio arrive at the lawyer's house three of The Breakers have started a fire on his lawn and are threatening dire consequences. They're not quite as tough when Michael Westen appears with two fully loaded machine pistols that he's not afraid to use.

I found The Breakers a fairly soft villain. They came across as somewhere in between the incompetent Hells Angels Clint Eastwood's truck driving, street fighting Philo Beddo and his orang-utan Clyde tangle with in Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can and the Sons of Anarchy in the AMC show of the same name. They're not as tough or as hard edged as SAMCRO, but they're a bit more competent than the Hells Angels in the Eastwood films.

They solved it all fairly simply with some help from Barry the Money Launderer (happy to see him back) in tying the lawyer into the club's financials, which means that if anything happens to him the FBI will investigate the club and their dealings. There was one quite amusing and well choreographed fight between Michael and Big Ed (the club president) and Sam and Big Ed's 'old lady'.

Anderson is well aware of Michael's 'extra curricular' activities and unlike Bly and Carla who hampered his other jobs, he didn't. At times it almost sounded like he approved, although he did warn Michael not to let it interfere with what he was doing for them.

He wound up accessing some sensitive information. This resulted in some poor innocent taking the fall for it. He later finds out that the innocent's name is Jesse Porter (Coby Bell) and Michael has just managed to 'burn' another spy.

I honestly don't remember seeing this episode before. It was a pretty standard season opener, no real indication if there is a 'big bad', although Vaughn has potential, and who called out the drone strike on the rebel camp when they knew two US agents were there? I knew Jesse came into the show this session, and his history, but I don't think I ever saw how Michael burned him.

It's good to be back.

Burn Notice, Season 1, Episode 3

Like the second episode this one too is largely an motw episode, although it does significantly advance Michael's efforts to find out who burned him. As with episode 2, episode 3 also attempts to highlight what a nice guy Michael can be, despite his past.

That was one thing that always struck me as a slightly weak point in the show. To pull off the moves he does in an effort to bring con artists and thugs and the like to justice, Michael and his team, have to outlay a significant amount of money with very little chance of return. Apparently Fiona does jobs on the side, but I don't think she spends her money on Michael's white knight for hire efforts. In episode 2 he took $300 for his efforts, he would have spent two to three times that amount. Initially he did ask for $500, but a filthy look from his mother bargained him down to $300. I assume Oleg (his landlord), who hires him in episode 3, pays him better, but it isn't covered.

Oleg has an employee; Carol, who is scared and being heavier by a local drug lord who she saw up to no good and is planning to testify. So, although it's not totally explained I think Oleg foots the bill. Michael does mutter to Carol at one stage words to that effect.

The meeting with the drug lord highlights something about Michael. He can look very menacing when he wants to, but he generally doesn't. He can however fight and some of the drug lord's underlings find this out to their regret.

We get to see Fiona improvising with Molotov cocktails and Michael turns his mother's garage into a safe house for Carol and her teenage daughter.

It's interaction with said daughter when she runs off to attend a dance at school with a boy she likes who prompts Michael to open up about how he had to leave Fiona in Dublin and never find out what might have been.

In fact the relationship between Michael and Fiona is a secondary theme in this episode. Fiona is officially Michael's ex-girlfriend and business associate as far as he is concerned, but as far as the lady herself is concerned, she wants to be back in a relationship, she even openly wonders if she should help him with his burn notice, because if he can crack that he'll be out of Miami and they'll be off again.

Another theme is Michael's abusive past with his father. Jeffrey Donovan has a small scar beneath one eye. Michael claims his father gave it to him. His father also used to force him to do things like fake seizures in public so he could steal things, it all gave Michael a strong sense of independence and made him a survivor. Where his father is concerned Maddie certainly seems to wear rose coloured glasses, or maybe she just needs to deny the truth to herself. Michael does wind up getting a pretty distinctive and high powered Charger out of it, though. He did need a vehicle, because stealing one all the time was going to become tedious.

There's something this show does that I find quite clever. It has a fairly large cast of characters every episode and, aside from the principals and recurring characters like Oleg and Barry the money launderer, they only appear once and are gone, but we the viewers still need to know who they are. So when they first enter the story a name flashes up on the screen, most of them say something like: Carol, the client or Oleg, the landlord, but occasionally get h a funny one along the lines of: Boris, wannabe Russian warlord, Quentin, small time con artist or Hector, local drug lord.

I believe this episode also marked the first appearance of blueberry yoghurt, which is a staple of Michael and Fiona's diet, although in this it's first appearance Sam is eating it, it's about the only time he ever did. It's also the first time we see Sam use the alias of Charles/Chuck Finley. It was pretty much his go to name. It was just the way he spoke and dressed when using it that changed.

The episode ends with Michael, having blackmailed an Egyptian diplomat/spy, receiving a copy of his notice and coming one step closer to finding out who issued it and why.

Burn Notice Season 1, Episode 1

I first started rewatching TV series that I enjoyed first time around early this year with Veronica Mars. I chose that show for a few reasons.

1) I really enjoyed it and always wanted to rewatch it.
2) I wanted to do a complete rewatch it before the film came out.
3) I like following Mark Oshiro's Mark Watches site and he did Veronica Mars so I wanted to go along with him on that.

After I finished Veronica Mars I did all 5 seasons of Eureka. I still wanted to keep doing it, and Burn Notice recently aired it's final episode (yeah, we're a bit behind down here), so I picked it.

Unlike Veronica Mars, which I began watching when it first screened here, and Eureka the first season of which I actually saw on DVD from an import copy a friend had before it was shown down here, I was not an early adopter with Burn Notice.

There was something about the way it was advertised that just didn't appeal to me, it more than likely also clashed with something else I was watching. It wasn't until it started being shown from the beginning on one of the cable networks that I tuned in to it.

Once I started watching, I kicked myself for not picking it up earlier.

The premise is simple, but effective and I can't remember having seen it done quite this way before.
The title of the show refers to the practice in the espionage industry of black listing or 'burning' personnel. This is generally done when someone has crossed a line or considered to have become unreliable. It leaves the 'burned' operative with no cash or influence, according to the show's voice over they have no work history, no money, no support network, they are in essence a 'non person'. That this happens to the show's main character Michael Westen, when he's about to offer a Nigerian based Russian warlord/terrorist $750,000 to stop blowing up American oil refineries in the region makes things rather difficult for him.

The opening of the show is in Southern Nigeria and it's rather reminiscent of the pre credit sequence in Casino Royale. Given that the film came out in 2006 and the show in 2007, it's possible that this was borrowed to an extent.

Once he's been burned Michael finds himself back at his town of origin, Miami, and his only friend is his ex girlfriend Fiona Glenanne. Both her accent and name indicate that she's Irish, although she and Michael were once a couple they aren't anymore, although he had her listed as his emergency contact and she's still willing to run point for him to allow him to slip his FBI tail.

While Michael has lost his job and his back up he does still have a very specific skill set and is not without allies in Miami, they consist of ex spy Lucy, who I don't think we ever saw after the first episode and former Navy SEAL Sam Axe, who is sponging off any 'sugar Mommy' he can find and drinking heavily, while informing on Michael to the FBI in order to keep his Navy pension

There is also his mother; Madeline, but at this stage of the series she's more of a hindrance than a help and does provide some comedy relief as well as some background for Michael about an abusive childhood at the hands of his now deceased father and a deadbeat younger brother.

Looking at the show seven seasons later you can see changes, not just physical, within the cast. Michael doesn't change a lot, although he was sleazier at the start and became more comfortable with the role as he continued in it. Fiona lost her accent after the first episode, although Gabrielle Anwar does a passable Irish accent, it did kind of grate on me, and possibly the people behind the show thought so too, she also developed a somewhat maternal instinct. If you want Fiona to go after someone then just hint that they are either wife beaters or child abusers. It wasn't mentioned that Fiona was an ex IRA operative, but her familiarity with explosives and guns coupled with her background and the accent kind of hinted at that anyway without spelling it out. Sam was far more bitter and on the very edge of alcoholism. Maddie herself was less sympathetic than she later became and far less savvy.

In the show's first episode Michael's various allies didn't interact much and were barely aware of each other. The original meeting between Sam and Fiona was quite amusing as they struck sparks off each other and snarked all the time. Fiona and Sam did actually know each other before, but that wasn't made clear in the opening episode. Fiona and Maddie know about each other as they have spoken on the phone, but they had never met in person.

A lot of the show is narrated by Michael as he explains the ins and outs of the spy business, talks about some old cases and things like how you can rig explosive devices from cheap and easily obtainable objects.

Michael's motivation is finding out who burned him so he can get out of Miami and back in the saddle. While I was watching it I became aware of a couple of things. He hates Miami, he doesn't even like the region, that's why he preferred working in places like Eastern Europe. It's probably got a lot to do with despite being intelligent enough to master a number of languages and living in a community that have Spanish as a second language, he never learned it.

In the meantime he has to make ends meet so he rents a warehouse apartment next to a nightclub owned by a former Georgian politician and has a drug dealer as his downstairs neighbour. It's cheap and the Georgian is well aware of Michael's reputation amongst the intelligence communities of Eastern Europe, he is a dangerous man. He also takes on PI jobs, things that other people won't do. n doing this he and his team become white knights of a sort, it's rather reminiscent of Angel Investigations in the Joss Whedon Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin off Angel.

I wondered why I liked Burn Notice as much as I did and it hit me part way through watching the opening episode. It's largely about capers, heists and cons and I love that sort of stuff. There are definite similarities in many ways between Michael and his team and what they do to one of my all time favourite books, Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora.