Burn Notice, Season 4, Episode 17

Unfortunately because Michael needs that list and now Brennen now has it, he has to deal with the slime bag.

Brennen's prepared to play, because he knows how dangerous Michael is (he still won't have forgotten the threat Michael made against his daughter, and that is referenced briefly in this episode), but unless Michael and his crew do what Brennen wants he will bring Vaughn and his organisation down on him. That also goes if Brennen dies, so Michael can't just kill him, much as he wants to. I thought that may be a hollow threat, because Vaughn gave me the impression he was backing off, but then again he's also rather slimy and duplicitous as well as ruthless, so maybe you can't trust anything he says.

To do what Brennen wants, Michael is going to have to work with someone. This is insurance, Brennen knows how slippery Michael can be (I do occasionally wonder if Matt Nix based Michael Westen on Harry Harrison's master thief Slippery Jim 'The Stainless Steel Rat' Di Griz), and wants someone to keep an eye on him and his friends and make sure that they don't get up to any tricks. He says that the new partner is a big fan of Michael. That makes the viewer wonder exactly who it is, and as Jesse and Michael turn around to see, in walks Larry.

When Brennen got the list Michael described him to Jesse as their worst nightmare. He was wrong. Michael's amoral former partner Larry in partnership with Brennen is their worst nightmare...squared.

Jesse is sidelined for a lot of this, he's going through problems after losing Marv. It appears during a conversation with Maddie, that Marv was more than just a handler, he was a form of mentor/father figure to Jesse, and he was one of the few genuinely good people that Jesse encountered in his line of work, so for him to die the way he did seems terribly unfair and wrong to Jesse.

Sam makes his displeasure with Larry known at Michael's apartment and threatens to joke him with a piece of rebar. Larry laughs it off and says that Sam is a wet rag, keeping Michael from being himself. To Larry, Michael should be the killing machine he was when they worked together. That is the real Michael Westen as far as Larry is concerned, and all the others in his life: Sam, Fiona, Maddie, even Jesse, they're just holding the real Michael Westen back.

It is fun to see Larry and Michael working together and you see how good Larry could be as an agent, if he weren't a complete and total psychopath.

They get the job done and turn the tables on Brennen, then Larry throws the monkey wrench into the plan by killing Brennen. He doesn't care about Vaughn and Co, he thinks that he and Michael can fight them off and ride into the sunset. Larry may die gun blazing, but he doesn't really care, he has nothing else in his life. No family, no friends, he doesn't call anywhere home. He's an empty shell of a person, brilliantly played by Tim Matheson, too. In the end they leave him to take the rap and explain Brennen's body to the police, but Team Westen will be busy dealing with the aftermath and trying to survive. Should be a cracker of a season finale.

Burn Notice, Season 3, Episode 13

For the third episode in a row the show opens with Gilroy meeting up with Michael. This time it's in a spa at a hotel. Michael doesn't like spas, he finds the water too hot. The embassy job is off. Gilroy wants Michael to get him a bunch of flight plans. Michael maintains that this is more risky than stealing something from a foreign embassy. Considering that he did it by asking Sam to hit up an old SEAL buddy working for the Coast Guard for a favour, that seemed to be a rather inaccurate argument.

I did kind of wonder about Gilroy at this point, though. How good is he really? Michael didn't see him activate the firebomb in the hotel, nor does he really know who was shooting at him at the stadium. He knows it was a sniper at the hotel when Fiona got shot at. He's only going on the assumption that Gilroy actually pulled the earlier jobs with the firebombing assassination of the British scientist and the shooting at the soccer stadium because of what happened to him. He didn't want to steal into the embassy himself and he can't get the flight plans on his own. He may be forced to back down if Michael wants to take him on face to face.

The real story is what happens when Michael gets back to his loft and finds a dead body down stairs and Larry the formerly dead spy upstairs. The dead guy works for a Columbian drug cartel and the six tear drops on his tattoo indicate that he has six kills to his name (Larry thinks that makes him an amateur).

Now why does a Columbian drug cartel killer want Michael Westen dead? That would be because Larry ripped them off to the tune of 2 million dollars and used Michael's name as his alias. Larry is currently using the alias of dead shoe salesman Larry Garber (I did wonder if the surname was a sneaky Alias reference. Actor Victor Garber played super spy Jack Bristow in that show). So to get the cartel off his back Michael has to help Larry get away with a cool 2 million somehow, he'll also need to protect Larry's accomplice, the inept stage magician Jack Fleetwood aka Jablonski.

I liked seeing Carlos Gomez as the angry Columbian cartel character Carlos. It was a change of pace from the other role I remember him in; mild mannered Latino coroner Carlos Sanchez in The Glades.

Most of it is standard Michael Westen. He saves Jack, manages to give Carlos back his cartel's money and leaves Larry trying to explain a very sticky situation to the police.

I think they returned Larry to point out that the more Michael gets involved with Gilroy (and I still don't really know why that is) the more like Larry he becomes. There was a bust up this time with Sam over the flight plans and it nearly broke up the friendship.

In other developments Nate came back from Las Vegas with a wife. He met and married card dealer Ruth within a month. I give the marriage about that long. Maddie cannot stand her, but Nate wants her to move out to Vegas. On the one hand that would get her out of Michael's hair and away from the danger that he brings with him. On the other hand it takes away a place to hide, a mother who he is only now starting to actually know and a good friend for his associates. Maddie refuses to go and Nate and Ruth go back to Vegas without her. As Maddie says her place is there in Miami with Michael, and Sam and Fiona. She didn't actually say the word family, but it's pretty clear that as far as Maddie is concerned Sam and Fiona are very bit as much her family as Michael and Nate are.

Now we just have to wonder why Gilroy wants information about a flight from the Chilean embassy in Miami to Poland. Michael doesn't believe the bio weapon cargo story he was told for a minute.

Burn Notice, Season 2, Episode 8

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.