Burn Notice, Season 7, Episode 11

The 3^rd last ever episode of Burn Notice is structured oddly. There are two storylines happening. One concerns Michael and his mission with James and also features Sam and Jesse, and the other takes place in Miami and is mostly Fiona with Maddy. However both are part of the same story and take place concurrently.

Michael has gained enough information from Sonya by sleeping with her that Strong and his team, which now seems to include Sam and Jesse, despite them having no affiliation whatsoever with the CIA, can finally grab James and hopefully Sonya.

Strong either can’t, or won’t, protect Maddy and Charlie and Michael knows James has them watched and uses them as insurance. He asks Fiona to do it for him, because there’s no telling what may happen when he betrays James. Fiona sets herself up in a car outside the house, armed with a sniper rifle.

The CIA ambush James, along with Michael and Sonya, but he slips it and escapes with some of his team by carjacking a couple of Mexican locals. The CIA use the phone Michael took from the person he carjacked, to track him. Then James and Sonya split from Michael and agree to rendezvous down the track.

Fiona goes in, but doesn’t enter the house, just booby-traps it, but tells Maddy by pretending to be a neighbour calling her. Maddy plays it well, but all the while they’re hoping nothing will happen. Charlie is still in the house and vulnerable. Before Fiona can set off her explosive and go in guns blazing, the guards in the house receive a call telling them to back off. Fiona quickly hides behind a tree so that she isn’t spotted.

At the boat house Michael goes to, the CIA extraction team go into action and after Michael has disabled one of James’ people, tell him that he can come out. Only one member of the team is still alive, he turns around and he’s Simon.

Acting under Simon and Strong’s instruction, Michael calls James and Sonya and gets them to meet him. Michael and Simon talk. Simon was let out to do CIA dirty work almost from the moment Michael delivered him to them. He sees his situation and Michael’s as similar. They’re both weapons that the CIA or someone else takes out when they’re needed and use. The difference is that Michael’s friends and family give them leverage against him. With Simon they use the fact that he’s not locked up, and that he actually enjoys killing people.

Michael actually realizes that Simon is right. The two of them fight and Michael kills him. It was one of the best choreographed fights in the show thus far. I know Jeffrey Donovan has martial arts experience. I don’t think Garrett Dillahunt does, but he still looks to have moves, and he does often play that sort of role.

Instead of letting the CIA take James, Michael helps he and Sonya get away. At his safe house, a palatial mansion, James wants answers and blood.

As an aside I do often wonder where James gets his money, or if he’s being bankrolled by someone. He has all sorts of expensive equipment and toys. He razed a $10,000,000 mansion to the ground in Miami to avoid detection, and yes real estate in Mexico isn’t as expensive as in Miami, but it still isn’t thrown away, then he also pays the mercenaries he hires and they don’t come cheap.

James wants to kill Sonya, because she was the only one who knew his movements. Maybe she broke under torture and rolled over on him. Just when the trigger is inches from being pulled, Michael confesses. He was the rat, he’s been the rat all along.

He then makes an impassioned speech about how he believed in the CIA and by using someone like Simon they betrayed him and all that he stood for, so if James wants to now kill him, go ahead. James gives the gun to Sonya, she thinks about pulling the trigger and then lowers it. So who’s killing who now?

Sam and Jesse are incensed with Strong for using Simon.

It’s all up in the air for the big finale, which will more than likely run over two episodes.

Burn Notice, Season 6, Episodes 10 & 11

It's kind of fortuitous that I ran out of time to review Episode 10 before watching Episode 11, because they really are one episode screened over two.

Having the name of Tyler Gray really doesn't help Michael that much. The man is a ghost who doesn't really work for any one employer, he may not have even been using that name when he went after Anson. Fortunately Tom Card has access to all sorts of footage and technology and he's got a picture of Tyler Gray, he also knows where he can be found. Panama. Card gives that intel to Michael and tells him that it's his operation if he wants to take Gray out. Michael insists that because of their connection to the case he be allowed to take Sam, Jesse and Fiona with him. Card agrees, but also adds a CIA agent by the name of Brady Pressman be added to it. He had a vested interest in the Anson Fullerton case. Michael protests, but Card overrides him and says that Pressman is already in Panama City and will be waiting for them there.

It's a running gag in the show that Michael doesn't like working south of the border, he never even learned how to speak Spanish, despite growing up in, and now operating out of Miami. Fiona seems to have an even bigger issue with it, though. She was very whiny in a Season 5 episode when they did a job there and she's doing it again almost as soon as wheels are down.

Pressman is initially treated with suspicion as an outsider by the group. Jesse, himself an outsider to an extent, cuts him a little more slack, and is friendlier. Fiona is particularly hostile towards him, although Michael after hearing about his background and his reasons for joining the army and then the CIA warms very much to him.

Maddie meets with Card and manages to get some time alone in a room with Michael's file and the details of the Fullerton case. Maddie doesn't seem to buy Card's nice guy act, but nor should she, because his smiles don't ever reach his eyes.

Before the team in Panama can move on Gray they're ambushed and wind up stranded in a strange city with no support, largely useless weapons and Jesse is doing a John McClane and walking around without shoes, he even gets glass in his feet.

Despite the setbacks they do corner Gray and Michael gets up close and personal with him. Gray tells Michael that he was working for Card when he shot Anson, and if he doesn't believe him to ring Card and he correctly predicts that Card will lie about where Gray is and tell Michael to stay put.

Sure enough Card gives Michael false details about where they've tracked Gray and to stay where he is. Michael, already suspicious of Card, leaves the phone there and gets out of the building, just in time to see it bombed by a US fighter jet. They're now on the run from their own forces.

Pressman feels more betrayed than anyone and sacrifices himself to allow Michael, Fiona, Sam, Jesse and even Gray to live and go after Card.

So they're stuck in Panama City with no back up and no real way to get back home, plus they have a hostile prisoner in Gray with them.

Fiona manages to get a local cargo pilot interested in her and they concoct a plan to get on his plane and smuggle themselves on board and force him to fly to Miami.

Back home, Maddie receives a phone call from Michael on a neighbour's cell phone. Michael uses a payphone in Panama and identifies himself to the neighbour as Maddie's nephew. He tells Maddie about Card's betrayal and asks her to contact a hacker friend of Sam's who can fix the FAA records to allow them to fly into Miami.

The hacker; Dixon, who we have seen before, has only just gotten out of house arrest and is rather reluctant to do another illegal favour for Sam, that is until Maddie gives him an ultimatum. If he doesn't do this and Michael somehow manages to get home he'll kill Dixon. If Michael doesn't get home, then she'll kill him. Maddie is very believable, and she does some wonderful distracting of the security guard at the FAA building to allow Dixon to work his magic.

The problem for Michael and Co south of the border is that the pilot is the cousin of a drug kingpin and flies cocaine across the border. They all get successfully on the plane, then Gray throws himself off, taking Michael with him, and the pilot can't abort his takeoff.

So Michael and Gray are prisoner to a vicious drug lord who wants to know where his cocaine is and will torture his captives to find out, and the rest of the gang are stranded somewhere in the nearby vicinity with a plane full of cocaine.

Sam and Jesse barter for a cell phone with a local kid and call the drug lord. They'll give him the GPS location of the plane once he leaves their friends safe and sound at a local hotel.

Gray, who still believes what he read in Michael's file, turns on Michael and agrees to help their captor find his plane and kill the rest of the thieves. Michael tells Gray he knows how Card operates and that he can understand why he's fallen under his spell, but the man will turn on him. Then under torture he refuses to give up his friends, the drug lord starts kicking Michael to death and Gray demands to be let loose so that he can operate effectively. Once loose he kills a a guard, takes his gun and shoots the drug lord. When Michael refused to roll over on the rest of the gang, Gray knew that he wasn't the same heartless bastard he'd read about in the file, and while he doesn't say it, he does have his doubts about Card.

Jesse and Sam get Michael and Gray out and they all fly back to Miami. Michael then has to work out how to break the news to his mother that instead of killing Nate's murderer, he allied with him. Everyone is together on operations Get Tom Card, though.

Burn Notice, Season 4, Episode 11

This one starts off as two separate stories which do have significant impact on each other and promise to resonate throughout the rest of the season.

Fiona and Sam take a job tracking down and gouging money out of a cold hearted British lothario for a widow he conned out of her life savings. In some ways that's rather reminiscent of the show's early days when it trod the seamy side of Miami, but this con artist runs with the rich crowd and so never really gets down and dirty.

While Fiona and Sam are doing that, and Sam tries to stop Fiona from simply shooting their mark because he's sleazy and callous, Jesse and Michael play the dangerous game of baiting the wealthy businessman and merchant of death John Barrett (played with just the right level of menace by Robert Patrick) by waving Simon's coded Bible in his face. They know he won't come and get it himself...at least to begin with, so they have to put those who do come on ice to force him out, and face him on home turf.

Both Jesse and Michael get drawn peripherally into Sam and Fiona's job, and when Jesse and Fiona are tailing their mark and get spotted, at least their car does - Fiona's bright blue Hyundai really does stand out - she has to find a way not to get shot. She puts two and two together and comes up with the answer of 'make out with Jesse'. It puts the suspicion away from them, but only serves to confuse both Fiona and Jesse and cement the growing love triangle.

The target later lets slip to Sam that the people who were tailing him weren't picked up on because when security checked it was only a couple snogging (this is later explained to Sam as making out. The occasional use of British slang is a running gag, in that Michael and Sam don't understand it. Michael also gets to use his dreadful British accent again, but this time it's okay because it is deliberately bad). Hearing that Jesse and Fiona were making out, even if it wasn't for real, bothers Sam. Now someone else knows that Jesse could prove to be a rather large obstacle between the future happiness of Michael and Fiona.

They do resolve the issue with the Brit by repeatedly drugging him and making him paranoid, they also make him think he killed his old girlfriend by blowing up her boat after one his drug fuelled blackouts. Overall the story was a little dissatisfying. It was largely caused by the actress who played Emily (Fiona and Sam's client), she came across as very unconvincing, and I was wishing they hired a better actress.

The kicker in this episode comes at the end, when Fiona walks into Michael's warehouse and has a gun pointed in her face by Jesse. His old friend Marv found some other footage of the day Jesse was burned from a different vantage point, that not many other people knew about and it shows Michael exiting the building just before the hammer came down on Jesse. He doesn't shoot Fiona, but he runs and now he's angry and he's going to target Michael. It all just hit the fan in a big way.