Burn Notice, Season 3, Episode 11

We get to meet Gilroy this episode (the British assassin, who Michael refers to as a psychopath), he appears to have taken over from Strickler as the Big Bad.

He apparently worked for Strickler and Michael's killing of the man hasn't done him a lot of favours. Michael claims that he killed Strickler because he didn't want a middle man. Gilroy reminded me of a rogue James Bond actually, although he does one thing Bond doesn't, he uses other people. To underline how much he knows and how Michael can never know exactly what he's going to do or who to, he has a hidden sniper take a shot at Fiona, who has eyes on the meeting between Michael and Gilroy.

I always saw this sort of thing as a weakness. Unless you have allies like Fiona and Sam, who do what they do for Michael out of friendship/love/loyalty, then you're vulnerable. Gilroy doesn't strike me as the type who has friends, so finding who he's using could give you significant leverage against him and even the fight up to a one on one.

Sam's moving out of Maddie's place to move in with Mrs Reynolds and her daughter Miss Reynolds. Apparently either Sam is a phenomenal lover or Miss Reynolds is very forgiving, because everyone thought his bridges were burned there after Michael sent the Buick to it's death from a rooftop car park.

Maddie tells Sam that someone has arrived for him, an old friend. Sam walks in, sees the guy and slugs him in the face. His name is Mack and they have a history. Sam was close mouthed about what it was, saying it was personal, but even if I hadn't seen the episode before I still would have guessed it had to do with a woman. In this case it was Sam's wife, who also later left Mack. It seemed a little at odds with what Sam told Fiona about his wife, who he never divorced, so I'm wondering if she married Mack and thus committed bigamy, or maybe this is a different wife? I'm not sure if he's been married more than once, although if he has that also seems against odds with the story he told Fiona when Veronica wanted to get married to him.

Those things aside Mack is working in conjunction with the police locating kids, mostly they're the subject of custody disputes and he's now after a nasty piece of work, a Latino predator called Rincon. He can't get close to the guy and he's hoping Sam and his associates can. Exactly how he tracked down Sam is also never explained, it's rather like how people just know where Michael is living when it's convenient for the plot.

To get to Rincon, who has hidden in the barrio, they need the cooperation of a local gang banger, Omar. Omar is a gangster, but he tries to do what he can for the neighbourhood. He's not willing to help 'gringos' like Mack, Sam and Fiona, so Michael dons a bright red suit and adopts his best Clint Eastwood Man Without a Name impersonation to intimidate them into cooperating. They made a joke out of every time he snapped his fingers something exploded.

This brought him into conflict with Vargas (cult hero Danny Trejo playing a latino gangster, colour me surprised there!). Rincon and Vargas were working together and he was protecting Rincon. That was until Michael Westen and Co teamed up with Omar. They took Rincon into custody and chased Vargas out, thus reclaiming their neighbourhood.

Progress was made on the Gilroy front too, with Gilroy observing Michael at work with Omar and deciding that he is the type of person he wants to work with.

Burn Notice, Season 2, Episode 11

Michael's still trying to track down the mad bomber at Carla's behest and closing in, I did wonder why she couldn't use her own resources to find him and whether Michael should just let whoever it was go after her. It would remove a thorn from his side. Hey, he'd never find out who burned him and get revenge, but after what Carla has put him through, is it really worth it? There was a running gag that every time Carla wants to speak to him she has a bag put over his head and takes him to wherever she is. It was established in Season 1 that Michael dislikes this sort of treatment. It happened when he was dealing with the Syrian secret police in an episode.

Sam, meanwhile prevails upon Michael to help a buddy of his out with something and it will also get them really good seats to a Miami Dolphins (NFL) game. From the name Michael Irvin in the credits I worked out that Michael was definitely taking the job. Michael Irvin was a former NFL player with the Dallas Cowboys, although he's originally from Florida and played for the University of Miami in his college days, so a nice bit of hometown casting there. He plays a coach for the Dolphins and a young star player is in danger from a gang banger who he took with a baseball bat.

When Fiona meets the boy and his sister and finds out that the gang banger threatened the teenage sister, her killer instinct kicks in, and she insists that they take the job.

What they do is not dissimilar to how Michael broke into the Cuban gang that was terrorising the neighbourhood in Season 1 and also how he set up a drug dealer who was threatening a witness to a crime in Season 1. The three of them; Michael, Sam and Fiona, suit up and start heavying the gang, whose main business is stealing cars for a local crime kingpin. They also set the gang up so that their boss is going to take the leader out for good.

I did learn how to make an ordinary car almost bulletproof using phone books, special glass and foam in the tires. I don't know if any of Michael's urban guerrilla warfare tips work, but they do sound plausible.

Maddie, who is becoming a bit of a halfway house for Michael's clients, lets the kids stay at her place and the boy eats her out of house and home, but she kind of likes having a teenager around the place again. We get another peek into how messed up Michael's childhood was. She shows her guests a Christmas picture, and Michael is sporting a decent bruise on his face. The girl remarks how she wishes she'd had a family like that. Maddie says that they were never a family like that, she points out the bruise on Michael's face and says his father gave him that because he stepped in to stop Nate from being pushed around. The only way the picture got taken was Maddie threatened to put the entire Christmas dinner in the garbage disposal.

Now that Campbell is out of the picture, Fiona puts operation 'get Michael' back into place. They reminisce about how they met, and I discovered that Jeffrey Donovan's Irish accent is only slightly better than his inner London one. How he remained undercover as an Irishman called Michael McBride and managed to convince local Fiona Glenanne of this I will never understand. There was a development in their relationship as while doing some investigation into the bomber Fiona walked into a booby trapped house, which caught on fire while she was still in it. Michael was frantic in trying to contact her and while she had gotten out and even Michael had to know that until she did, he  definitely didn't want to lose her. They wound up in bed together again. They've done this before and Michael does care for her, but just because they sleep together he doesn't see that as meaning they're in a relationship. In fact last time he broke it off just after sleeping together. In part he doesn't want to be tied down and there's another part of him that says a relationship between them can never work and would be dangerous for Fiona while he is still what he is.