Burn Notice, Season 7, Episode 6

 Now that Michael's mission has moved back to Miami, Michael has in many ways returned to his old life. Even down to moving back into the loft and tucking Sonya away there. When they were on the run last season I thought that they torched the loft, I even saw them set it on fire. However it didn't actually get burned to the ground, it just looks a little bit charred from the outside. Michael tells Fiona that a few of her snow globes survived if she wants them, when she comes around to face him down and let him know that she's been forced into working with him. She also sees Sonya there and sparks fly. The two ladies don't come to blows, but they clearly don't like each other, and the reason is Michael Westen. I actually find it a little churlish of Fiona to feel this way toward Sonya. She's repeatedly rejected Michael and made it quite clear that she wants as little to do with him as possible, she's flaunted her relationship with Carlos in front of him, so why shouldn't he take up with Sonya? Not that he has at this point. Fiona's behaviour smacks of I don't want you, but I don't want anyone else to have you. It's not only disrespectful towards Michael and Sonya, it's also an insult to Carlos.

The plan is to go after the hackers that outed Sonya. Exactly how this helps the mission I don't really understand, although I think it may prove to Sonya that Michael is really on her side and get him to take him into the organisation that she's part of.

To get into the hackers group they need the assistance of someone else and that someone else is Barry. I had been wondering about Barry. However Barry is not all that disposed to helping Michael, because his association with the former spy had him locked up for 4 months, during which time he lost his girlfriend, his house and played havoc with his client list. The hackers also have a certain reputation for taking down anyone who crosses them and they've stolen some of his clients. Sam and Jesse can't do much about his house or his business, but they can at least help him track down his girlfriend. Because Barry really does like Michael and his friends he agrees to let that stand as payment, besides if Michael performs his usual bang up job on the hackers that will remove them from the board.

So, we had two stories running again. One is the take down of the hackers, which mainly utilises Michael and Fiona masquerading as a pair of hackers, with Sonya running outside interference for them. The other was Sam and Jesse helping Barry with his relationship issues.

The second of those was a little sad. They managed to find the girlfriend because of a bright orange Lamborghini that turned up at a dodgy car dealership (an orange Lamborghini, that is so Barry). Unfortunately she'd moved on and had another boyfriend. She liked Barry, but his lifestyle bothered her and she wasn't heartbroken to have an out.

Michael and Fiona establish themselves as the real deal with help from the rest of the group outside. The hackers were an interesting bunch. They ran the operation like a corporation, with the hackers sitting in an office, working away and being closely monitored by one of the guys behind it. Even going out for a smoke break seemed to be a major issue, admittedly Michael was doing it so that he could get on the roof, abseil down the side of the building and drill through the wall.

The whole operation was overseen by a menacing moustached character wearing a sharp suit. This was Frakes, played by Charles Mesure. The accent was rather like an English one mixed with Australan. This makes sense as Mesure was born in England, but grew up in Australia. I remember him from V, and he does play a heavy quite well, which is what he does here. Fiona and Michael throw his underling under the bus, and then the whole operation gets broken up by the authorities. As a bonus Barry gets the information that they stole from him back.

Back in the loft Michael convinces Sonya that she and her operation is all he has left. He's convincing, because in many ways he is telling the truth. He has lost Fiona, but he does still have his mother and the friendship of Sam and Jesse, which he makes her believe is not the case. I found it interesting that he said his relationship with Maddy was irreparably damaged due to what happened to Nate, because while she doesn't give a lot of outward signs that she still blames him for the death, he may think that.

Michael and Sonya sleep together and he knows he's in. Again this was interesting and an idea of how far Michael has turned. He's come to the point of having to do something in the course of his work on a few occasions, such as kill an innocent or sleep with someone other than Fiona, and he's always found a way out at the 11th hour, but this time he went through with it, and I don't think he cares for Sonya overall, she's just a means to an end. Michael could be on a very slippery slope here.

Burn Notice, Season 5, Episode 10

Once again the gang split up to do their own separate things in Episode 10.

Michael's under pressure from Pearce to provide his data on Max's killer and has some time to kill while Sam and Fiona go to contact an old 'friend' of Sam's who can possibly hack into the badly damaged computer that apparently belonged to whoever tried to frame Michael for Max's death.

The fly in the ointment is that Jesse wanted Sam to help him out on one of his security jobs, and as Sam is the only guy the hacker knows, it's not like someone else can fill in for him.

Michael offers to take Sam's place for Jesse and that works out nicely because Jesse also wants to use Maddie, but in a hands off no combat role, you just know from the moment he says that, it won't work out that way.

Michael pretends to be a low life hacker who is happy to go along with the guys Jesse is watching, and at that point it's been described as white collar crime, which even Maddie is happy about as these guys carry Blackberries, not guns. That all changes once they get into the building, which is located at an airport and the briefcases are opened to show Mach 10's and the little extra surprise of a hand grenade. From that point on it becomes a hostage situation, and pretty much turns into a Burn Notice version of Die Hard. Michael invents a ex special forces maintenance man by the name of Jack Marsden. How the criminals ever fell for that I do not know. Even the name sounds like the hero of an action film. Michael makes Marsden out to be a combination of Rambo and John McClane, and becomes the spanner in the works. He picks off the bad guys and then stages Marsden's 'death' which allows him to get the hostages out, one of whom is Maddie, and send the remaining criminals into the hands of the waiting police.

While all this is happening and Jesse is helping out on the sidelines, Fiona and Sam are contacting the hacker. Sam may have overstated their friendship. The last time Sam saw the guy he tasered him and put him in the boot of his car. Relationships are not helped by Fiona meeting him and then tasering him again to get him to help, they also put him in Fiona's car boot. Fiona points out that she's ridden in it before, so it's not so bad, but she's a small person.

The other problem with the hacker is that he's under house arrest and wearing an anklet, which they have to remove and then lead the police on a merry chase so that they can get access to the computer lab and try to glean something off the hard drive of the ruined computer. That's Fiona's job, and honestly her car is a great ad for Hyundai, I wonder if they paid for the advertising?

Michael gives Pearce his documentation, which I assume he's doctored sufficiently and in the mean time he has a flash drive from the computer data which may lead him to the real killer.

I have to admit I'm getting a bit disenchanted with this season. While they get to Max's killer inch by torturous inch, they tread water for most of the episodes. Not only was the main storyline of this one ripped off from Die Hard, it closely followed a previous Burn Notice, which served to give it all a feeling of 'seen this before'. I didn't notice it so much watching it week after week, but shotgunning them this way it becomes glaringly obvious that for whatever reason the people behind the show were running out of creative gas.

Burn Notice, Season 5, Episode 4

Burn Notice goes hi tech as Michael matches wits with a ruthless young hacker.

Because of the end of this episode I am now convinced that I never saw the first 4 episodes of Season 5, and the rest of it makes so much more sense.

Remember how I wondered where Barry was in the last review? Well, someone must have heard me, because this is a Barry centric episode. While Michael and Max are trying to recover some vitally important information off a table, and Michael is annoying the life out of Max by continually harping on continuing to go after who burned him, despite all evidence saying that chapter of his life is done and dusted, Barry comes to Fiona and Sam for assistance.

Apparently everyone's favourite money launderer has a brother (as people often say when hearing this: 'there's two of them?), Paul (played by John Ross Bowie, better known as the speech impaired Barry Kripke from The Big Bang Theory, he doesn't have the speech impediment here and he's slightly less nerdy, but I can't see him as anyone other than Kripke), who has gotten himself into financial difficulty with a computer hacker.

I didn't know who the hacker would be, but the moment I saw the name Big Show in the credits, I knew who a heavy would be. I'd actually thought Michael may encounter the 7' 400+ pound wrestler, but it was Sam and Jesse, it was rather comical to see him throwing the two men (neither of whom are really what you'd classify as small) as if they were rag dolls. He turns out to be scared of the hacker, who is a relatively petite 20 something called Eva (Aviva Farber's portrayal actually put me in mind of an older, tech savvy version of Loretta McCready from Justified).

Michael then has to pull double duty to help the gang out with Eva. Max showed what a genuinely stand up guy he is by pulling a few strings to get them government level access to help Michael out on what is an unsanctioned operation. Max seems to be slightly in awe of Michael by now, largely because he makes hard things about their job look so easy and he has time to do other things outside of it.

Eva turns out to be one of his most dangerous opponents. Possibly due to her sheer ruthlessness, she had her giant accomplice scared to death of what she'd do if he double crossed her. It winds up taking everything Michael and the gang have to foil her and pull Barry's brother out of his situation.

Michael's PTSD seems to have conveniently vanished, which makes me wonder why he had it in the first place. As he's wrapping up his mission with Max he finds his partner dying of a gunshot wound on the floor. It becomes apparent that it's a set up and Michael is meant to take the rap for it. Why? Maybe he wasn't being paranoid when he insisted that the people behind his burning hadn't gone away and that they were still inside the Agency.

The new improved Charger makes it's reappearance as Fiona roars to Michael's rescue, using it as his getaway vehicle. 

The gloves are off and Michael is back to being a marked man.