Burn Notice, Season 1, Episode 7

As Michael says in the voice over that most episodes begin with, characters like Jason Bly don't like anyone knowing their real name, it ticks them off even more when you broadcast it publicly and give details of the department of the secret service (in Bly's case the CSS, a division of the NSA) out as you do it.

Once Michael's had his fun, Bly turns the tables and starts talking about Sam and Fiona (he knew about her, although I think it's recent knowledge) and how Fiona is driving a stolen car with illegal weapons in the trunk and the cops are on their way.

A high speed pursuit that wouldn't have looked out of place in any big blockbuster action film follows.

Bly then turns up at Michael's house and lays down the law to him. He will take a job they find for him and become another anonymous untermensch or they will have his brother arrested, let some of Fiona's enemies (from her IRA days and her current gun running) know where she is and cause trouble for Sam too. In fact he's already in dire straits with Audrey Landers (cannot remember her character name) for having CIA come to her house and threaten her because of his past.

Michael doesn't do or say anything then and there, but you just know he's not going to take this lying down.

He takes a job to help a local Cuban business owner who is being shaken down along with his fellow business owners by a criminal gang operating in the neighbourhood.

We've seen Michael the smooth spy and Michael the redneck, now we get to see Michael Westen psychopath. He would be a scary individual. At one point he blocks off a car full of gang members, drills a hole through their engine block, then drills holes in the roof of the car and pours petrol all over it and threatens to send the whole thing up in flames. Shocking how easy it was and makes you wonder exactly far someone who simply didn't give a damn about consequences could go.

This gets him in with the gang, who interestingly enough was run by a woman. I kept having flashbacks to Salma Hayek's drug lord/lady from Oliver Stone's Savages, although that came out in 2012.

When he's given orders to kill the man who hired him as well as his family he knows things have gone far enough and this lady has to be taken down. He forms an alliance with her second in command, who wants out, and they bomb her house with a device that Fiona and Michael put together. As the bomb is planted and exploded, killing the woman in the blast, Michael's voice over talks about doing the right thing for the wrong reason or vice versa, which leaves the viewers to decide whether killing someone to stop them from doing more bad things is justifiable or not.

While all this was happening, Michael was also using Barry the money launderer (Barry returned, he was one of those peripheral characters that just kept popping up now and then) to set Bly up.

So when Bly gives him the employment contract for a job as a security guard at a local bank Michael gives him a dossier about his new company which Michael set up, his car upgrade, also arranged by Michael and some pictures of he and Michael looking very friendly. Back off and get me my file or I will end you is the message.

Michael and Fiona fight. I mean really fight. Judo, kick boxing, karate, some krav maga, I felt Michael was pulling his punches, but they wound up blowing off some steam and ended up in bed together. They're in bed when Bly arrives with Michael's classified file.

Michael has got some of what he wants, but Bly's not the type to go away that meekly.

Burn Notice, Season 1, Episode 6

Six episodes in the one thing Burn Notice lacked was a Big Bad. The motw episodes were just that, the mystery of the week. Michael and Co tracked the bad guys (they had all been male to this point) down and served them up justice, then we moved on. There were over arching stories that held it all together (who burned Michael and why, the relationship between Michael and Fiona, his relationship with his family, initially his mother, then younger brother), but it needed something else.

I get the term Big Bad from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Unlike many shows that came before they didn't have one villain or even one villainous organisation, it changed from season to season. It's become a term something uses when trying to identify or explain a villain in a TV show since.

Episode 6 gives the viewers that Big Bad. After his FBI tail let higher powers know that Michael had somehow managed to obtain a copy of his burn notice they were removed from the case and someone else was assigned to it. That someone else is a sleazy creature who doesn't mind breaking a few eggs to make an omelette.

First he goes after Madeleine. Michael arrives before anything bad happens, but that's just a welcome. Then Michael's house is searched and bugged, his car is taken for the same treatment. Now whoever this is, he won't give Michael a name, knows about Maddie and Sam, but not Fiona. He's also underestimated Michael, despite comments to the contrary.

It's child's play for Michael to find and disable the bugs in his apartment. The lack of a car is annoying, though. Fiona tails Michael's tormentor and then Michael turns the tables. He puts a high powered magnet in the desk lamp in the guy's hotel room, which wipes the hard drive on his computer the next time he powers it on, and pisses him off no end. He's now angry and sloppy, this lets Michael needle him the next time their paths cross and Fiona takes his wallet. The id reads Jason Bly.

Ladies and gentlemen we have ourselves a Big Bad!

Bly was played to the hilt by Alex Carter. He rather reminds me of a younger, meaner version of Joe Pantoliano's Guido the Killer Pimp from Risky Business. Dealing with Bly is going to be fun. He's the kind of guy you really want to see get his teeth kicked in.

While trying to piss off and neutralise Bly, Michael still had to pay for the damage the government heavy did to his mother's house. To that end he mentioned looking up Lucy from episode 1 for a job, but was instead referred by Sam to an old Navy SEAL buddy.

The guy lived out in the Everglades and repossessed boats for a living. He'd recently had issues with a Jamaican who employed some heavy muscle.

Michael posed as a redneck yokel by the name of Homer and took the boat, but knew there was a reason the Jamaican wanted it back and it was not just because it was a nice ride. Suspicions were further tweaked when returning the boat to whoever paid Sam's friend he got shot at.

The old Navy buddy moved in with Madeleine for safety and wound up sharing her bed. Michael's reaction to that was wonderful.

Sam and Michael found $10,000,000 under the floor of the boat. It's never stated, but probably is the Jamaican's drug money. The other guys are crooked cops who also want the money. Eventually Michael takes some for himself and his friends and some for Sam's friend and stacks the rest up on a pier. He sets it on fire and leaves the Jamaicans and the crooked cops to shoot it out.

Setting all that money on fire is rather impressive. Channel 10 down here used to use it as a promo for the show, I think it was what first piqued my interest.

Burn Notice, Season 1, Episode 5

In some ways this one wrong footed me at the start.

Michael in his apartment studying his burn notice isn't surprising, that he gets a call from Nate, asking him to help is.

I hadn't expected them to go back to the character of Nate quite so soon. I knew he'd pop in and out, but at this stage they had me wondering if they were trying to add him as a sidekick.

He had once again represented himself as something he wasn't and when things get nasty calls on his big brother for help.

This time he'd offered to help someone working as the security manager at a private airport being used by a family of Israeli gun runners. Before even seeing them Michael knows from the description of the patriarch that he's ex Mossad, not because he's encountered him before, but just from the gun he favours and the manner in which he acts.

This was the first time I remember seeing Fiona slip into her vacuous lady of means persona and taking a tour out to the airport and using her looks and the character she's playing to get a good look around, trying to work out what's going on. A quick look is all she needs to determine that the family are running guns and that the youngest son is the weak link.

He's the one Michael goes to work on and this time they don't even need to get all that rough before they have the family running scared and getting out of Miami. There was a nice C4 explosion, though.

A sort of secondary story centred around the car that Michael's father supposedly left him. Nate contends that as he had to put u with 'years of Dad's crap' after Michael left then the car should be his. Michael tells Nate that his father left it to him and there had to be a reason for that. Personally I think he's overthinking that. Maddie TOLD him that his father wanted him to have it, there's nothing in writing, it's just the sort of thing she'd do to try and force Michael to acknowledge that he has more than unhidden contempt for his father.

While working on the car Fiona and Michael do find a bug Sam put there. Fiona makes a very catty comment about bugging the young gun runner's car to Sam. It puts Sam's character and how serious he is about his FBI contacts and giving them information on Michael into question. Sam explains that he is under heavy heat and he was obvious about the bug because he knew Michael would find it. Michael then arranges for Sam to find the copy of his burn notice which he passes onto the feds, with Michael's knowledge and blessing. It gets kicked upstairs and gets those agents off the case, which means out of Sam and Michael's hair, but what if they get replaced by something worse?

Oh yes, Audrey Landers appeared briefly at the end of the episode as Sam's potential new 'lady'. I remembered Audrey Landers from the late 70's and early 80's when she was on a lot of shows as a 'pretty blonde'. Given that the first season of Burn Notice was made in 2007 she's held her looks well and definitely fits what Sam is looking for when he identifies a 'target;.

Almost a holding pattern of an episode in a way. They're definitely cycling through the threats in Miami; drugs, illegal prostitution, gun running.

Burn Notice, Season 1, Episode 4

There's really about 3 stories going on in this episode.

Just after having a run in with a Czech assassin (story 1) Michael receives a call from his mother for assistance with her garbage disposal, at her house he meets up with his younger brother Nate (story 2). Nate has a job lined up for him, trying to track down the teenage daughter of an old high school classmate of Michael's (story 3).

The Czech assassin storyline tied into Michael's burning and he does get some information that he pissed off some very bad people, that's why he was burned and why an internationally renowned assassin is now trying to kill him. Having got what he wanted he delivers the assassin to his FBI tail via Sam.

Viewers had heard about Nate and they knew that Michael didn't have a lot of regard for him, but not exactly why. Nate's more like his father than Michael is. He doesn't seem to have uncontrollable temper or the alcoholic tendencies, but he is unreliable, he does let down those who trust and love him and he's a compulsive gambler. He basically sets a job up for Michael, and takes money for it without consulting his brother and he does it to try and pay off some people he owes money. At the urging of his mother Michael agrees to take the job and help his brother out, but he's clearly not happy about it. I had the feeling this was not the last we'd see of Nate and I was right.

The actual motw was what happened to the daughter of Michael's former school friend, although Michael asserts that he wasn't actually a friend. Michael worked for his father. It also transpires that Michael left Miami even before graduation and joined the army. Shades of John Cusack's assassin Martin Blank in Grosse Pointe Blank there.

The daughter has been 'procured' by brothers, who publicly are names in the fashion industry, but make most of their money by acting as pimps, and have a sideline in transporting innocent girls to Dubai and auctioning them off to the highest bidder. I was reminded of Taken, although the brothers were smarter and the girl's father wasn't Liam Neeson.

Using his resources and Nate, Michael gets the girl back by kidnapping one of the brothers and doing an exchange. I wondered if the brothers were going to cause a problem later on or whether they'd learned not to tangle with Michael Westen.

The first 3 episodes dealt largely in the seamier side of Miami, this one concentrating on the fashion industry was all South Beach hotels and resorts. It was quite bright and easy on the eye.

Mostly it existed to introduce Nate and show us Michael's relationship with him and further establish how much his family really does mean to him and what he'll do when they're threatened.

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 2

After having who Michael Westen was and why he came to be where he currently is in the pilot episode, this one opens with a voice over briefly covering that. This would be the start of the show over the next 7 seasons. They only changed it after season 4 when a new character became a regular, and even then the little out cuts introducing Fiona, Sam and Maddie remained the same, so we got some of Fiona's Irish accent right throughout.

There was a little bit about the season long arc of Michael trying to find out who burned him, but this was largely a mystery of the week (motw) show.

Michael wanted information from his mother about the guys who had questioned her as to his whereabouts and bugged her house, she refused to give it to him until he agreed to help a neighbour of hers who had been ripped off.

I knew from the opening credits that Mark Pellegrino was going to be the bad guy. Honestly, has he ever played a good guy? The basic scheme that he (he played a con artist called Quentin) and his two cohorts ran was to get little old ladies like Madeline's neighbour to hand over their bank details and then steal from them. That he found it necessary to rough up this lady ensured that Fiona was going to be on board if he required back up.

Sam moved in briefly with Michael as he seemed to be between 'sugar Mommies' and this was when Fiona and Sam renewed acquaintances. Despite keeping up the fiction that they actually disliked each other intensely for some time, they got along fine and worked well together. A personal highlight was when they posed as Detective Cagney and Detective Lacey to heavy Quentin's young accomplices. The in joke with the names was that Sharon Gless (Madeline Westen) played Christine Cagney (her accomplice Mary Beth Lacey was played by Tyne Daly) in the TV cop drama Cagney & Lacey.

Gabrielle Anwar also showed some nice comic timing when she played Michael's doting girlfriend the first time she met Maddie face to face. I did enjoy her clearing the table as Michael's still desperately grabbing food from his plate.

One thing I did notice that differed from later episodes in this one was that as a group they were nowhere near as slick and well practised as they later became. They made more than a few mistakes here and that was to take down someone who was strictly small time.

Another thing that altered was Fiona's accent. She had dropped the Irish accent, they explained it away as her actual accent would make her stick out too much in Miami, so at least they did acknowledge it and that they probably made a bit of a mistake in the pilot.

This may crop up again later (I can't remember), but in the pilot they highlighted some downsides to where Michael chooses to live. He regularly has to make his way through crowds of nightclubbers when trying to get to the gate in the fence that leads to his warehouse and he also gets the lights, music and noise filtering through to late into the night. That wasn't present this time, although I am sure it will crop up later as the show were relatively good about most continuity things.

Despite them taking on various aliases they rarely use elaborate disguises. Mostly it's done through clothes, glasses, maybe a little facial hair or hairstyle. Jeffrey Donovan does a few voices that he cycles through depending on what persona he wants to project.

This one ended up almost HEA. Quentin went to jail, his young accomplices escaped on his boat, Maddie's neighbour got her life savings back and Michael got the information he wanted. I found the pilot stronger, but this was solid and a good example of what to expect, it kept me watching.

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.