What’s that? You didn’t think what? What? You didn’t think Roth would ever get arrested for selling cocaine? What then chucklehead? He’s gonna flip! – Michael Westen

Oh, Mike and I go way back. ’91 or ’92, the Balkans. He’s a good kid. And he knows the score, too. I’ve taken a look at his dossier, and I’m glad he finally figured out how to get paid for what he’s good at. Still a little soft, though.

I’ll tell you what happened tonight, sure. But if anyone finds out – and I do mean anyone – that I talked to you and I’m going to kill everybody. And I mean *everybody*.

The Recap

Things start out simple enough. Mike and Sam – I never liked that guy – are running down their list of Bill Johnsons. At Bill Johnson #10, they find what they’re looking for, a bottle of laundry bluing in the garbage blotting out documents.

Later that evening, I corner Mike outside that rathole he calls a home. The look on his face when he realized it was really me was priceless. He was a little reluctant to trust his good buddy, but who can blame him? Everyone thinks I’ve been dead for almost twenty years!

Plus, Mike’s still angry the government burned him.

Like I said, I’ve seen the Michael Westen dossier. A few unauthorized kills, a few state secrets sold to the highest bidder, and they were done with him. The government might not have a use for him anymore, but I sure do. I’ve got a job in Miami and figure I can let Mike do it and keep my hands clean.

He’s just got to kill a woman.

This cancer nurse, Jeannie Anderson, she’s the “dead-ee”. Married a rich patient. He got better, then he got sick again. She needs to die before he does. That’s the job, nice and simple. And I offered Mike $20K to do it. Smart kid, knew I low-balled him, so he countered with $30K.

I remind Michael what I tell all my clients: if a cop comes anywhere near the job, I kill *everybody*.

The next morning, Michael meets Fiona with her boyfriend Campbell, the paramedic. He takes her away to help him out with the victim. Mike needs to meet the target and warn her that…well, that *I’ve* been hired to kill her!

It doesn’t take long for Jeannie to figure out it’s the kid, Drew, who wants her dead. He’s an entitled punk, long on ambition, short on brains. He’s whiny Jeannie’s been added to the will and hired me to take care of her. But he triple-booked the job!

Michael finds out and convinces me to cancel the contract. So, pretending to be me, Michael gets Drew to call off the other hits. Drew can’t get through to one of them.

A dump truck is on its way to run Jeannie and Fiona off the road, so Michael steals a pickup and…I wish I’d been there to see it. To hear about it is pretty impressive, though. He gets in front of the truck and just slams on his brakes. The front tires of the dump truck ride up onto the pickup bed and both vehicles come to a stop. It was something else.

Drew’s on the run, the hits are off, and Michael figures it’s all good. But I think I want to get paid. So I pay a visit to Drew. The hit’s back on. I’m gonna poison her!

But damn it, if Michael isn’t a step ahead of me. He’s got Fiona inside with Jeannie and she spots the fork I poisoned. And her boyfriend, Sam, and a buddy of his are outside in Campbell’s ambulance. Jeannie fakes it and gets carted off. I think I’ve finished the job and meet Drew to get paid where Michael’s on a rooftop with a rifle.

But Drew’s nervous. I get the money, kill the kid, and get out of town scot-free.

I heard through the grapevine after I shuffled off to Buffalo that Michael and Sam tracked down Carla’s sniper, too. Looks like Mike’s been running logistics on this guy’s op the whole time and didn’t know it. Figures he can make something of that.

Character Counts

Madeline has found herself a new counselor, and she thinks this one might be better – might take her side – than the last one. She and Michael have their first joint session and little positive occurs. The counselor gives them an assigment to write down five things for which they’re grateful about the other person. When Michael asks if this is homework, the counselor replies, without a trace of irony, that he prefers “to call it lifework. In fact, that’s the name of the book I’m writing.”

As Michael needs a way to get Bill Johnson’s landlady out of the house in order to break in, and Madeline provides an exterminator’s uniform, Michael makes sure to put “outfitted me with a cover ID” at position one on his list. We don’t hear positions two through four, but the fifth thing for which Michael is grateful is that Madeline gave him good vision. Comes in handy.

Madeline’s understandably upset, but then we learn that it wasn’t Michael’s father who signed the release letting him join the army at 17, but Madeline who forged the signature. She knew he had too much of his father in him and would end up in jail or worse on the outside, so she gave him focus. Michael’s truly grateful for that.

There were remarkably few repercussions of the Campbell-Michael meeting tonight. I know a lot of other things were going on at the same time, but didn’t expect Michael to swallow his feelings quite that forcefully. His only real reaction was to keep Fiona occupied babysitting Jeannie.

Chin Bits

The interaction between Sam and Larry led to some great tense humor.

• “Buddy of mine pulled it. In exchange for some Sam time. Hehe! Not all my buddies are guys”
• “You too, Larry. Very youthful. Still drinking the blood of children?”
• “That’s our Larry.”
• “You know, she needs to freshen up a little bit. Try the Jumble for a change.”
• “Yeah, he’s alright I guess. He’s no Campbell, though.”
• “You a soil scientist too?” “Oh yeah. Big time.”

Important Lessons in Spycraft

• Laundry bluing is a synthetic dye that blots out secrets and works like a poor man’s dye pack.
• When a bad job comes along, you can either pass and watch the op go down or take the job and try to tank it.
• An amateur ambushes from a place of weakness.
• A can of paint across a windshield might blind a driver and a 50mm cannon might take out engine. But neither guarantees the vehicle still won’t swerve into traffic. You’ve got to actually get the front wheels off the road.
• Faking a death is hard in order to get the appropriate number of emergency vehicles to show up. What you’ve got to do is actually call 911, but only after you’ve called your own people.
• Black bag missions are broken into parts.

Final Thoughts

Tim Matheson did a great job pulling double duty tonight, as both very special psychotic guest star and director. In particular, I thought he made some very bold shot choices when it came to himself, using skewed angles and extreme closeups to make his Larry appear even more deranged. It’s unusual for a director shooting himself to do anything too unusual on screen – for vanity’s sake, because it can be hard to properly set up the shots, and because it can sometimes seem self-serving – and it was refreshing to me to see Matheson make the right choices to make this a great episode.

Next week’s mid-season finale is shaping up to be really exciting, with a lot of revelations. If only we then didn’t have to wait until January for new episodes. Alas.

So, I believe somewhere at sometime I wagered something (hopefully not involving eating a hat) about Fiona and her boyfriend. I was *sure* it would turn out to be Victor. I was surely wrong. If anyone can recall what I bet and with whom, I’ll do my best to welsh on that bet with grace and style!

What did everyone else think?

R.A. Porter is an aspiring television writer who currently toils away in the software mines. He can be found at his personal blog and stalked on Twitter.