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My buddy Michael Westen is busy in therapy or something this week, so he gave me this job. I’ll do what I can, but you know, “little out of my league. I’m good with papers not with computers. I think this is a computer thing, right?”

The Recap

That broad Carla left him a message in a crossword puzzle to meet at some mall. He shows up and she gives him a job. She needs this security badge duped and only one guy in town can do it. Nice guy, even if he don’t want to do whatchamacallit, barter, for the job. Takes him a couple of days to do it right, which leaves Mikey time to help out some other chick.

Lady DEA agent in way deep is getting stalked by some big honcho with the Cartel. Me, I like to stay far away from those guys. Guns give me the creeps. But Mikey helps her out. They make it look like this guy’s trying to kill his boss, and then the mook runs to the DEA for protection. He gets the shock of his life when he finds out he’s been hittin’ on the lady DEA agent for years, though.

When Mikey’s not helping her out, he’s seein’ a head shrinker with his mom. But she don’t like that any more than he does. Even if the lady looks just like her.

But she does like the new coffeemaker Carla got her.

When I go pick up the badge – that Nefzi guy does real pretty work – I pay him a little extra ’cause Mikey wants to know what building it goes to. But Carla’s too quick. I run back in, but it’s too late. He’s dead.

Character Counts

Phew. That white track suit was hot. Didn’t breathe at all. Glad to be out of it. Tonight on Burn Notice, the heavy relationship lifting was all about Michael and Madeline. Of course there’s the new coffeemaker, conveniently left in Madeline’s house in the middle of the night by Carla or one of her goons. That’s a bit of a scare for Micheal.

More significantly, Madeline drags Michael to counseling. We get a great sight gag and reaction shot from Jeffrey Donovan as the camera reveals the counselor with hair of gold, just like Sharon Gless. It’s a funny moment, but it’s also a telling moment.

Madeline is seeking confirmation and help in getting her reticent son to open up, but when the tables are turned – really, just the therapist being fair and consistent – she quickly reconsiders the quality of care she’s getting. Michael’s mother is less interested in repairing rifts than regaining and retaining a mythical ideal of family. Her sons are still her little boys and she’s never been able to relate to them as adults, partly because their childhoods were cut short by circumstance.

When Michael comes to pick up his mother for their second session, she tells him she’d rather find someone else, “someone who asks better questions.” Michael reaches out, offering to spend time with Madeline. Standing side by side with arms crossed, postures fully guarded, Madeline gives Michael the answer to the question he’d asked in therapy: why she didn’t ask his nine-year-old self about a black eye he got stealing groceries for the family. She was proud. And thought Michael looked proud. She let him have his lie, that he’d bought the groceries, thinking that’s what he wanted, when in fact all the little boy wanted was his mother’s attention.

It’s a great scene, and the very small smile on Donovan’s face says all we need to know about how Michael Westen feels.

Chin Bits

Honestly, this wasn’t a great episode for Sam or Fiona. They’re pushed mostly to the background, only getting a couple of scenes each. Of course they shine even in support.

• “When I’m on a job, it turns her on. It’s all I can do to keep up. The things this woman does. I’m trying to get some too.”
• “Mike, look. I did a little pre-scouting but…I knew he was packing. I didn’t know he had a Mac-10. I thought it was like a regular gun.”
• “I’m starving anyway!” (Particularly funny as Sam’s scarfing chips as he says this.)
• “Well, Sammy will take whatever reward you want to give him, baby!”

Important Lessons in Spycraft

• “If an operative hands you a crossword puzzle, chances are you just received a coded message.”
• Nail polish remover dissolves ink. A nice way to counterfeit some checks by washing.
• A great way to meet a thief is to pretend to be in the same business.
• “People trust you when they have something on you…It’s all about making them feel secure.”
• “People don’t trust information they get for free. If you want to sell someone on a lie, you have to make them drag it out of you.”
• Experienced operatives play their roles harder under pressure.
• The best way to distract men is not with a beautiful woman. They want her to stay around. But they want to get rid of obnoxious guys. That’s of course why Sam is always handy to have around.
• “The trick to selling an assassination attempt is to use a lot more firepower. And an explosion or two.”
• “If you walk in on a corpse and can’t catch your breath…someone might be pumping nitrogen gas into the room to displace all the oxygen.”

Parting Thoughts

We got some interesting tidbits on the long arc tonight. Michael *believes* that Carla speaks Arabic with a Kurdish accent. It’s not much to go on, but is a start. Of course, that’s going to be moot if she faked the accent. Michael knows those who burned him want to keep him around for the long haul. He’s refused their blood money, but he’s going to keep doing their dirty work until he can get some answers. He is a de facto employee at this point, and worried about the safety of his friends and family. Carla’s made it clear she can get to anyone of them at any time.

What’s she going to leave Madeline next time? A toaster?

I was moved a lot by the way Michael and Madeline interacted tonight. One of the rare times they stopped talking past each other and connecting, the kitchen scene at the end of the evening packed a lot of punch. That’s two episodes running with really strong character work. Actually, it’s more than two if we count last season’s finale.

The show’s firing on all cylinders, giving us good action, good intrigue, clever banter, and heart. It’s a shame the Emmy committee couldn’t find a place for this gem of a show.

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.

Hi. I’m Terry Miller. Me mate, Michael Westen, is trapped in the back of a lorry, so I’ll be running you through this episode of Burn Notice.

The Recap

When Mike gets out of the lorry, he finds himself in the middle of a war zone. That bird Carla – the one who works for the wankers who burned him – gives him a job: make this poor sap Jimmy do what they want. Take him back to Miami and help him steal data from a low-rent Blackwater and the bloke can save his wife and kid. Plus Mike gets to meet Carla.

Mike gets to keep a copy of the data too. Figures it might help him suss out who burned him.

I come in the game when Mike needs someone on the inside. I meet the chief mercenary, Ryder Stahl. He says he’s just in security, but the chyron says different. Trust the chyron. This bastard doesn’t believe me, so he has me escorted out. I end up having to shoot at my mates Sam and Fiona to earn his trust. Fi proves her mettle by shooting to miss me. Close. Really close. I think she’s upset about something Mike’s done.

In the end, Ryder’s set up to the ATF, Jimmy’s death is faked, and Mike gets a copy of the data.

Character Counts

Burn Notice is fun and light-hearted, but it’s actually less about the bombs and bullets, mysteries and scams than it is about the characters. The relationships Michael has are what ground this show. A man who spent his whole life escaping ties and commitments turns out to have four very significant ones. His two best and only friends in the world, Fiona and Sam, and his mother and brother Nate keep Michael grounded. He might hate Miami, and might wish his mother would stop calling, but he loves these people and would do (almost) anything for them.

That “almost”, of course, is where the drama lies.

Michael’s mother Madeline (Sharon Gless) is still stressing over the men with guns. With the score silent, Michael tells her this is why he never came home, to protect her. It’s a small moment. A touching moment. A moment quickly broken when Madeline tells him he could have written. The score kicks back up, a bit jauntier than usual as they cut to Fi playing with explosives.

That was one of the quickest, most abrupt, and funniest tonal shifts I’ve ever seen and it was pulled off with aplomb. Of the many things creator Matt Nix does well, this is the best. It is also why the show will never get award-love: no one knows how to classify it. Sometimes it’s a comedy and sometimes a drama and rarely is there time to pause between the extremes.

On the drama front, the next-to-last scene between Fiona and Michael, when Fi finally realizes she and Michael can’t be together, is beautiful to watch. Gabrielle Anwar, usually tough as nails, finds some heartbreaking vulnerability here. What’s truly sad about the scene though is Jeffrey Donovan‘s narration.

When you work as a spy, it’s easy to think of people as assets, resources to accomplish a goal. Because you don’t have a personal relationship with an asset. You don’t care about an asset. You don’t miss the scent of an asset when she leaves the room.

Chin Bits

Ain’t nobody better than Bruce Campbell, and this is where we take a quick gander at some of his best bits of the night.

• Wearing one of Michael’s shirts and looking silly: “Mike, How do you fit in these little shirts? They’re like doll clothes.”
• “I can count on one hand the number of buddies I got who would stage an armed assault to save my butt. You got Mike, you got…”
• “I got lots of other friends with ovaries. I got you…”

Important Lessons in Spycraft

For some of us – particularly British? South African? businessmen with accents that meander from the streets of London to the north, down to Capetown and over to the antipodes when we miss a glottal stop or two – the most important part of this show is Michael’s lessons in spycraft. We didn’t learn how to make any explosives tonight, but we still had a few good lessons.

• Airbags make evasive manuevers tough. But you still drive backwards.
• “It takes a great marksman to miss, while making it look like they’re trying to hit you. Or markswoman as the case may be.”
• “A great way to get people talking about their security is to put them on the defensive.”
• “Counting your steps can be extremely useful if you need to reproduce a floor plan from memory.”
• “The typical floor is concrete slab over 20-gauge steel pan with steel trusses spaced 30 inches for support. When you cut through a floor the thing you have to worry about is wiring…If you don’t want a chunk of concrete crashing through to the floor below, you need to drill a hole and anchor the slab.”
• And always remember the most important tool: eye gear. You can also learn that lesson from Norm Abrams on The New Yankee Workshop.
• Motion detectors bounce sound waves and analyze changes. Move slowly and use a wool comforter. A thermal blanket will make you invisible to a heat sensor.
• Quadrangle buckshot is best for destroying the inside of a computer…
• Frag-12 is better for hardened security glass.

Parting Thoughts

I haven’t mentioned the beautiful and talented Tricia Helfer. There’s a few reasons for that, but primarily it was because there was a big-ass monsoon tonight. MikeO is up north and missed this one, but I didn’t. Neither did my satellite dish. On the 7pm showing I got everything but the tag at the end. But Pop Critic #1 filled me in (and I recorded the 10pm showing as well.) Beets. Huh. Interesting. I mean, coming from the Battlestar Galactica girl. That Bruce Campbell sure is a teddybear of a man, too.

That’s right. Matt Nix tossed in a massive, awesome, NBC-Universal pop culture joke and I love him and this show for doing it. I also quite liked the Gabrielle Anwar Scent of a Woman reference. Maybe it was unintentional, but I doubt it.

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.