Burn Notice: Good Soldier

Burn Notice concludes its summer run with last night’s episode, which finds Michael being manipulated by Fiona into helping someone her goody-goody-gag-me paramedic boyfriend Campbell patched up (ever notice how loser replacement boyfriends we’re supposed to root against on tv always have really square, nimrod names like Campbell or Roger or Bob or Todd?).  The client is Henry, who works for a private security firm and was approached by a group of bad guys led by Lesher, who wants info on security guards and procedures assigned to a Venezuelan oil family coming to the U.S.  Lesher wants to kidnap Isabella-the daughter-and needs an inside man.  Michael arranges to “join” the security team and be that man.

Fiona helps Michael create a profile (come on, it’s the least she can do after all these lame paramedic romance shenanigans) that will ensure that he will be the first security guard the bad guys approach, selling Michael as a burned-out and lonely boozer.  Basically, Michael’s cover is a less-tortured and less-fiery version of Denzel Washington’s Creasy from Man on Fire. Henry gives Michael’s file to Lesher.  That night, Michael sets himself up at a bar with Lesher and gets him to offer him the job.

Now as usual, these gigs Michael keeps taking get in the way of his finding out what the evil Carla is doing, and this time the timing couldn’t be worse for Michael.  Picking up where the end of last week’s show left off, Michael uses the access card he stole to enter the sniper’s building and discovers that his target is someone on a ferry, but he doesn’t know who that someone is.  Sam helps Michael steal some files from Carla’s hotel room, but the name of the target isn’t in them.  Michael must be feeling more and more like Jerry Fletcher, Mel Gibson’s character from Conspiracy Theory, who says, “I don’t know what I know, but I know that it’s big.”

As for the kidnapping in progress, Michael’s plan is virtually the same as last week: get hired by the bad guys and then sabotage the operation from within, getting them to call it off.  Michael tries to convince Lesher that Isabella’s security is unbeatable, and to do this, he recruits Sam and his brother Nate-who has decided to open a limo company (Michael expressed his doubts about this business venture earlier in the episode and ticked off Madeline)-to pose as extra security.

As is usually the case with Burn Notice, things never go as smoothly as Michael would like.  Things really heat up in the last ten minutes.  The cast and crew pull out all the stops, delivering great production values and several slam-bang action sequences right on top of each other.  The action sequences in this episode are as good as they have ever been on Burn Notice, and as far as I’m concerned, they could hold their own with the stunt work in many of the expensive Hollywood action pictures of recent years.  But because Burn Notice is so character-driven, the explosions (and in this case, also a righteous motorcycle chase) are even more exciting because we are personally invested in the people involved.

Multiple cliffhangers and the truly talented cast ensure that Burn Notice will be sorely missed until its return in the winter.

For another opinion on this episode, check out Potently Underwhelming by Paul Secrest.

Burn Notice returns this winter on USA

Photographs courtesy of USA