Burn Notice: Seek and Destroy

This week on Burn Notice, goofy arms dealer Seymour is back by popular demand.  Michael and Fiona go pump him for information about the bomber who tried to kill Michael.  Michael explains that even though Seymour once tried to hit him with a baseball bat and Michael once shot gunpowder into Seymour’s face, in the intelligence business, you can’t hold grudges.  Seymour didn’t initially agree with Michael on this issue, but Fiona can be very persuasive.  Seymour agrees to help.

While Michael and Fiona are busy pretending that nothing happened between them last week, Michael explains to her that he needs money to give Seymour to flash around for bomber intel.  Michael can’t get a job or take on a new client because then Carla & Co. would get their knickers in a twist.  Fiona comes to the rescue, saying she just turned down a job working for an art dealer who needs a security leak plugged.  Sam joins in the fun and cooks up a cover ID for Michael so that he can go to work for the art dealer.

The art dealer, Chandler, has noticed unusual activity on his computers and found a bug in his office, so naturally he’s a little upset.  Michael assures him he’ll figure out who is responsible and why.  Meanwhile, Seymour comes through faster than expected and uncovers that the bomber does demolition work for Miami and also moonlights for the Russian mob.  He also has a girlfriend that he spends considerable time with.  Gee, even bombers can find love!

Sam helps Michael on the art dealer/corporate espionage job and loves it, comparing it to going on the kiddie rides at a carnival.  Michael suspects there is another device planted and he’s right.  It’s some kind of gizmo that transmits all the passwords typed into a keyboard.  Michael sabotages the device, figuring that the culprit will have to come back to repair it.  Michael’s plan works perfectly, and he catches the gallery receptionist, Melanie, in the act.  Michael is about to take her in when she begs him not to because Chandler will kill her.  Michael thinks murder is a little extreme for an art dealer, but Melanie explains that Chandler killed her father, a painter named J.D. Blake, when he threatened to leave Chandler and sell his painting for millions to someone else.  Michael confirms her story and decides to help her instead.  This is a fun twist, Michael turning on his own client when he turns out to be a bad guy.

The rest of the episode involves Michael pretending to track down the spy…which is now in fact Michael himself…so he can figure out where Chandler is hiding the painting he killed Melanie’s father for.  It’s rather like the plot of No Way Out (1987), that great Roger Donaldson thriller with Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman.  This effort takes up the majority of the proceedings, but Michael does finally get to the bomber and obtains the account number of where the money came from to pay the bomber to kill Michael.  If he tracks that down, he’ll be one step closer to figuring out who is after him.  It’s a typically fun, very well put together episode, and hopefully next week we’ll get to explore more of Michael’s personal story.

Season 2, Episode 12: Seek and Destroy (originally aired February 5, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out White Collar Mayhem by Paul Secrest.

For more on Burn Notice, click here.

Thursdays at 10/9c on USA

Photographs courtesy of USA