Burn Notice: White Collar Mayhem

Any longtime fan of serialized entertainment will tell you that there are few things harder to do well than consummating sexual tension between major characters.  Sometimes it goes smoothly, like the flirtation that grew into a heartwarming engagement for Jim & Pam on The Office.  Other times you get Mulder & Scully stumbling through clandestine affairs and miracle pregnancies, taking The X-Files down with them in the process. After doin’ the deed in the course of last week’s adventures, it seemed for a moment like Mike & Fiona were on the verge of pleasing the majority of fans by settling into happy couplehood.  As if such a notion is even a little bit possible for spies.  Instead, we’re given an amusingly intricate dance of denial, cavalier attitudes, and crisscrossed emotions that should keep fans on a rollercoaster of love and leave the relationship’s impact on the series at large as something to judge further down the road.

In the realm of all matters outside Mike & Fi’s pants, this episode worked around the amusingly realistic and blunt premise that Mike is running out of money to finance his search for whoever bombed him and must take a straightforward corporate security gig for an art dealer (Joel Gretsch, star of bygone fave The 4400) if he ever wants to relieve his and Carla’s security woes.  But things just aren’t allowed to be as easy as they appear, thus Mike discovers that a security leak is the work of an innocent secretary whose father was a pop artist the dealer killed.  Meanwhile, Sam & Fi work on seducing, drugging, and manipulating the dealer’s thug hitman (Lost‘s M.C. Gainey, continuing a potential trend of hiring dead members of the Others to play Burn baddies.  William Mapother, wait by the phone.) After a few sly machinations, secretary recovers some of daddy’s long lost work, hitman gets back at his boss in lethal fashion, and Mike earns a tidy payday.  The highlight of this particular story is by far when Mike refers to the threat posed by blacklisted spies working as mercenaries.  Gotta love being 4^th wall self-referential.

This week also marked the return of erratic arms dealer Seymour, a dangerous goofball who means well and just wants to be cool like Mike & Fi.  His assistance proves invaluable in both locating and neutralizing the bomber, the latter achieved by wicked cool water balloon-ish shotgun shells that disarm bombs and cause extreme discomfort to bad guys with equal ease.  The freelancing pyro has little trouble rolling on those who hired him, thus putting Mike one breadcrumb closer to big answers, as usual.

Mike & Fi stuff: great.

Client stuff: painfully average.

Tracking down the bomber with an assist from Seymour: Pretty darn fun.

Finishing my final Burn Notice recap so I can focus on other Poptimal assignments and certain neglected aspects of my life in general: Priceless.  Thanks for reading!

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

For another take on this episode, check out Cameron Cubbison’s review here.

For more on Burn Notice, click here.

Thursdays at 10/9c on USA

Photographs courtesy of USA