Burn Notice: Lesser Evil

How can it already be the second season finale of Burn Notice? The episodes truly fly by with this breezy show, and you’re always left wanting more. This exceptionally-crafted and wonderfully explosive finale is no different, as it satisfactorily wraps up the extended Carla conspiracy only to open up new doors.

As the episode begins, Michael is still trying to hide from Carla the fact that he found the person she was looking for-the assassin who has been trying to take down her team and their operations-and it is Victor (Michael Shanks), who has worked for Carla for years and has tried to kill Michael four times. One might think that Michael would be only too eager to give up Victor to Carla, especially since Carla has promised Michael he could get his old life back if he did this job for her. But Michael knows there is something more than a little fishy about Carla, and he’s also earned the right to be pissed off since she has threatened his family a myriad of times.

Michael has been holding Victor in an empty warehouse since he nabbed him at the end of the last episode, with Sam and Fiona taking shifts doing guard duty. Before he decides to do anything, Michael wants to know why Victor tried to take down Carla and her team. Michael convinces Victor that he has nothing to lose by trusting him and everything to gain. So Victor reluctantly tells Michael his story. He was a CIA agent working an operation in Mexico that went bad and his family was killed. He was burned the same day, but then got a call from Carla and was more eager to take her offer than Michael was, because he saw it as a chance to get revenge. Imagine his horror when he discovered that Carla had actually killed his family as the impetus for Victor’s recruitment. Victor, a damaged man, has been trying to take her down ever since.

Of course, Michael isn’t going to blindly believe everything Victor says. After all, the guy has done nothing but lie and try to kill him before. Victor tells Michael to check out his booby-trapped boat for proof that he is telling the truth. Michael does (with Fiona in tow) and finds pictures of Victor’s dead family-proof that he is telling the truth. Sam also tries to get more information about Carla out of Victor, but all Victor knows is that she does black ops, off the book, and her operatives never have enough information to put the full picture together. She always speaks of her “management” but no one has any idea who or what those people are.

Back at the warehouse, Michael asks Sam to get his mother Madeline out of the city so Carla can’t go after her. But before Sam can convince Madeline to leave with him and before Michael can get out of the warehouse with Victor, Carla’s people track them all down and declare war. What follows is some of the best, most balls-to-the-wall action in the show’s history, and that’s saying something. The story intercuts between Michael and Victor trying to escape and Sam and Madeline fending off bad guys at her home kind of like the finale of Sam Peckinpah’s unequaled Straw Dogs.

We get great scenes with Madeline and Fiona, then we’re off to the conclusion with Carla, which involves Michael and Victor stuck on a boat rigged with C-4 while Carla threatens to detonate. It all looks rather hopeless but Sam and Fiona arrive to kick some ass. Victor’s storyline gets wrapped up with a large dose of pathos and tremendous work from Jeffrey Donovan and Michael Shanks. And the very end of the show opens up a new direction and a new set of enemies for Michael Westen to contend with. This is a perfect show, and it will be a long three months to wait until the third season begins in June.

Season 2, Episode 16: Lesser Evil (originally aired March 5, 2009)

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Burn Notice returns to USA in June

Photographs courtesy of Glenn Watson, NBC Universal, and USA