Burn Notice: Fearless Leader

To quote Mel Gibson in Payback—a movie made before Mel lost his mind—“nobody likes a monkey on their back.” But that’s exactly what Michael Westen has. Detective Paxson (Moon Bloodgood) has her arms and legs wrapped around his back and she’s holding on for dear life. She starts to show up at really inconvenient times, like when Fiona is counting on Michael to help her rustle $5000 out of a dirty criminal. Luckily she can take care of herself, but Paxson makes it clear that until he answers her questions, she is going to keep interfering with his business, even if it gets him killed. Not very nice if you ask me, especially since I still have no idea why a cop would be after an ex-government employee when he doesn’t have a criminal record and she doesn’t have anything on him. I’m not really a fan of this whole storyline so far, it just doesn’t seem credible.

But obviously, what Michael needs to do is find a way to get Paxson off his back. First he starts giving her a taste of her own medicine, showing up when she’s on a stakeout for another case. She begs him to leave and out of common decency, he does. But he also has Sam look into what this other case is she’s working on. Sam tells Mike that Paxson had a harassment complaint filed against her recently by a guy named Matheson, a sleazebag who likes to rip off drug dealers and take over their operations. Paxson was forced by a judge to back off Matheson because she couldn’t get anything on him but kept harassing him. I’m sensing a pattern here. The difference is, unlike Michael Westen, Matheson is a legitimate bad guy.

Paxson is still after Matheson but can’t do much, and he has nothing to worry about. So Michael decides that they should take down Matheson for her, in hopes that she will then realize he is a friend and will leave him alone. So now, whether she wants to be or not, Detective Paxson has become Michael’s newest client. Michael needs a way into Matheson’s organization, and he finds it in a guy named Tommy, who is a small time thug also trying to get in with Matheson. So Michael goes to the racetrack and makes friends with Tommy, pretending to be an even smaller time criminal. It helps that Sam gave Michael a fake prison tattoo.

Michael gets close to Tommy pretty fast and introduces Sam and Fiona as his crew. Fiona sports a hilarious New Jersey accent, and Tommy quickly takes them on a job knocking off a dry cleaner. And because Michael Westen is Michael Westen, he quickly shows off his mad skills and proves himself to be a valuable asset. (Of course Michael finds a way to give the dry cleaner back all of his money). He then takes the committed step of intentionally smacking himself in the face with a steel door so he can have a real shiner to show Tommy. He tells Tommy that he owes some guys up north some money, and if he doesn’t get it, he’s going to have to leave town. Tommy reluctantly agrees to take them all to meet Matheson and see if they can put together a larger score.

Matheson is initially suspicious, thinking Michael and Sam might be cops, but he eventually agrees to let them come in on taking down a meth lab and stealing all the dough and product. That’s because Matheson intends to let them get killed on the job along with the meth dealers so he can make more money. Tommy knows this and tries to convince Michael and everyone not to take the job. Michael then realizes that Tommy really isn’t a bad guy and takes a gamble by telling him the truth about who he is. They then all agree to use the meth lab heist to turn the tables on Matheson and take him down. It’s a good character twist.

From there, we get to see the classic Burn Notice staples of Michael & Co. using hardware supplies and improvised gadgets and a little old-school gun play to outfox all the bad dudes and save the day. Sam has another problem though: he’s being audited by the IRS. Definitely not good. He hears the auditor’s name is Stacey, so he puts on his best shirt and plans to turn on the charm. Then he finds out that Stacey is a man. Yikes. But it turns out that Stacey is someone from Sam’s past with a hidden agenda, although it turns out to be rather innocuous.

With Matheson down, Michael has gotten Paxson off his back, at least for the moment. Now his concerns turn back to finding a way to get his old job back, though Fiona protests again and starts to cry when Michael says that he absolutely will not be deterred from getting back in. Michael seems to have a pretty good life now, I would definitely take it. So you have to wonder why he really wants his old job back, there’s some hidden reason why he must need the job so badly to give himself a sense of purpose. It’s deeply ingrained in his character, he’s a patriot, but who could love their job that much? Well he does, and I’m interested to find out why that is.

Overall this is an average episode, good not great, but hopefully it means that Paxson is out of the picture for the time being and some more interesting (and hopefully more credible) storylines can be introduced now.

Season 3, Episode 4: Fearless Leader (originally aired June 25, 2009)

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Thursdays at 10/9c on USA

Photographs courtesy of Glenn Watson, NBC Universal, and USA