Burn Notice: Friends Like These

Michael begins his tentative working relationship with agent to the spies, Strickler, the man who promises he can get Michael back into the spy game. Fiona, however, thinks the guy is a creep, a sleaze, a slime, a lowlife, and a weasel. In other words, she doesn’t trust him and she doesn’t think Michael should either. She tells Michael to walk away and asks him at what cost is he willing to get back into the agency? Is he willing to compromise his ideals and his integrity? Michael tells her that it’s not like he’s working for Strickler as an assassin. Fiona says that when you work for someone like Strickler, it starts to change you, little by little, until you can hardly remember who you were before. I always thought that Fiona did dirtier jobs and worked with more questionable characters than Michael did, so if all this is coming out of her mouth, I’d be inclined to listen. It seems that Michael isn’t, though.

Strickler takes Michael to a weapons safe house for an American intelligence agency, telling Michael that he knows exactly when the joint isn’t going to be guarded. Michael becomes concerned, but Strickler tells him that no, he doesn’t want Michael to steal the weapons, because someone else already is. He wants Michael to figure out who is behind it and who they are selling to. Michael is charged with obtaining the license plate of the cleaner, the guy in a heist responsible for getting rid of the evidence and covering up tracks. But unfortunately, the safe house explodes. I hate when that happens!

Michael gets Sam involved, asking him to run the guy’s plates. Sam tracks it down to a motel that is known for not checking IDs. How helpful. The only other business around is a bingo parlor, and Sam doesn’t think that Michael could fit in with that crowd, as good as an undercover worker as he is. So Madeline gets to go on her first spy mission! Fiona starts to chastise Michael for pulling his mother into a potentially dangerous operation, but he tells her he’s just adapting to the parameters of the mission. This answer doesn’t satisfy her. It’s becoming more and more clear that Michael’s commitment to becoming a spy again no matter what may tear the two of them apart permanently.

While all this is going on, something else comes up, as it always seems to do for Michael Westen. Michael’s money launderer associate, Barry, calls and tells Michael that he’s calling in all of the favors Michael owes him. Someone stole Barry’s ledger, which lists all of his clients and the accounts where he protects their money. Whoever stole the ledger is trying to blackmail Barry for $5 million, threatening to sell the ledger if Barry doesn’t pay. Barry’s clients will kill him if this happens, so Barry really really really needs Michael to recover the ledger really really really fast.

So Michael has to toggle back and forth between trying to save Barry’s ass and trying to get this thing done for Strickler…and trying not to piss Fiona off to the point where she blows a hole in him with an automatic shotgun. With the Barry thing, there’s an untrustworthy lady friend and a foreign guy involved. Isn’t there always? I was also rather surprised to see Callie Thorne, Sheila from Rescue Me, show up with a significant, twisting role.

The usual entertaining Burn Notice staples are all here. We get to see Michael explain to us how to break into a burn safe, which is a safe tied into a fireplace all set to incinerate itself if someone tries to bust it open. We get a good car chase and fun undercover work involving the whole gang. But the real highlight of the episode is the character work. It’s really interesting to see Fiona question Michael and go toe-to-toe with him about his moral code. The writers are really doing a good job keeping the tension (and love) between them. The episode ends with Fiona telling Michael she won’t help him do any missions with Strickler, which leaves him on his own and lamenting the loss of someone he could always depend on in the field. When you find someone who always has your back, Michael tells us, you want to work them every time. But when you have to work alone, you find a way to adapt. Only one more episode of the summer left, and I’m sure it promises to really shake things up. Until next week…

Season 3, Episode 8: Friends Like These (Originally aired July 30, 2009)

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Thursdays at 10/9c on USA

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Glenn Watson