Burn Notice: Noble Causes

This week, Michael Westen helps an enemy from his past. Well actually, he wasn’t an enemy so much as a nuisance. Michael assumed that after he shot his former drug dealer neighbor Sugar and made him move out that he would never see him again. But he shows up at Michael’s loft. He comes in peace and wants Michael to help his cousin Doug. Michael isn’t too motivated initially, especially since he still has Gilroy to deal with.

Michael shows up to meet Gilroy at a French restaurant but finds a third place setting at the table. It belongs to a baddie named Claude. Gilroy forces Michael to work with Claude on a mission to break into the Chilean consulate and steal some mysterious file. Later on, Michael tells Fiona that his plan is to find a way to decommission Claude without Gilroy catching on. Fiona gets on Michael about helping Sugar. She does that whole passive aggressive thing which presses Michael’s buttons and is totally hilarious coming from a woman who likely sleeps with a bazooka under her pillow. It works, and Michael decides to get involved.

Doug is in trouble courtesy of a fellow named Lynch (sounds like a good bad guy name to me), but neither Sugar nor Michael knows why. So Michael and his team go and do some good old fashioned reconnaissance work at Lynch’s compound. They only have time to plant one bug, and they choose the tv remote. Michael’s magic voiceover narration tells us that the remote is a good choice because it has its own power source, tends to be in the room that the most people are in and is usually in the hands of the most powerful person in the room. Not at my house, but I take his point.

Doug works at a refrigerated flower warehouse and is a little slow. He tells Sam that he always wanted to be in the Army but couldn’t get in. Lynch was a marine and uses this to his advantage. He is planning to rob some fancy international art and needs to use Doug’s flower delivery route and schedule. So Michael has to take the place of one of Lynch’s men, extract Doug, stop Lynch, and keep Sugar from doing anything stupid. He doesn’t quite succeed at that last one and has to save Sugar from assault rifles by making the coolest on-the-fly microwave bomb I’ve seen since Under Siege. It was definitely one of Michael’s coolest contraptions yet.

As for the whole Claude/Gilroy thing, Claude is supposed to be the point man and Michael the support/distraction agent. He finds out—courtesy of Fiona—that Claude has been learning how to scale walls through freeclimbing. So Michael has to go to the Chilean consulate and try to booby trap some of the potential handholds Claude might use. It pays off at the end big time, and Claude has a nasty (and totally awesome to watch) Tumble.

The other thing Michael has to deal with? His mother. She reported a number of the cars Michael has stolen for his missions and is being presented with the prestigious (?) Crime Fighter of the Year Award…and she wants him to go with her to the ceremony. You know, where all the cops are. Michael isn’t enthused…but then Madeline starts guilting him. Right, as if he wasn’t getting enough of that from Fiona.

There are some nice subtexts about family this week, and quite a bit of great action. Sam plays a bigger role and gets to do more stunts. There is better spectacle in this episode than in the terrible John Travolta movie I just saw, From Paris With Love, which cost $55 million to make. Go figure.

Season 3, Episode 12: Noble Causes (Originally aired February 4, 2010)

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Thursdays at 10/9c on USA

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Glenn Watson