Burn Notice Review: Spy vs. FBI

Let’s start this week’s episode on a good note, because if nothing else Michael Westen’s triumphant return to form after last week’s APPALINGLY dismal episode is deserving of a good note. So let’s start this off with what’s right in this week’s episode of Burn Notice: well, Nathan’s back in Miami, Michael’s once again fighting the good fight, and Fi and Mike are settling into couple’s life.

We begin this week with a coming home dinner for Nate and his family. And by family I mean Nate and the newest little Westen Charlie, Mike’s nephew, because Nate’s wife Ruth was too busy for family time as she is off getting a pedicure. And as Madelyn says, you can’t get one of those every day. Mama Westen seems especially put off by Ruth’s blow off of this family function, and Nate half-heartedly tries to cover up for his wife, but her absence is an underlying tension in the room. Trouble in matrimony? Probably; but that will have to wait for another week because for the moment the younger Mrs. Westen is completely absent. Mike goes out to work on revamping the charger. Baby brother Nate tags along and offers him a helping hand in making the car better than it ever was, but Mike is hesitant to accept his help for the moment.

Turns out Mike has been having some… issues. Sort of like post-traumatic stress, after all the danger and drama of last season Mike is seeing shadows of enemies lurking behind him. Some, Sam and Fi, call it paranoia; the guy who Mike assaults (he thinks he’s following him) calls it crazy, but Mike just calls it being cautious and with good reason he’s had a target painted on his back for several years now. Just because his known enemies are gone, doesn’t mean there aren’t 50 more biding their time to get at him. (Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not watching.) So, to keep Mike cheerful and most importantly away from the crazy, Sam and Fi encourage Mike to get his mind off of his troubles. Sam’s suggestion is a day at the spa, and Fi buys Mike a shredder so he can finally shred those files that contain all the information about his burn notice: exorcise those ghosts and move on. But it’s Nate who unintentionally provides the best distraction in the form of a new client by the name of Jessica.

Jessica is the widow of a friend of Nate’s. A fellow reformed gambler like Nathan, Jessica’s husband has died with a debt of $100,000 due to a loan shark who is now threatening Jessica and trashing her yogurt shop. Jess has called the cops on loan shark, Carter, but the cops won’t really get involved until things escalate, which Jessica is eager to avoid. In order to settle the debt, Carter and his boss head shark Wallace now want the boat owned by Jessica’s father as payment. Jessica can’t give it to them, and besides, as Mike says, that won’t be enough to satisfy them anyway. So Mike makes a plan, he’s going to infiltrate the gang and, by making it seem like the boat is tied up in a police sting, make the loan sharks wary of doing business with Jessica. Nate wants to help out on this case, but Michael refuses telling him that he’s got a family to take of now and can’t get involved with these dangerous cases.

Setting up like a fellow debtor Mike stakes out the yogurt place and waits for Carter to come inside where he makes a deal. Mike (now known as Trey) knows that Jessica won’t give up the boat. But thanks to some handy friends in Vegas who can fake ownership papers, Trey can steal the boat from under Jessica and the two can split the proceeds from its sale. Carter likes this idea and takes Mike to boss Wallace, who while initially shy on the deal agrees that this may be the best way.

Once Mike gets in with the loan crew his next step is to discredit Carter and “remove him from the equation” by making him seem like an undercover cop working to set up Wallace. Sam and Fi set up a fake badge and credentials in the floor of Carter’s apartment , and Jesse doctor’s some photos to make Carter seem like he’s tied up with the police. Once “Trey” comes through on ownership papers on the dirty boat tagged by police, he passes them off to Carter who eagerly presents them to Wallace. Carter, known as the overly ambitious sort, uses this opportunity to try to move up in the Wallace organization and tries to convince Wallace to let him take over control of ALL of Wallace’s illegal books.

The trap set, Trey comes back on the scene and tells Wallace that the boat and Carter are dirty, the boat now being involved in a police investigation that Carter set. Furious Wallace takes Mike over to Carter’s place along with a few hired goons, and they proceed to tear Carter’s apartment apart looking for information that will tie him to the police. Carter denies any involvement, but when threatened, Carter looks to a painting hanging on the wall. Sending his goons on a new direction, Wallace finds papers sighting “Carter” as an FBI agent hidden in the wall, not the floor. Yes, folks, these are the real deal. When Mike finds out that he has burned an undercover agent he looks properly horrified and rushes to try to fix up his mess.

Wallace wants to kill Carter right then and there, but “Trey” convinces him to question Carter first to find out what the cops know. What Mike is really doing is buying some time so he can keep Carter alive and make a plan to help him escape. His chance comes and while no one is looking he cuts Carter’s bonds and tells him to come out swinging once the car stops. Carter does, tackling Wallace and running off into the woods where Fi and Sam are waiting to clue him in on just what in the world has happened to his operation. Fi and Sam manage to convince Carter to play along with them, all in the name of putting that scumbag Wallace behind bars.

But to do that, first they’re going to need to give Wallace some room to hang himself. Back at the car, a panicked Wallace is making plans to leave the country. “Trey” talks him out of this by saying that he knows a guy in Vegas who can doctor them up some new lives under new names unknown to the FBI, but to do that they’re going to need money. Wallace refuses to go back to his shop, but when faced with the idea of starting his life over with just the money he has in his pockets, he relents and takes Mike back to his office. At the office, Wallace and his goons grab everything that they can money, files, their dirty books and starts to make a run for it… right into the welcoming arms of the police. And so, Wallace, his goons, and all the evidence they could possibly need are gathered up by the feds.

In the aftermath of the sting, Carter thanks Mike for saving his life, explaining that the things he’s done as bad boy “Carter” were necessary because sometimes you have to do “a lot of damage to avoid hurting people.” This is something to which Michael can easily relate. Here the fragility of Mike’s position seems to really hit home with him as he realizes that with “one bad break out there, somebody dies.” And although this situation could have easily turned tragic for Mike and Carter, disaster has been averted this time, but there’s always the next, and the next.

As a reward for getting Wallace off her back, Jessica gives Michael a card proclaiming free yogurt for life. He is pleased. In a heart to heart moment with his brother, Nate tells Mike why he decided to move out of Vegas and come back home. He had a gambling problem, but didn’t notice it until his addiction caused him to miss the birth of his son. That was his wake up call. Nate acknowledges that he understands that Mike has some issues to work through, but that no one can tell him when to stop digging for answers; Mike has to figure that out on his own. This is the only encouragement Mike has gotten to continue to pursue the back story of his burn notice and that seems enough. Back at home with Fi, Mike has give up all pretense of shredding the files. He’s up late into the night combing through the files for one last detail that he may have missed. Fi wakes up and confronts Mike about not shredding the papers, he says that he can’t yet they may still hold something else. Upset Fi tells Mike to come to bed and they will look through the papers in the morning. Mike agrees that he will but still continues to search on with Fiona looking on.

Okay, for the good. Loved, LOVED the constant yogurt reference in this episode. And if you missed it, first episode back this season, when Max asked Mike how he keeps going so strong, Mike answered that yogurt was his secret weapon. I found this as a very clever wink back to the episode and really look forward to more of the same of this. For a second I wondered if yogurt would become the “pineapple” (Psych) of Burn Notice, and if so I whole-heartedly support this.

Now for the bad, I wasn’t really feeling the night terrors. And by feeling, I mean I wasn’t quite sold on it. Sure it’s understandable in this case, but it just seemed to come full fledged out of nowhere for me. I would have loved to see them build this up more in previous episodes like they did with the yogurt, maybe someone mentioning he was having trouble sleeping before. But if just seemed like it’s just another plot device which will probably be forgotten next week as something else comes along.

But overall this was quite a successful episode of Burn Notice, which really in a way confuses me. What in the world is going on that they can hop through such an awful and contrived episode last week and come up with a genuinely moving one this go ‘round? Yeah, I know we all have our off days, and I’ll just chuck that up to a bad week, or maybe unsteady legs and they try to figure out what this new Michael Westen government man means and needs. Note to producers, what Michael needs is to always at the core stay this guy, a passionate, honest, DRIVEN guy. Or some such variation of that at the very least.

Season 5, Episode 3: Mind Games (originally aired July 7, 2011).

Catch Burn Notice every Thursday night at 9 p.m. EST on USA!

Photos courtesy of Virginia Sherwood/USA Network.