Burn Notice Review: The Tale of Two Mikes

On this week’s episode of Burn Notice, Michael Westen manages to somehow get best friend and ally Sam caught between a foreign arms dealer and a good old American drug kingpin. And while they’re busy trying to extract Sam from a hiccup of epic proportions, Fiona and Madelyn are off trying to find the people working so diligently to frame Michael for Max’s murder. Also this week: Michael gets himself a new handler, Abbot and Costello unfortunately join the team, and the boys are off on a CIA mission to help what turns out to be some very ungrateful friends.

So last week, I took a little break from Burn Notice, so for whoever’s out there that still hasn’t seen it let me take this moment to catch you up. Nothing happened. No seriously, nothing happened. I have to say this whole “Who Murdered Max” storyline is not progressing as quickly as I would like it too. But then again, the writers have struck plot gold here (that totally exists, just ask the ghost of Poe waiting at the end of every opium infused rainbow) because right after Michael getting burned this is by far one of the series’ best storylines. That being said, when are things finally going to kick off?! One moment, boom, they drop a bomb on us and then next we’re focused back on the client of the week, who frankly, no offense, I really couldn’t care less about because I’m just waiting to see what’s happening in the background, which is where this story is. I understand the writers milking this for weeks and weeks, taking the time to let it slowly unfold, but really I’m getting super impatient to know who off-ed Max just as we were beginning to find out that he’s one of the good guys. But I’m going to just be patient for the moment and sit on my hands while I dictate to my pet monkey who is currently typing this. Forgive any misspellings, he’s just learning conjugations.

And here we go. With the exit of Max, Michael now needs a new handler and her name is Pearce. More specifically Pearce is assigned to find out who killed Max, and after a brief suspicious glance at Michael she’s tagged him on to help her track the murderer down. But this week, of course they have bigger fish to fry as a Serbian syndicate is in town buying up arms. Michael’s new number one priority: find those bombs.

Because the CIA doesn’t want someone on their payroll to get mixed up in things which may become an international incident, Mike is pretty much on his own with getting this bomb back. But how do you take on an arms dealer with an army at his disposal when you’re a village of four? Well, you get someone bigger and badder to take him down for you. To that end, Mike comes up with a plan to trick a hardcore drug kingpin, Carmelo to go after the Serbians by stealing his drugs and pinning it on them. In order to get the bug in Carmelo’s ear, Mike decides to send Sam undercover as a hired hand of the Serbians who just happens to know everything that’s going on. Here’s how it went down: Mike and Fi robbed a couple of Carmelo’s goons (who are by the way, the most pathetic excuse for drug dealers I’ve ever seen. They don’t even fight, they just run away), leaving behind Sam as the patsy middleman who worked for the Serbs but didn’t know what they were going to do. Carmelo comes to the scene, takes Sam and demands answers about where his drugs are, at which point Sam (or should I say Chuck Finley) becomes a canary and starts to sing, leading Carmelo to the Serbians lair where a shootout begins and Carmelo takes one of the Serbs as hostages. This causes quite a bit of a problem because of course the Serbs “don’t know nothing” about any drugs which leads Carmelo to question the veracity of his only witness.

With a gun to his head, Sam/Chuck swears that it was the Serbs who stole the drugs and says the guy they stole is the one who actually has the drugs hidden at his place. Full of confidence that he’s hiding nothing, the Serbian prisoner tells Carmelo to check his place and gives out the address to lead them there which also of course leads Jesse and Mike to plant a whole bunch of drug cartel paraphernalia at his place. You know, scales, guns, everything but actual drugs.

Carmelo continues to use his particular brand of torture and submission techniques to get his Serbian prisoner to cough up the drugs. The only thing the guy is saying is the marina which sends Carmelo off racing down to the waters like a sinner at last call baptism. Of course, there are no drugs to be found and Carmelo is mighty pissed to find a bomb instead of his precious heroin. He turns to Sam/Chuck prepared to pull the trigger when just in time Michael Westen joins the party.

Okay, so there is a bit of a backstory leading to this point. Right when Carmelo decided to go ahead and capture a Serb, Mike and the team were in a state of panic because their story wouldn’t check out and Carmelo might have just gone ahead and killed Sam when he found his story was a load of bull. Fi was upset at Michael for volunteering Sam for this mission in the first place and now that the team have to work on a plan to sneak Sam out from under Carmelo’s thumb she is even more frustrated and worried. Mike plays a good cover and says that he can get some help from the CIA if he needs it, after all this is their mission of course they’d be willing to provide proper back-up. But, or course they aren’t.

A couple of loony agents, by the name of Manaro and Bailey step in and say that under no circumstances will they be willing to disrupt this mission in order to help Sam. I really can’t stand these guys; and not because they’re leaving Sam out in the wind, but because they are horrible, horrible caricatures. Are these guys serious? They come up here, like an old school Abbot and Costello want-to-be-agent duo that is supposed to be a form of comic relief but really just left me scratching my head. And left poor Daniel Scruffington scratching his head too (that’s the monkey). These guys just make no sense, and I’m going to throw them by the wayside where they belong and move on to tell you that Mike decided to take matters in his own hands. And that’s how he ended up at the marina.

Now Carmelo and Michael have a rocky history, which ended in Carmelo telling Mike that he’d kill him if he ever saw him again. Carmelo is all ready to make good on that promise when Mike tells him that he has a sniper waiting outside to take Carmelo out if Mike doesn’t survive this exchange. That sniper would be Jesse, waiting outside along with Fi. Inside, Mike gives Carmelo his choices: he could call the police and tell them about this here bomb he found and the Serbians army he had to go through to secure it and be a national hero OR he can kill Mike and Sam and then die himself at the hands of the unseen, but very present sniper who has already taken a few practice shots at him. Carmelo chooses the hero route. And problem averted… until next time.

On the search to find out who’s trying to frame Michael, the gang finds out that the killer used a cell phone right after he killed Max. Tracing that cell phone back to the store where it was bought, the gang poses as dirty cops and gets the store owner to give them the security footage from the store. Mike puts Madelyn on the case of watching for the people who buy cell phones, but after watching the footage Madelyn gets really upset and demands to know why Mike needs to know who bought the phone. Mike tells her that the person who bought the phone also killed Max. Frazzled, Madelyn shows Michael the store footage which shows a Mike look-a-like hiding his face from the camera and buying the phone. Aw, shucks. The gang sees that whoever’s trying to frame Mike is really covering their bases but they are determined none-the-less to track him down by first finding the guy who impersonated Michael.

Madelyn and Fi go to the County Clerk’s office and give a teller a sad story about Mike cleaning out her bank account. And they only want to look through the driver’s license records to track the scum bag down. By playing up the woman’s mothering instincts, they get her to help them out. Using a picture of Michael, Maddie and Fi use face recognition software and find pictures of guys in Florida who have the same facial features as Michael. After at first getting an overwhelming 62 thousand hits Fi does some trick to narrow the list down to 86. And then viola, they’ve got their man.

But before Fi and Madelyn give the information to Michael, they decide to have a little chat with him. While at the County Office Fi told Madelyn about how Mike offered Sam up as bait in their little CIA operation, and about how Sam is now in a lot of danger. Maddie is concerned about this too and the two tell Michael that above all he needs to put his friends first and make sure that he’s not putting them in any danger working with the CIA. After extracting his promise they hand him the folder of his on camera double. The name: Jacob Starky. The episode ends with the gang checking up on Mr. Starky who just happens to be in a shady neighbor buying a gun. Yeah, this guy’s up to no good…

Until next time…

Next week on Burn Notice, Michael takes on yet another army, this time to save the life of a little boy. Fi drops off the back of a car and the gang continues their quest to blow up everything in Miami.

Season 5, Episode 6: “Enemy of My Enemy” (original airdate July 28, 2011.)

Burn Notice airs Thursdays at 9/8c on USA Network.

Photos by David Giesbrecht/USA Network.