Download Burn Notice Good Soldier

Michael Westen finds he has a gift: he can save the people with the Lord’s own vengeance and then turn around and walk right into hellfire.

One truism for this show is that before the end of the hour, something always catches on fire, usually in brick-shattering, black oil-spitting clouds of smoke and flame. The cliffhanger finale is no disappointment in this area. Michael (Jeffrey Donovan) solves the secondary plot the hard way, thinking his day is done when his undercover identity as a phony bodyguard uses Born-Again righteousness to defeat the kidnapping scheme of bad guy Lesher  (John Allen Nelson).

But we finally get movement on the mysterious Carla (Tricia Helfer) and the whole Burn Notice premise! The last few episodes have very slowly contrributed clues about who and what, and even where, after Sam (Bruce Campbell) and Michael stake out their sniper to see where he uses the precious identicard.

Impatient to get to the bottom of things, Michael marches right into the “hornet’s nest” using the matching identicard he took from the dealer and heads up to the fourth floor where Bill Johnson, the sniper, had been sent. The floor is empty except for a big conference room with several windows and a huge table; no chairs. Nothing’s even in sight from the windows–all the buildings are too far away to get a shot, so what can they be up to? Michael gets his answer as a large boat pulls by on the intracoastal waterway.

So now he has a good idea of what’s about to go down, but not who the target is.

While Michael’s digging around in the office building, Carla shows up. When she goes inside, Sam puts a tracker on her bike, and Mike slips out unnoticed. The two trail Carla to a very nice hotel–Sam says, “You got to love it when you draw surveillance in a place that has a good mojito.

” He stocks up on food and liquor and keeps an eye on Carla, who’s a very busy girl, conducting multiple meetings a day with international types.

During one of her meetings, Michael braves access to Carla’s room, cleverly circumventing the facial recognition software guarding her door, and he comes up with “the jackpot”–photos and a file on everyone involved in this mysterious operation. Still no clue who the intended victim is.

Carla, of course, catches on that Michael is up to something, though not with the picture-perfect observation of earlier shows. She warns him to stay out of her business once, then she turns up the heat–literally.

The best part of this episode was the examination of relationships between Michael and the other characters. Campbell shone as the man Friday, competent, wise-cracking and on top of his game as he helped Michael in his quest. There was a slice of family angst as Mamma Westen (Sharon Gless)  lent ne’er-do-well brother Nate (Seth Peterson) money to start a limo business, much to Michael’s dismay. Michael even takes him into the A-Team job to help the kid out and keep Mamma happy, though it backfires in the end.

But most touching, I thought, was the delineation of the relationship between Michael and Fiona. All season, he’s been pushing her slowly away and she’s called his bluff, reminding him frequently that she’s dating, and even bringing her new boyfriend, paramedic Campbell, into their lives. In this episode, she must have asked Michael half a dozen times how he felt about Campbell, clearly not getting the response she wanted. Last episode when he nearly killed himself by crashing his own car into a dump truck to save their victim, she demonstrated how devastated she would have been if he’d succeeded. Each look they exchange seems to have multiple layers. The phone conversation Michael has with Lesher about how he’s seen the error of a life that made him cold and unfeeling is delivered as he’s looking into Fiona’s eyes. No question that fire is still burning strong, which is a good thing, because these old flames are two of a kind.

The series now goes on hold until January, so the fiery resolution will have to wait till then.

Download Burn Notice Good Soldier