Review – Burn Notice: Friends Like These

Michael Westen’s money-launderer friend Barry enlists his help to find the ledger he uses to keep track whose money he’s laundering where and how.  Meanwhile, Michael does his first job for Tom Strickler, the shady agent-to-the-spies who promised to get Michael’s burn notice reviewed.

It turns out a Serbian strongman paid Barry’s girlfriend to steal the ledger. Michael and Sam snatch the strongman offstage, along with a hysterical woman (Callie Thorne) who claims the strongman has threatened her son. From there, as usual, Michael, Fiona, and Sam try to con both the strongman and the woman into telling them where the ledger is.

I’d like to tell you I saw the twist in this episode coming, but as many innocent victims as the trio have helped, I never would have guessed the hysterical woman was actually the mastermind behind the theft of the ledger.  Her transformation from victim to stone-cold killer was the high point of the episode. She escapes Fiona by threatening to fire her weapon into a crowd of children, and as much as I wanted Fiona not to care, I realized her weakness is a tenderness for children.

Serving the larger season-long arc, Tom Strickler has Michael track weapons stolen from a military safehouse.  Of all the leads Michael has pursued in hopes of getting his old job back, Strickler strikes me as the flimsiest.  The idea that Michael can be “un-burned” is so unrealistic, part of me is surprised Michael hasn’t walked away from it already.  Fiona and Sam continue to warn Michael about dealing with Strickler, but these warnings also ring a bit false to me.  Fiona and Sam never seemed so concerned with taking the moral high road before.  Perhaps they don’t want Michael to turn to the dark side, but don’t all spies live in a gray area? I don’t want any of these characters to seem too heroic.  Let’s not forget Fiona is a borderline psychotic former IRA bomber, please.

I thought Michael leaned on his friends heavily this episode, having Fiona cover him on the job for Strickler, borrowing Sam’s girlfriend’s villa to interrogate the strongman and the woman.  I’d like to see something really drive a wedge between them the way they’ve divided and conquered so many villains.  Michael’s work with Strickler has the potential to do just that, as at the end of the episode Fiona plans to leave Miami.  She turns up in next week’s summer finale, though, so it remains to be seen whether they have a falling-out. I’ve always wondered how they’d come back from that.