Burn Notice: Meet Michael Westen, Army of One

Michael and Sam follow a lead to the man who hired Lucien the clock-maker/bomb-maker. As they arrive, the man torches his safehouse, and Michael and Sam are only able to recover his charred computer. Michael takes Sam’s place helping Jesse with a case of corporate espionage, freeing Sam to contact a friend who may be able to salvage what’s on the computer.

Jesse’s client was Richard Grombach, billionaire owner of big box stores and fast food restaurants. Sam, and now Michael, was supposed to play a hacker who joined the team of corporate spies plotting against Grombach. The actual hacking would be done by a device Jesse gave Michael, which would gather evidence against the spies. Jesse also convinced Maddie to help him on the job by taking photos. The whole thing was supposed to be relatively safe, as the criminals were thought to be white-collar. Of course, Michael discovered the spies were much more violent. Taking over an airport, they planned to kidnap Grombach when his plane landed.

With Patrick Bauchau’s portrayal of Lucien in last week’s episode, I mentioned his previous series, The Pretender. Jeffrey Donovan also appeared in several episodes of The Pretender, playing protagonist Jarod’s long-lost sociopathic brother, Kyle. In this week’s episode, Pretender star Michael T. Weiss portrayed Holcomb, leader of the corporate spies. Much of the fun of “Army of One” for me was seeing Weiss and Donovan together again, but it would have been lost on someone who hadn’t watched The Pretender.

“Army of One” might be thought of as Burn Notice‘s take on Die Hard 2, except its plot was like many episodes this season. Holcomb and his men were better trained and more organized than villains from earlier seasons, but Michael wormed his way into checking passenger manifests against the hostages they had taken. From this position, Michael made up a person named Jack Marsden, filling in Marsden’s background with his own Special Forces training. He was able to keep Holcomb and his men chasing “Marsden” while he moved the hostages to safety.

As usual, I found myself having to swallow the idea that Michael was able to convince the villains to follow his lead, even though some of them initially knew better. Nothing about Michael’s performance was especially convincing until he pretended to be fatally wounded and agreed to go after Marsden with a grenade–oddly the only grenade Holcomb and his men had. By exploding the grenade, Michael made Holcomb and the others believe he’d sacrificed himself to help them get away.

In the season-long storylines, Sam’s friend was able to recover some data from the computer and put it on a flash drive. Meanwhile, Agent Pearce (Lauren Stamile) increased the manpower on the investigation of Max’s murder, threatening to uncover Michael’s involvement very soon.

Last week, I mentioned I thought I knew how the first half of the season would end. In commercial previews, the man who framed Michael looked like Max as he escaped the burning safehouse. From this, I thought Max had faked his death, but apparently the mastermind is not Max.

Burn Notice has always been good at pacing its longer arcs. I look forward to seeing how things shake out in the final two episodes of the summer.