Burn Notice Summaries

Michael (I used to be a spy) Westen was in Warri Nigeria to pay a drug kingpin, Boris,  $750,000 to stop blowing up oil refineries in the Nembi Oil Field. He called his handler to report the ABA money transfer number (0210010175…); but was hung up on because he had been… "burned." He escaped the beating from the drugee's by feigning that he would take them to the money; but, escaped by luring two guards into the bathroom, where there were hard surfaces, for a fight. Eventually he made it to the airport where the airline said they were "instructed" to take him to Florida and dump him in a cut-rate motel. Unconscious.

 

His EX-girlfriend, Fiona Glennan, was called by the maid who had seen the "next-of-kin" number in his wallet. Awakened by Fiona's kick, he was dogged by two FBI surveillance men, and his mother who he tried to avoid. He tried to check into the Chadwick hotel requesting: no view, facing the wall, no windows, far from the elevator, close to exits; however, the clerk advised that his bank accounts were frozen with a "government related code." Dan Siebels, MWs handler for 15 years (trained together, has a Lucite plaque on his desk with a bullet hole in it, drinks sprite) refused any contact with him. So he moved to a "girls gone wild" motel where anyone tailing him would stand out.

 

He paid two kids to tell a cop that one of his FBI tails had tried to make them sit on his lap. While the tails were busy being rousted by the cop, Michael was able to escape their watch. He made contact with Lucy (ex-spy) who was working at Securi-corp and told him that he had been flagged on every government list; but, after giving her "puppy dog eyes," she gave him a contact for a "job" to earn some cash with Sam Axe, a former friend, who had lately been "sponging off of every rich divorce' in the greater Miami area."

 

The job was with Javier, a caretaker, who offered $4,600 to clear his name for a robbery of $22 million in jewelry and antiques from the house of his boss Mr. Pyne, a condo developer. Neither Pyne nor Vincent, his security man, were really helpful to Michael in his search. Sam found Michael an empty storage loft above a nightclub called "The Warehouse" for $200 a month. The landlord, a Russian immigrant named Oleg, gave disclaimers that "all night there was boom boom" from the nightclub and that a drug dealer lived downstairs. Oleg had actually heard of Michael from Russian spies who claimed that Michael Westen was really one name for many people – and we learn that Michael can speak Russian without an accent. Fiona gave MWs cell phone number to his mother, Madeline, a chain-smoking hypochondriac who had him steal a car to take her to the doctor at the hospital on 20th street. She ragged on him for missing his father's funeral by 8 years – and we learn that MW was abused as a child, had been sending doctor money for her many illnesses and that his brother, Nate, "went to pot" after MW had left.  MW packaged up some pipes and chemical fertilizer to send to Dan Siebels in order to get him to call back. Javier's son David wanted MW to "shoot the people who had robbed Mr. Pyne." Mikes rules for clients are that "I follow it wherever it leads, I finish what I start and we do it my way."

 

Sam set up a meeting with Barry, a money launderer, who gave him the name of an art dealer/fence who would know about possible stolen art in the area. M had to kick some drug buyers off the steps to his loft one evening when he got home. Dan finally called back and said that M was on "all FBI watch lists" and that he "couldn't leave Florida without SWAT teams and reporters showing up on his lawn." He refused to have any further contact with M but advised him to "lay low."  M Met Sugar, the drug dealer leaving below him, who tried to hassle him for sending the customers away; and M had to subdue him, although it was quite easy. Walter, the art dealer, needed a little convincing to tell him that a condo-developer had tried to discretely sell those stolen paintings, overpriced six months prior. MW broke into Pyne's safe and obtained evidence of Pyne's illegal dealings. Then he told Javier that his boss was trying to frame him for an insurance scam. After MW confronted Pyne he had Sam and Fiona help him plant a bug in Pyne's car.

 

Fiona began haranguing MW about "personal relationship" issues and MW said that they had tried before and their relationship just wasn't enough (she was robbing banks for the IRA). Then Fiona beat up an attempted assassin sent by Sugar which made her amorous; but M had to tell her that "violence is foreplay for you but not for me." Sam has good intelligence contacts and sent Vincent on a wild goose-chase when he tried to find out about M. Then to prevent Sugar from continuing to come after him, M shot through Sugar's door, wounding him in the knee. He gave him bandages and 20-minutes to clear out. M went to Madeline's house to deliver a prescription as his voice-over said: "people with happy families don't become spies. A bad childhood is the perfect background for covert ops: you don't trust anyone, you're used to getting smacked around and you never get homesick." Madeline wanted him to go see his brother who wouldn't return her calls so that they could all be together for Christmas. M had parted with his brother after he had gotten a telephone book thrown at his head. When they were six, their father locked them in their room to prevent them seeing the Star Wars movie, so they took up the floor and sneaked out through the heating vents. M said he has had "thirty years of Karate, combat experience on five continents and a rating with every weapon that shoots a bullet or holds an edge."

 

M then had to save David from being kidnapped by Vincent under Pyne's orders. He offered to be the driver of a fellows car, which didn't have airbags, then crashed into Vincent's car setting off his airbags to stun him long enough to cable-tie his hands to the wheel. Taking David back to the loft, he found that the kids at school had been bullying the boy so gave him pointers on how to defend himself using tactics. He told David that he had two black belts and still gets beaten up. Sam met with the two FBI tails, agent Lane and Harris, and M interrupted their meeting.  They only told M to "don't go thinking you got nothing to lose, you got friends, you got family." Sam said they had his pension tied up. The told M he could do anything he liked as long as "you stay where they can see you and don't cause any trouble."  MW told Sam: "Don't sprinkle sugar on this bull and call it candy." All he wanted from Sam, he told him, was for him to tell the FBI just enough and keep them out of his business. Sam agreed. M set up a trap for Pyne and Vincent in Javier's house, so that when they entered Pyne was blinded by a mirror and tricked into shooting Vincent. M then put Pyne's prints on the gun and let him listen to a recording of his plotting David's kidnapping from the bug that they had planted. Pyne agreed to Ms demands that Vincent would confess to the robbery, Javier would get "5 years severance pay with benefits and dental and never see them again – and throw in a college fund for David." M would hold all the blackmail documents and "be watching." M then watched as David followed his advice about fighting back to the bullies at school. He needled Lane and Harris a bit by asking to borrow their binoculars to see David's tactics better.  Then when he got back to the loft he found the floor littered with surveillance photos which had been taken of him by someone other than "normal" feds – along with a "Welcome to Miami" greeting card.

Michael Westen analyzed were the photos left in his loft had been taken from and found that many had been in his mother’s neighborhood. When asked, his mother, danced around the topic claiming that she “didn’t remember”; then finally admitted that she had actually invited “two government” people into her house several months ago. “They were very nice,” she claimed and had made them cookies.  M found a bug which had been planted in her electrical outlet; then ran to a vacant house down the street just as two men escaped and their equipment burst into flames. Madeline refused to tell Michael anything that would help his situation until he agreed to help her elderly neighbor friend who had been scammed and beaten. The elderly Laura had received a letter stating that she had won a prize; but when she called, three people came to obtain information which she had given until she became suspicious and told them to leave. They then had broken her arm. They drained her bank account and her children now wanted to put her in a home. Sam agreed to help IF M would let him stay in his loft. Fiona kept breaking in to the loft just to “say hi”; and then, just to spite Sam, demanded to join the job.

 

They found the con artists through the print shop they had used for the embossed letter. Sam set M up with a cover ID, Peter Jordan, ostensibly a cell mate of an ex-partner of Quentin King, the Con man. M went to the south beach club, Onyx, to initiate a counter-con to try and obtain Quentin’s bank account info by enticing him to join a con of his own. Fiona was asked to rig Quentin’s car so that they could disable it and to plant a bug on Quentin’s boat with Sam.  M was presenting his proposal to Quentin and his apprentices, Greg and Bonnie, to keep them busy. Sam and Fiona’s constant arguing slowed them to the point that they were caught on the boat by Greg and Bonnie. They pretended to be mistakenly on the boat as lovers and were able to leave. Both Fiona and Madeline contrived to manipulate M to attend a dinner where Fiona could rag on him about relationships. Despite being asked to “go easy” at the dinner Fiona embellished that she’d like to be a June bride and revealed to Laura that M was a spy. As a reward for coming to the lunch Madeline admitted that she had told the two surveillance men that Michael "was a perfect son – seemed better than the truth," she told him. Sam was tasked with setting up Greg and Bonnie to alienate them from Quentin; but, he had overdone it and Quentin found out about it before they were ready. Sam then tried to use Fiona’s disabling device but she hadn't  followed instructions either and the whole thing blew up. That sent Quentin underground and brought the FBI back on Ms tail.

 

M finally found Quentin’s hiding place and told him that he could arrange retaliation on Bonnie and Greg for him by hiring someone he knew. Sam and Fiona went back to the boat posing as detectives Cagney and Lacey and told Bonnie and Greg that they were going down for the extortion scam in a ploy to get them to flee, which they did. Finally, M told Quentin that the FBI tail following him was really following Quentin because Greg and Bonnies had informed on him. Quentin begged M to take his bank account info and arrange the hit; but Mike drained his account, returned the money to his marks and used his ID to call known terrorists and threaten judges and the drug cartel -- the most fun he'd had in Miami.  MW agreed to only take a $300 fee from Laura for helping her. Madeline finally said thanks and only then gave Mike the phone number of the people who had “surveilled” him. When he called the number a man only told him that “we’ll be in touch.”

Michael Westen sneaked into a “spy convention” to obtain a name of someone who could get him a copy of the “burn directive” against him so he could at least know why he had been burned.  He was chased by security and found that Fiona had abandoned him and he had to walk home only to find her having broken in to his loft and whining that she needed a key. When he told her he didn’t want anyone to have a key she set out to manipulate him into giving her one. She had arranged with his mother to get MW to take his dad’s old car. Oleg, Ms landlord, offered to give 4 month’s rent if he would help one of his waitresses with a problem which was preventing her from coming to work. Cara Stagner had reported someone to the police for nearly killing a pizza delivery boy and and then had been afraid to leave her house because a rat had been nailed to her door. People had also been looking for her daughter, Sophie, at school.

 

M cooked dinner for Fiona to ask her to help track Akhom Thabet a spy who owed M for saving his life. She wouldn’t do it unless M asked his mother, Madeline, for the car. M discovered that Alvaro Desantos was sending a hit squad for the Stagners and Fiona chased them off with molotov cocktails. Reluctantly M took the two to stay in his mother’s garage where he could set up controlled access. Madeline ranted about wanting to know everything until M finally broke down and told her.  Then, out of the clear blue, she tried to manipulate him into going to visit his father’s grave.  Sophie whined about living in a garage, not being allowed to call her friends on the phone and needing to miss her school dance. M asked Bruce Gellman, Desantos’ drug cartel lawyer, to have the cartel back Desantos off. Fiona tailed Akhom to find a time and place that M could talk to him; but tiresomely turned every conversation into a referendum on their relationship.

 

Gellman sent a hit man to blow up M but he failed and finally had to admit that the cartel had said to kill them all. So M and Fiona told the Stagner’s they had to become ghosts which sent Sophie wailing about her dance. Fiona went to mislead the mob who was watching the Stagner house about where they were going and deliberately worried M about her getting caught to manipulate him into giving her a key to the loft. Sophie sneaked out to go the the dance and M had to rescue her all the while she blubbered for some reason or another the whole time. Now that Desantos knew they hadn’t left, they had to set up an alternate plan. They decided to edit together some contrived video of a conversation that Sam (posing as Stagner’s lawyer) was having with Desantos where Sam was manipulating him into saying key phrases wich they could edit into a compromising conversation. They edited it into Desantos asking for witness protection then had Sam slip it to Harris and Lane where they knew Gellman would have a mole in the FBI. Then M went back to tell Gellman “thanks for getting Desantos to flip” in order to get him to check with his FBI mole. When he did, the Columbians “took care” of Desantos relieving the Stagner’s of the necessity of leaving. MW arranged to meet Akhom at his father’s grave and received a copy his burn memo.

While going over sports trivia flash cards in the “sand-bar” with Sam for fun, Michael Westen noticed Jan Haseck, a Czech Assassin, sneak in the door and try to be unnoticed. So making a pre-emptive strike, he faked  inebriation and picked a fight with another rowdy in order to get close enough to Haseck that he could cold-cock him – saying, in Czech, “Welcome to Miami comrade.” M then felt that he needed to booby-trap his front door with a shotgun and set Fiona to tail Haseck who was tailing M. Madeline again manipulated him to come over to her house in order to force him into helping his compulsive gambler brother Nate with a job: finding a friend, Bill Reese’s, runaway daughter Jenna. Nate told M that he had been given $1,000 but when M went to give it back he found that it was really $3,000. Police had told Bill that his daughter was over age and could run away if she wanted. Her boyfriend, Brandon Diggs, half-assed modeling scout, had taken her to the Wilhem brothers who had her captive - although she didn’t know it yet. Sam located Diggs from a photograph and info from his FBI source, then incompetent Nate followed M to the bar arguing and screwing things up to the point that Fiona jumped in and enticed Diggs out to the parking lot herself.

 

Because of Sam’s informing to the FBI, M kept him in the dark about Haseck but Fiona found where the assassin was staying. When Mike went to Haseck's hotel he barely escaped a knife fight ambush. Then, posing as a (un-named) bidder at a fashion auction, M bid against the Wilhelm’s in order to gain access to them as a client. They invited him to a party they were giving that night and he was able to begin to talk to Jeaan. However she was whisked away from him, by Carl who told him that she had already been sold to Saudi Arabia and was leaving on Thursday.  M sneaked in to Haseck’s room and found an empty drink cup from a diner and that special meals were being ordered from the kitchen. Sam was being pressured by Harris and Lane, the FBI agents, to get more and more info on M. Then, loan sharks beat up Nate for non-payment of debt because M had been holding all the money and couldn't pay them. M still refused to give him the money knowing that he would just loose it; and told him that he would personally pay off his debt directly after the job over – that didn't satisfy Nate in the least however.

 

M planned to ambush the Wilhelm’s car on the way to the airport but pathetic Nate went to steal the money from Ms loft - which made mike need to rush hom to save him from the shotgun booby-trap and Haseck began shooting at him. M was hit by a ricochet so missed Sam and Fiona’s extraction.  Over Fiona's objections, they merely set a ruse which delayed their Jenna's departure by a day. Nate extracted the bullet from M with a knife then like a typical sociopath who thinks all his problems are someone else's fault, completely ignored that it was his entire fault and tried to shame M into giving him the money. M finally relented, and warned him t to "pay it all"; but of course Nate didn’t. They then kidnapped Oscar Wilhem and used him to ransom Jenna back. They made Carl tell Jenna the truth; as well as give back all their profits to the girls they had pimped. In usual fashion, Nate couldn’t see that the girls would miss it and wanted to keep money for himself. Using Fiona's intel that Haseck was ordering food from the kitchen because of a peanut allergy, M sprinkled peanuts on the hot dog Haseck ordered at the diner and held his epi-pen hostage to extract info about who had sent him – he had no real info – so M gave him the antidote then cable-tied him to the table and called Sam to notify the FBI. The next day Sam said “guys” came in to the FBI and took Haseck away to “commit suicide” in his cell. These same "guys" left M a balloon basket on his step saying to “take care of his shoulder” and they would “be in touch.”

Michael Westen in a voiceover explained that: "family knowing what a spy did for a living would let them figure that they could get into trouble and you’d get them out." As tiresome a character as he is, Nate again called M to come and get him out of trouble in a “job” he had taken. He was supposed to “talk” to some characters that his “buddy” had “gotten into trouble with.” Then, of course the sociopath that he is, blamed his incompetence on M who had the car “that should have gone to him.”

 

Fiona found a bug in Ms car which Sam had planted because of his FBI connections. M told Fiona to leave it alone because he only talked about what he wanted them to hear. Nate had scammed his friend Jake Miller into believing that he and M had a “business to together” fixing things. Nate stole the distributor cap from Ms car in order to manipulate him into finding their fathers will, hoping to get the car away from him. Fiona scammed her way into the Zamar’s hanger, the people who had beat up Nate's friend, for recon and found that they were really arms dealers and the father was an ex-israeli spy. M told Nate's friend Jake to play along while he would go under cover and get Ari Zamar to show him their warehouse. Sam bugged Ari’s car and set up his cover ID as Steve Remington, international man of mystery and another arms dealer. Fiona helped make fake and real C4 which M offered to sell to Ari behind his father's back and even gave him a demonstration. Ari’s girlfriend Debbie tried to seduce M in order to “trade up” – M told Fiona that if he "wanted a girl to mess up his life he could do a lot better than Debbie." Reluctant to show the warehouse, Ari relented when M started to back out of dealing with him.

 

Sam finally admitted to M that he had planted the bug under the FBIs pressure. M told him that it was all right with him if he broke into his loft and actually told him where to look, "under the sink, don't break anything." Ari eventually did show M their warehouse and revealed that they had cops on the payroll. Not being able to bring in the police, they had Jake go to the Zamar's and claim that he had been contacted by Steve Remington letting slip the arrangement with Ari. When the Zamar's went to their warehouse they found that it had been cleaned out and only a calling card for Steve Remington on the empty table. Not being able to find any trace of M they decided to leave town and therefore leave Jake alone. Sam dumped the guns they had stolen in the river, delivered the burn memo to his FBI tails then met a new friend Veronica in a bar. When they finally found there was no will and that Madeline had just wanted M to have something to remember his father, M offered to flip him for the car - and won; so Nate stole Ms wallet. Because of the burn notice paper that M had under his sink the FBI tails were pulled and Sam was told that the government was sending “someone new” down.

Michael Westen and Fiona were jus finfing that the loft had been broken in to and searched when he received a distress call from his mother, Madeline, whose house was being ransacked by Ms new “tail.” Sam complained that M hadn’t called him for help; but was told that he hadn’t answered his phone because Veronica had been demanding his time. M then needed money to fix up his mother’s house so Sam referred him to a friend, Virgil Watkins, a boat repo guy who needed help. Meanwhile M did tricks to keep his new tail's recon goons listening to a radio on Ms phone tap. Mason, a dirty cop, had hired Virgil to retrieve a boat from some hoods but they had just beat him up. So he offered $2,000 each for Sam and M to do it for him and deliver the boat to Mason’s warehouse. Sam wanted to get Fiona involved to make it to be “just like that personnel carrier in Bulgaria.” M wanted to think about it until his "tail" impounded his car and disconnected his phone as further harassment for Ms tricks so he told Sam "I'm In, but I need to borrow your truck."

 

Under the cover ID of Homer (devoted employee), they called the police to report drugs on an adjacent boat then walked over and took Andre Dekker’s boat back when he couldn't do anything about it. Dekker acquiesced knowing that he had a GPS tracker which would allow him to get his boat back, M found and removed it, or so he though. When M went to deliver the boat to Mason he found that the guy was dirty and had rigged the warehouse to explode. They barely escaped so began tearing the boat apart to see why Mason wanted it so bad only to find bales of about 10 million dollars under the floor boards. Virgil finally admitted that he had known they were cops but claimed that Mason had threatened his daughter Trudy. They removed the money and Sam and Virgil barely escaped midst gunfire when they were dumping the boat in the woods and the Jamaicans, who had a second tracker, showed up. Unfortunately for M Virgil had to stay with Madeline and began chatting her up, eventually sleeping with her.

 

Fiona and M swept the loft for bugs from their new "tail" and Fiona hijacked the conversation to force M into talking about why he had left her back in Ireland in front of the bug. He told her that his cover had been blown and contacting her would compromise her safety which, of course, she didn't believe. They found an optical bug on their window and counteracted it with a personal vibrator. M went to Mason saying he wanted to give the money back but the Jamaican’s were after him. Mason said they should bring the Jamaicans and the money to a spot and they would take care of it. Instead Mason had Trudy arrested and threatened to plant drugs in her car. M broke into his "tails' hotel room and planted an electromagnet in the lamp which then destroyed his lap-top computer. Virgil disobeyed Ms instructions and took Madeline out to a resteraunt where he was kidnapped by Dekker. M arranged to give back the money to ransom Virgil but then told Mason the same thing. Fiona, Sam and M decided to take out some money for themselves; then they set it up on a dock and covered it in gasoline. M stood with a butane torch over the gasoline soaked money as a stand-off between the Jamaicans and Mason but got Virgil back, then flipped the torch on the money as they started shooting at each other.  Jamaicans were killed, cops were in jail and Trudy was released. Sam got Ms charger back through his contacts with the FBI. M rousted his "tail" at the Carlito Cafe and Fiona picked his pocket of his wallet to discover that the "tails" name was Jason Bly and he worked for the CSS.

Michael Westen gave Jason Bly his ID back which he seemed to take in his stride until revealing that he had set up Fiona, who was driving a stolen car with guns in the trunk, to be caught. Police sirens wailed as M ran to warn her and during the chase Fiona ragged on him for never “supporting her work” and couldn’t see any difference between Ms helping people and her running guns. They ditched the car in a parking garage and fled. Yet again pathetic Fiona turned every conversation into a referendum on their relationship.

 

Ernie Paseo, a friend of Javier (a previous client) and store owner in a rough part of town, wanted M to help extract him from being shaken down by Concha Ramirez for protection. He offered M $20,000 to kick Concha out. In his expanding harassment of M, Bly talked to Veronica, Sam’s girlfriend, and told her that he was two timing her - over which she was mightily provoked . Ms cover ID was "Johnny," a crazy crook, in order to convince Concha that she better leave the area because someone even worse was taking over.  Fiona gave Sam girlfriend advice with Veronica. Bly’s new tactic was to force M into taking a meaningless and insulting security guard job at a bank. M met with Barry to set up business records for him and Bly to make it look like they were in cahoots. He wanted off shore corporations, purchases, etc. as a “surprise” for Bly. M captured two of Concha’s men, took their money, drilled holes in their car, poured gasoline on it and told them to get out of town. He was captured by Diego Cruz, Concha’s second in command and taken to Concha. She revealed that she was actually planning to eventually take the property after forcing the owners out. She forced M to work for her and Diego took him around to make collections. He told M how Concha had shot his former boss in front of his kids and that he really didn’t want to be working on the street again. M needed to impromptu rob Fiona in order to “sell” his cover which set her off so she slugged him as a parting shot.

 

Bly broke into the loft without a warrant and told M that his rental car had been upgraded so Miami was being good to him. He threatened to sell Fiona out to her enemy’s and put Ms brother in jail if M didn’t take the security job. Concha sent M to kill Paseo’s whole family so she didn’t need to worry about any inheritance and lawyers. M warned Paseo to leave then built a bomb like Concha wanted. However, he turned the tables on Diego, who concha had told to kill M after he had completed the job, by telling him that Concha had really told M to kill him. Paseo bargained for M to let him go and he would take the bomb to Choncha's house and “take care” of her instead. M gave him the bomb which he planted in Concha’s house.  M gave Ernie most of his money back saying that he only needed it for "seed money"  then swore him to better secrecy than Javier had done.

 

Finally M revealed to the smug Bly, who thought he had won, all the blackmail documents he had created. Offshore bank accounts filled with deposits from M, joint businesses, photos of Bly in Ms apartment without a warrant, M had upgraded Blys car etc.. The Blackmail worked, Bly got the dossier on Ms burn notice that he was asked for and even apologized to Veronica for Sam. Of course now that the job was over, Fiona came back for her “talk” about “where she stood.” M told her that he had agreed to talk but not that he would have anything to say. He said they had been together and it didn't work. They had been profoundly unhappy in their former relationship in Dublin and Germany and he even had the scars to prove it. He said that he just couldn’t do it anymore. But, he said, he didn’t want to be with anyone else - there was no one he could be with that would make him more happy. Not getting the answer that she wanted, she attacked him and he had to defend himself but was obviously holding back – it ended in bed. Bly brought the dossier and told him to “have fun with it.”

Michael Westen brought the burn file which he had been studying along with him to Fiona's house where she was going to cook him dinner. Predictably (and tiringly) she wanted to manipulate the conversation into a you/me discussion. She asked him to go to the beach with her, but in reality wanted him to help her bounty hunt Thomas McKee. McKee was already being pursued by another bounty hunter, Wayne Ray, so Fiona assigned M to knock him over while Fiona captured McKee. When she did, McKee offered to pay her double to prove his innocence so now she wanted M to help with that. Fiona has snow globes for the places she’s done a job. McKee described that he had been blamed for stealing a 2 million dollar broach from the Victor Hotel after a friend who worked there had shown it to him. When his own attorney said that he would lose the case he ran. Sam got the name of the only person who fenced large diamonds from Barry.  Barry said that a guy named Cristo had shorted him on a deal and had cost him a client. M visited Cristo, discovered a diamond necklace hidden in his freezer and that someone had indeed tried to sell a broach like that a while back.  M forced him to tell the phone number. He also took the necklace for insurance of Cristo's silence until the job was over.

 

Sam used his FBI contacts to track the guy who put together Ms burn notice, Phillip Cowan, who works counter-intel for the NSA and got nothing more than a bill. Fiona faked having an amorous relationship with McKee in order to manipulate M into improving their relationship. Sam found the phone number Cristo gave them was that of Lawrence Henderson, owner of the hotel where it was stolen, and who was near bankruptcy. He had previously owned a hotel in New Orleans which was hit by a very convenient fire. Ray found Fiona’s home and came to fetch McKee. He was beating up M until Fiona beaned him out cold with a snow globe. Then McKee had to stay with M. Sam took point pretending to be Charles Finley, a representative for M who wanted to buy the broach. Henderson wanted to meet in person, finally submitted to Mr. Smith’s price but wouldn’t submit to independent authentication so M walked. They determined to begin a psych-op campaign to convince Henderson that someone was trying to steal the broach so he would bring it out into a bank vault or something.

 

Meanwhile, M approached Anwar, a Libyan spy, who was surprised to meet him. Anwar took MW head-bagged to a secret place to talk and M offered to tell him who had attacked their gas supply depot in Gadamas in 2002 if he would do a favor in return. M wanted Anwar to have someone in their organization merely mention Phillip Cowan as a friend in their conversations.  He said that Cowan would realize it was Ms doings and be forced to make contact to try and stop his career from being ruined. Henderson finally called for a re-visit but when M came he had Cristo there who had been tortured. M grabbed Henderson then escaped out the door. Barry told them that he had learned Henderson was going to move the broach to Dade Trust for safe keeping, so M gave him Cristo’s diamonds in payment. When they saw Henderson leave the house with the broach, they staged a fake robbery outside the bank and called the police so that they arrived conveniently at same time Henderson arrived and found the broach in his money belt. Phillip Cowan finally called M to complain that he had the FBI on his front lawn because the head of the Libyan secret police sent him a fruit basket. M told him he wouldn’t stop until he was told why he was burned. Cowan replied “I’ll be in touch, count on it.”  McKee paid Fiona $8,000 and she took it then told him to take a hike because her ploy to manipulate M hadn't worked. M did get her a new snow globe – “welcome to Miami.”

A “government worker,” Perry Clark, approached Michael Westen, ostensibly to review his case, so M “vetted” him by reporting him to the police to see how he would react. The police rousted him and he acted just like a bureaucrat so M figured that he was "legit." Fiona, in her tiring way, reminded M that it was her birthday and he should get her a present. Sam brought his new Cadillac, a gift from Veronica, to show off for M and told him that all he could find on Clark was that he was a "name in a cubicle." Sam also needed M to help him with a job which his girlfriend Veronica asked him to handle. Nick Lam was a bumbling post-adolescent, house-sitter whose fiancé, Dawn, had been kidnapped. He had been letting everyone think that the house and cars were all his so the kidnappers were demanding $5 million ransom and he didn’t' have it. He offered M $15,000 or his surfboard collection for his help. M acted as the hostage negotiator and demanded a video confirmation of life.

 

They arranged for a dropoff of the video at the mall and the idiot didn’t follow instructions and made a silly guesture at M when he had picked up the package. Of course that telegraphed to the kidnapper, Lucio Velasquez, that M and Fiona were there. After a chase, Fiona tazed Lucio and they took him hostage. Lucio said that he was only a "finder" and didn't know where the boss was keeping the girl.  So Sam tickled him to get him to smile and they took photos which looked like Lucio was double-dealing in order to convince him that he should help them locate the hostage. Reyes was the boss and they decided to scam him by enticing him into another kidnapping. Sam played the disgruntled bodyguard, Fiona was the potential victim and Lucio "found" them for Reyes. M played the negotiator, Andrew Chambers, who Lam's family had brought in. Reyes took M to a massage parlor to talk. M was able to bargain for $3 million and got 48 hours extension.

 

Fiona lusted over a Makarov Soviet issue side-arm from 1951 in the collection of the home owner where Lam was living. They set up a tracking device in Sam’s shoe for his meeting with Reyes – and he was able to beat him down into showing him where they kept the hostages.  Once he decided on a "better" hostage, Reyes decided to move up the deadline so he could do Sam’s job more quickly. M met with Reyes while Sam and Fiona went to blow down the door and rescue Dawn. When she was safe, Nick seemed to forget the $15 grand he had offered before; but, offered the surfboards which M said he didn’t want to take. Dawn slugged Nick for lying to her.

 

After being put off several times and blustering about needing to get some respect, Perry Clark finally came to Ms loft to talk about his case. He turned out to be an assassin sent by Cowan who then tried to garrote M with a wire. M braced his hand at his neck and got him to fall to the floor in front of his sink. M let go of the wire and smashed into the cabinet sink for his hidden gun; then shot Clark moments before he was choked to death. Clark ran out into the night wounded and was later found dead, with no ID, in an alley. He had apparently killed the real Perry Clark and took his identity.  M gave Fiona the Makarov for her birthday.

When Michael Westen went to obtain a fake identity (false flag) for his anticipated trip to visit Cowan in DC, he was recognized by the man he approached, Jumbo, who then tricked him into handcuffs. Fiona rescued him playing her ditsy girlfriend cover then began, again, with her tiring rhetoric about M “needing her.” She ragged on him that he didn't even carry tools necessary to get out of handcuffs and gave him a hairpin. When he got the handcuffs off he put her hairpin in his wallet. Sam suggested M try and get Lucy to do his ID in exchange for doing a job that she wanted them to do.  When she balked at making an ID for him, he again had to use his ‘puppy dog’ begging routing. She finally agreed but sent him first to a woman named Evelyn, who had asked for help retrieving her son who had been kidnapped by his father Doug Baker. Evelyn wept and clung onto M which annoyed Fiona. Then, when they went to search Bakers house it was being watched by some gangsters who surrounded them and they needed to escape out an air conditioner hole. Then Evelyn claimed she had been jumped by some guys at the courthouse, again fawning all over Ms shirt while Fiona watched. Fiona engaged M in some barely understandable rhetoric about "letting his emotions take control" then stalked off in a huff. (huh?)

 

Sam’s contacts reported seeing Doug’s license plate at Mangrove campground; but said he wanted to go out with Veronica, so M ended up taking Evelyn with him. Evelyn saw M put his gun in the glove compartment (huh?) and seemed to take umbrage with it. When they found Doug the story immediately turned 180 because he said that it was he who was hiding from Evelyn who was with people who had killed his wife. M immediately realized he had been set up to do all the leg-work by Evelyn and turned to find her pointing a gun at him and that she had sabotaged the firing pin on his gun so it wouldn't fire. M fixed his gun by using the hairpin he had gotten from Fiona. When Evelyn began driving the charger toward their cabin, M rescued them both by tossing a propane tank onto it, shooting it and causing it to blow up. Evelyn jumped out in time but they were able to drive off in Doug's truck.

 

Doug said that he was the controller for Greenway Cargo which was found to be a trafficking company by the FBI who had forced him to cooperate with them. His wife had taken their car and was killed with a bomb so he had sent his son away and ran. M and Sam tried to call Lucy to warn her that Evelyn would be in "cleanup mode" but found that she was away at a meeting "with a new client." They rushed to warn Lucy but M found Evelyn sitting at a table wanting to engage in conversation.  Evelyn said that they had met in Istanbul 7 years previously, in July, when she had taken out two diplomats and was nearly caught by M. Since then she had been stalking M which enabled her to contrive the scenario she used very specific to Ms weaknesses. She eventually revealed that she had paid to have Lucy run down. M did save Lucy but Evelyn told him she would begin going through the rest of his friends/family until he give up Doug. Sam called the US Attorney to set up bringing Doug in and then went to protect Madelyn at Ms request. Fiona got the armed escort ready. M anticipated that Evelyn had a source in the attorneys office and would learn of their plans; so, after casing to find where he thought Evelyn would be setting up in ambush, he waited for her and caught her in the act. She committed suicide but not before some more hokey writing where she wanted to know if M liked her!  Lucy kept M out of the investigation then unbelievably wanted to know if Evelyn had said anything about their relationship! (huh?) She gave M the new ID she had made; but, Sam came and said that his sources told him Phillip Cowan was coming down to Florida to see M.

Sam came with a job offer from his buddy Pete and offered it to Michael Westen; but, M was worried about the Phillip Cowan thing. Cowan did make contact but then didn’t show because Sam was there watching his back. Instead, Cowan left a friendship card containing a clipping about some activity in Belgrade. Gillian, a supervisor at a government contractor, S.X.G., told Sam that her friend Melissa was having an affair behind her controlling, abusive husband Kent’s back and had enticed her to sign in her lover as a guest. Her boyfriend then had stolen files, took photos and had begun blackmailing her to sign for packages from Turkey containing heroin.  Of course that put Gillian in the middle needing to sign for them so Melissa could smuggle them out the building. Gillian asked Sam to help; but, when confronted, incredibly the friend Melissa she said “I don't want any help” (Huh?) Mellissa claimed that she couldn’t even remember in which bar she had med “Dave,” the blackmailer. Cowan called Madeline and just said: “Van Buren Avenue,” which frightened her. Nate showed up, missing a meeting with an investor in his recycled titanium golf club business, and M asked him to stay with Madeline for protection giving him a gun and some money.

 

Sam made nice with Fiona trying to get her to help with Gillian. She said she would help but "for $500 up front, expenses and an hourly" – explaining she didn’t charge M because she “expected other things from M.”  M put together Cowan’s clues and went looking in South Beach for a “cutout” – a person hired to wait at a pre-arrange location and show a given “sign” in order to be recognized and to deliver a message. The message turned out to be on another friendship card and gave the time and date but only a newspaper clipping about a terrorist being killed in Budapest. Trailing Melissa’s credit card to a gay bar, and using a photo, Sam found that the guy was a hustler named Ray Wagoner and got his address. Sam haymaker’d Ray into giving the information that they needed but he revealed that he had only been hired to be in some photographs. Mellissa and her husband were the blackmailers.  Sam realized that he needed to bring in M and they decided to try and get info which they could use to counter-blackmail Melissa. Gillian offered more money because the job was getting bigger; but, Fiona took it upon herself to say they didn’t’ need any more money even though she expected Sam to keep paying her.

 

Sam coerced M into playing a green beret and getting to be buddies with Kent in order to get some blackmail info on him. M pretended to be Rod Bucksey a Green Beret who got out in ’97 and requested that Kent let him “use his hook at S.X.G. that his buddies in Istanbul told him about.” Kent said “he’d think about it.” Fiona acted like a self-centered ass the whole time to Sam while he needed her. As a distraction, Sam went to tell Melissa that he couldn’t find anything which would help so he was going to give up looking while Fiona put a bug in her phone. Madeline stormed into Ms loft dragging Nate with her whining about M giving Nate a gun and demanding to know everything. M had had enough and asked her just what she thinks he was doing, was he just playing games?  She demanded that he trust them because they were family and he asked back “just when would I have learned to do that?” Typical to her living in her own little world, she shot back, “you were the one who left us” which seemed to stun M. Incredulously, he only asked back “I was the one who left you?”  And Nate broke the tension with “and you still got the car.”  M told her that he had a meeting so she stormed out ranting about that he should get some furniture.

 

At the meeting Kent pulled a gun on M and demanded to know who had told him about their scheme so he could close the leak. M had to brake Kent's trigger finger so he could run while sniper-Sam kept Kent pinned down. Kent wanted to quit the scam but there was another package ready to be picked up; so, they decided to get it first and then “clean up the mess” before their bosses found out.  M and Sam decided to let Kent get the heroin out and then use it to bring him down. While Sam was staking out Gillian’s work, and M was waiting to meet Cowan, Fiona monitored the Mellissa's bug and heard Kent tell his boss that he had “set her car this morning.” M had to leave a “John 3:16” note on the sidewalk to reset his meeting with Cowan and go to prevent Gillian from being blown up. Melissa got the heroin out but while they waited in their van for the bomb to go off so they could get a “visual” for their boss, M disarmed the device. Then Sam and Fiona went to photograph and audio record Kent’s sale of the heroin while M went to meet Cowan at St. John’s church at 3:26 pm..

 

Sam and Fiona watched as Melissa found out that Kent had actually told his boss about Gillian and M.  When the buyer didn’t show up and they started to leave their car was hit by a stinger missile coming across the water. Men showed up and captured Sam; others tried but couldn’t catch Fiona because she jumped off a bridge. Cowan called the pay phone where M was waiting and said he was back at the first place and would leave unless M ran all the way there in 10 minutes. Cowan said it was ridiculous to think that one man did everything to M alone and then come to Miami to explain himself. He told M, “You are on the edge of something much bigger than me. The people I work for have plans for you. Powerful, dangerous people… and man are they upset with me. I misread you. I didn’t expect you to buck quite so much.” As he said: “you are making everyone nervous,” a single bullet hit his chest and killed him. M needed to escape, because police had already been called by someone, and called Nate to come and get him. When they arrived at the loft, and M was asking Nate to take their mom out of town, they spotted a bunch of stalkers waiting for them so fled. Fiona called saying that Kent’s boss was cleaning house and had taken Sam, she needed their help.  (Continued)

[Continued from previous] Together Michael and Nate Westen found Fiona hiding in the warehouse district, crashed into the building, tossed her a gun, built a bomb to put in Nate’s truck, rolled it out amongst the gangsters and escaped through a window during the explosion. Nate took them all back to a mansion under foreclosure in which he had been crashing and M dispatched him to bring Madeline there as well. Meanwhile, Sam was being beaten up in the hold of a ship but was smart-mouthed to his captors the whole time. Fiona retrieved some hidden firepower which she had squirreled away under an overpass. The lead captor used Sam’s phone to call whoever answered and find out who he was dealing with. M answered and said that he’d deal for Sam but wanted a photo as proof of life.  Sam chose to pose in a posisition like he had done in a previous photo which M knew about. Then M and Fiona had to break into Sam’s storage unit in order to find the photo and found that it represented a clue to tell them that the guys were going to kill everyone no matter what and that they should stay away.

 

Some men were waiting at Madeline’s house when Nate had gotten there; but, he stole a new car and ditched them. M had him buy some new burner phones for emergency use only!  M and Fiona set up a place where he could attempt contact of his old handler, Dan Siebels, and observe what kind of response it triggered. Within 10 minutes they had a response in armored cars so intense that they had to separate and flee back to Nate’s. The captor called back and demanded to see Fiona too – M agreed in order to buy time. Sam did everything he could to get his captors to kill him so M and Fiona wouldn’t need to show up. M asked Barry for the name of another heroin dealer that he could shake down for the name of the guys that had Sam. Barry initially refused so M had to tell him that "you and I are either friends or enemy’s.”  Barry said that Carmelo was the 2nd biggest dealer in Miami. While M was there, Barry’s phone rang and it was for M – a woman, refused to give her name but said they had “been trying to bring him in.” M told her to call back because he was busy. Barry wouldn’t take his phone back so they tossed in the river. They built a remote detonator on a dead-man switch and several explosive charges to plant in Carmelo's bar in order to get him to tell them the name and location of his largest competitor.  M argued that Carmello should welcome the chance to put out one of the competition but that if he didn’t - well then, M was really good at “raining down hell.” M didn’t even bother to use a cover ID, he plainly said that he was MW and “I used to be a spy.”

 

Carmelo called back with the name of Glen Harrick and said he lived on a boat. So, M set up a meeting with Harrick. Nate got Sam’s caddy back and the charger fixed; then he agreed to take Madeline out of town. M decided to drive Nate and Madeline to Ft. Lauderdale where he was going to steal a car that they could use to get away. His mom told him that he had always done a lot of things that she didn’t understand; but she knew that he’d always done them for the family. On the way to Ft. Lauderdale, it was obvious that cars were following them because Madeline had used the secure phone to call home to check for messages which allowed whoever the woman was to then tail her mobile phone. M got out of the car telling Nate to keep going then put a gun to his head and talked into the phone saying that unless they gave him some time he would kill himself. The woman called back and said that she’d wait and M said he would then come voluntarily.

 

Fiona made a “sticky bomb” to plant under Harrick's ship then M put on a dry suit and swam to the boat. When Harrick called M to set up the meeting, the phone rang outside his door on the ship. Then, when he went to check, M jumped him and they fought pretty evenly, banging against the cramped bulkheads. M was being choked and Sam jumped his chair over to slam the iron door on Harrick’s head. M grabbed Harrick’s gun out of his boot and shot him with it. Then, Sam and he escaped across the gang-plank and Fiona blew it up after they had gotten across. On the way back in Sam’s Caddy, On-Star called him and told him that his destination, 110 mile away, was being transmitted to the car. So, he let Sam out and was shown driving across a causeway and stopping at the back of a semi-truck with its tail ramp down. The woman called and told him that “we’re so looking forward to meeting you.”