Burn Notice Summaries

[Season opener] From inside the semi-trailer in which he had been riding, Michael Westen heard gunfire and explosions going on outside which put him on alert as the ramp door automatically began rising. A woman calling herself “Carla” called on his cell phone and explained that the destroyed plane and car that he was seeing in front of him was because “Jimmy didn't do what he was told" and now Ms job was to take him back to Miami and help him finish stealing info from a secure computer, like he had been told to do. Carla said “they” had been watching him for a while, but wouldn’t tell him any more than that. Emergency 911 had already been called by Jimmy and M had to toss him in the trunk and escape quickly, backwards through thickets so the air bags wouldn’t deploy in Sam’s Cadillac which he had borrowed. Jimmy explained that he was the one who had installed computer security for a company named “Security Associates” and Carla had called demanding that he go back and break in to get a memory dump from their computer. When he ran away, Carla swept down and kidnapped his wife and daughter. Back at the loft M found Sam eating toast and wearing Ms clothes - not having believed that M would be back any time soon. H explained to Sam that he was having to do a “we’ll kill you if you don’t do it” kind of job and Sam replied nonchalantly: “Never liked those.” He was smirking out the other corner of his mouth however when he saw what M had done to the Caddy. M took Jimmy’s phone from him because it had called 911 on a double homicide and would now be tracked by the police. Fiona came storming in, as usual tiresomely whining about the short length of the “I’m home” message that he had left on her cell phone [and probably more to the point, that the first thing he had done wasn’t to fall into her arms and shower her with affection]. While blocking the usual wild swing at him from Fiona, his mother called from where she'd been exiled, so he told Madeline that she could now come home.

 

Sam obtained the scouting info on Security Associates; basically, it was a private military company which was run by Ryder Stahl and took high-end, high-demand clients for mercenary work where “more guns equals more money.” Jimmy introduced M as Terry Miller to Stahl in a con to act as a British mining company executive who needed to buy Security Associates' services. Stahl’s men caught Sam and Fiona staking out the office, so MW had to shoot at them in order to sell his cover. As usual the two had been arguing in their car while waiting and weren't paying attention. Sam was defending M and Fiona was whining yet again that M wasn’t paying her enough attention. Madeline called from her home and demanded that M come over immediately, claiming "it's a disaster." He rushed over only to find that it was a burned out coffee pot which had blown a fuse and ruined food in the refrigerator! She gave M a cell phone that she had found in the glove compartment of the charger -- which turned out to be a phone planted by Carla. Carla had broken into Madeline's house in order to show M that she could. He told Carla that she now owed his mother a new coffee pot. Carla let Jimmy’s daughter talk to M about "not liking it here" and told him to hurry it up. M eventually made it into Security Associates in order to scout their security by showing his “unoxidized kimberlite, blue ground”  samples – diamonds. Their security was severe, even their computer was kept in a sealed room with a burn-vault which would melt the electronics should anyone attempt a break-in. If they were going to get at the computer they would have to tap the wires going running into the room. M had Fiona set up for some building maintenance in Iso-Gene labs, the DNA testing company on the floor above the computer vault. As typical, she wouldn’t do it without manipulating him into agreeing to have a heart-to-heart talk with her when they were done. Jimmy couldn’t teach M how to manage the electronic tap so he needed to go with M. In the meantime M noticed some badly done surveillance on them and chased the guy down. The “watcher” said he had answered an ad from some woman who paid him to watch and take notes. He then handed M a letter which contained a photo of Jimmy’s wife and daughter which was supposed to hurry them along. When Carla finally called M, he demanded from her that she retrieve for him the guns she had used to kill the two pilots and take Jimmy’s family to a location at a date he chose. She agreed, arrogantly claiming that she wanted this to be a “good experience for everyone.”

 

M and Jimmy set up a concrete saw to cut a hole that they could use to lower into the computer room. However, the night security called Stahl to report the “unusual activity” in the building and he showed up to check on it. Fiona and Sam were providing cover from their car across the street and of course they were arguing. Sam wanted help on what to say to Veronica about his wounds and damaged car. Fiona bristled at being his “girl consultant,” but eventually told him to say that he was "beaten up protecting a helpless man from a gang of ex-lowlife soldiers -- true enough." Meanwhile, when they finally got the download, in a gesture, idiot Jimmy raised his hand straight up into the path of the motion sensor which triggered all the alarms. M shot into the computer causing it to blow up, then shot out the upper window so they could rappell down to the street just as Stahl came crashing in to the room. Realizing that Stahl would now be trying to kill Jimmy at the first chance, M asked Sam if he could get a boat which was expendable. He knew of one and Fiona called to say that Carla had broken into the trunk of her car and left the hot guns. Of course she also had to rag on him to go see his mother, which he did. M found Madeline chain smoking, blithering about men and guns and leaving home and coffeemakers. She whined about now “finally seeing what you do.” M, showing more patience than was realistic, said “all these years you wondered why I didn’t come home, why I didn’t call. This is why. I never wanted this for you.” Even though she couldn’t argue with that she still needed something that she could feel sorry for herself about and said “that doesn’t explain why you didn’t write.”

 

Fiona set up the boat to explode and Jimmy called Stahl to exchange back the data. M had him use his old cell phone to do it which he knew was being monitored by “the feds.” Stahl came with his mercenaries and Fiona hid the hot guns in Stahl's truck. Police finally came while Jimmy was still stalling, talking to Stahl on the phone. As Stahl was approaching the boat he though Jimmy was on, M pressed the button to blow it up, which drew in the police to arrest Stahl. Sam’s friend sailed Jimmy to Haiti then on to Argentina where he met his family. Jimmy told M that he could have his Saab convertible when he was gone and asked who had it better: him who had to leave the country or M who had to work for Carla. M replied “you do.”  Back at the loft with Fiona they found that the data they stole had over 500 files of operations, most of them “pretty nasty.” They couldn’t tell what Carla might want it for – but it was a start. Fiona’s sighing theatrically gave M a clue that it was time for their “talk.” She ragged on him for making the wrong choice between going to find who burned him OR staying with her – as if it had been a test of some sort. Then she said that she would still help him but they “couldn’t be together” as if it was some sort of revelation she was making. He said: “I know… that’s what I said.” Fiona left and, in voice over, M said “… you don’t miss the scent of an asset when she leaves the room.”  Sam helped a woman at a bar with a crossword puzzle. Then while he and M were talking Carla called and M complained about her not keeping her promise that they would meet. She said "we did meet, tell Sam thanks for the help with the crossword." M got the puzzle she had left on the bar, which turned out to be a code about seeing him soon.

Michael Westen needed to de-code the crossword puzzle which Carla had left him in the bar – he called it “Steganography” but didn’t reveal the key. The message read “meet at Marwa Mall, noon.” Insecure Fiona (in her usual tiresome way) ragged on MW about Carla “flirting” with him. He told her it was past so-called flirting when she had tried to kill him and threatened his family. Fiona was supposed to wait in the car and Sam was to take a photo of Carla; but,  both were rousted by Carla’s people. Carla avoided photos, and was captioned as Ms new “handler” for whatever “organization” she was part of. Carla offered him a drink and he said that he’d "have what you're drinking" – which turned out to be qishr (Yemenis coffee) that she had brought herself because she was afraid of being poisoned. She handed him a security badge – integrated circuit processor, embedded hologram over laminate patch – which was impossible to duplicate. Her orders were to go to the only counterfeiter in Miami who could duplicate it and get Nefzi, a Tunisian, to do it. She said she liked “working with people like you” because they can do things on their own without getting her involved. She gave him a bag of money, saying that he could keep what he didn’t use, and a two day deadline. Her goons brought Sam’s camera which she threw to the ground after taking the film and Fiona’s keys – telling him that “the next time the kids stay at home.” Fiona thought the goons had been polite; Sam on the other hand was in trouble with Veronica over the damage to the Cadillac and now to the camera.

 

Barry would know where to locate Nefzi but was avoiding M because he “didn’t enjoy our last meeting.” Fiona refused to go, so M asked “do it for me” and she replied that "your charms no longer have any effect on me." She eventually did it for "all the yogurt you can eat" (which she takes anyway.)  Sam called M about a job he wanted to talk about. A lady named Sophia had asked Sam, in front of Veronica, to help with a stalker (which he said really turns Veronica on.) Sophia claimed that a low-life named Raul was stalking her at the restaurant where she worked and now has become possessive to the point of injury. M wanted to meet Raul, so went to the church where he picked her up every day. When he saw that Raul was packing a MAC-10, M became suspicious, especially because the lady had met Sam and Veronica in an expensive cooking class that she didn't look like she could afford. Madeline called under the ruse that she couldn’t find her coffee-pot warranty and wanted M to come over and fix her coffee pot. Fiona had to sneak into a massage parlor, where Barry was having an avocado and cucumber facial mask; and, after threats, Barry said to: “tell M that it’s nothing personal. Last time we met there was this ‘do this or we’re enemies for life’ vibe.”  He said they shouldn’t deal with Nefzi because he was ‘hard core’ doing fake money for coke deals, counterfeit passkeys for bank robberies, "you know stuff that gets people killed.” M found that fixing the coffee-pot was just another one of Madeline’s ruse’s to get him to go see a counselor with her ‘because it’s all your fault.’ Then when he resisted she again began whining about men and guns… until he agreed. Sam tailed Raul to his job where he was the boss of a warehouse which ran guns, Lidocaine and coffee – all things related to cutting and smuggling drugs.

 

Without Sam’s knowledge M confronted Sophia and forced her to tell the truth that she was actually a DEA agent watching drug king-pin Campos and Raul was an accomplice who had accidentally become possessed with her and was now compromising her case. She had targeted M for help when she had heard rumors of "someone who had helped take on the cartel" so tracked down who he had helped and was told that it was him. M devised to go undercover to Raul to do a deal, then make Campos think that Raul was going behind his back. Barry gave M some left over checks from a defunct shell company, which M could “wash’ in order to support his cover ID with Nefzi. He became a “colleague” of Nefzi who had gotten a job to duplicate a computer-key which was out of his league. He asked if Nefzi could duplicate it for him. Nefzi said that he wanted 10K and could do a “knock off  by tomorrow or a real good one which would take a few days.” M decided to give him a few days even though he knew Carla's deadline was nearly over. Madeline called again, this time pissed that he had missed the appointment she had made with the counselor. Then Carla (who must have been tailing him) called to see why he looked so upset. When he told her that they would have the key in a couple of days, then she was pissed that she wouldn’t get her duplicate key card by her deadline. He told her "it's the best I could do," and she rebutted "I don't think so."

 

M met Raul posing as an “expeditor” of shipments and offering his services. He went to apologize to Madeline and found that Carla had broken in again and replaced her coffee maker, leaving another crossword puzzle. Meeting Carla at the mall again, M found that she had broken in as a sign that she could, had been doing surveillance on Madeline, and warned that the next time he didn’t do what she wanted “it would be more than a coffee maker.” Fiona planted a GPS tracker in one of Raul’s trucks so that then M could tell him about it and convince him that he did have connections in order to sell his cover. At counseling Madeline’s issue was about Mike keeping secrets. She gave as an example that he hadn’t called her on her birthday EIGHT YEARS AGO! So he revealed the reason which made her feel petty for even asking. Then he decided to fight fire with fire and asked her why that when he was nine she hadn’t even asked about the black he had gotten from stealing a bag of groceries after his father had squandered his paycheck. Madeline didn't have an answer, it looked as though she had merely expected M to steal.  She told a lie then wanted to talk about something else. M backed her down for an answer a second time and she asked to change the subject. Walking out of the building after the session, Madeline said that she didn’t like the counselor but M smirked “it wasn’t so bad.”

 

Raul called and demanded that M come to the restaurant where he said that he had examined the phone that he had taken out of Ms glove compartment and found calls to Sophia on it which had been returned by Sophia. He had beaten her up trying to get information. M said that of course he’d called to do a background check on Raul; but that she wouldn’t give Raul up.  Raul believed M but said that he wouldn’t do a deal with him directly, only with Campos involved too. So, M had to devise plan "B" which involved Raul getting a call from Sophia, while M and Campos were meeting, in order to get him to leave the meeting thinking she was at work and someone was trying to make time with her. Raul told Campos he needed to leave to go help Sophia at work, which gave M a chance to intimate that Raul was doing something shady because Sophia wasn't at work that day.  Also he had Fiona take a shot at Campos through a window and blow up a truck to simulate that Raul was selling him out to the Mexicans. So, Campos went after Raul who then went to the DEA to cop a plea in exchange for maximum facility protection. Sophia was happy to talk to him in her true DEA role. M asked Sophia not to reveal any of their actions to anyone when she asked him how she could return the favor.

 

Nefzi gave the duplicate key to M and said that it had taken three prototypes. M paid extra if he could find out what lock that it actually opened; then, after leaving, spotted a tail and ran back to protect Nefzi. It was too late. Nefzi had already been suffocated by nitrogen gas pumped into his closed back room. M retrieved the money he had given Nefzi and an extra copy of the key that Nefzi had made. M went to pick up Madeline for another counseling session and found that she had cancelled it because she was going to find another counselor "who asked better questions." He told her that he wasn’t going to talk about when he had been away, but that if she wanted to spend time together he would take a potter class with her. M met Carla and gave her all the extra money back saying that he’d never work for her in that way and she said that she would hold onto it for him. She reluctantly agreed to no more high powered rifles or nitrogen gas and walked away. As she was leaving, M asked her about coffee in Arabic and she responded in Arabic that she had another meeting. M called Sam and told him that Carla "speaks Arabic with a Kurdish accent!"

Instituting a reconnaissance con at the Pakistani consulate, Michael Westen told Sam that one perk of being burned was that his crimes were just plain crimes and not acts of war. While Sam diverted everyone’s attention by complaining loudly, M posed as Rich Franklin of the Miami Harold who was of course ushered back into the offices. Then when Waseem, the director of “security,” went to handle Sam, M stole some documents from Waseem’s desk and left a note. M tried to clandestinely obtain some car parts from his mother’s garage but he was caught and forced into the card game she was having with her friends including Phyllis and Fiona. His telling her that Fiona and he were no longer “seeing” each other just set her off on another "got-to-know-everything" tirade. Phyllis was talking about her friend Diane whose son Andy was in trouble with a loan shark, and just to annoy M Fiona volunteered his services to help, with a smirk – as usual a referendum on their relationship (or what she thinks is the lack thereof). It turned out that Andy had been swindled by Zeke, the owner of a club in South Beach called Velvet, into making an investment in Cuba which was only a con. After giving the money, they were rousted by mock FBI men who then kept his money for “evidence.” M explained to Andy and his mother that it had been a commonly used con and devised a plan to get the money back. Fiona went to the Velvet in order to get invited into the back room and crack the safe, while M went to visit Waseem.

 

Michael struck out because Waseem said he’d rather take his chances on a document leak than to ask for an eyes-only dossier on a foreign operative, even from 15 year ago. At the Velvet, Fiona did get into the back room by flirting, but found that the door needed a key card which Zeke kept on him all the time. And, to make things more complicated, the loan shark came to muscle Andy into paying so M had to intervene by knocking Baranski's two goons for a loop. Baranski agreed to extend two days. Back with Waseem, M crashed his picnic with his girlfriend by saying: “What’s up, Waseem?” Then M made a show of giving the stolen package back while Sam took photos. Andy paid M for helping with a bag full of cell phones, then let Madeline in the door even though M called out: “No.” As usual Madeline just came to stick her nose in Ms business wanting to know what had happened between him and Fiona. He wouldn’t say, so Madeline said "well I'll just talk to Fiona." M posed as Davis Cullen, some oil baron’s kid, and Fiona introduced him to Zeke. Fiona lifted Zeke’s key card and M excused himself to go to the bathroom only to find that the safe was wide open and filled with fake wads of cash. So, M used his cell phone to plant a bug in Zeke’s computer, just as Zeke’s partners arrived. Sam came to Zeke posing as the sole executor of the Cullen trust and set the stage for M being unstable and causing incidents. When Sam heard that it was about Cuba he walked away saying that "it was out of the question."

 

Madeline manipulated Fiona into a "talk" trying to worm information about their relationship. She appeared to believe Fiona when she basically said that she couldn’t be second fiddle to a job. M put the bite on Waseem using the photos that Sam had taken as blackmail and offered the rationale that: "if your superiors realize that you've been approached by a burned spy, and possibly compromised, you would probably be relocated." Back with Zeke, Sam came to him again pretending that M had forced him into doing the deal, and asked for paperwork "not mentioning Cuba"; but, also demanding to see matching money from Zeke in the escrow account. Zeke, who had previously refused to put any of his own money into the deal, eventually agreed but his partners vetoed the idea, telling him to "cut him loose."  Back with Baransky, M called to get more time and was granted some; but found that the shark was holding Diane hostage. M asked Barry to make $200,000 appear in a numbered account to help the con; but Barry said that he could only make it appear to bounce it in for only about 5 minutes before it was caught and removed.

 

At Zeke’s house, M came to do the deal and had the money transferred while they watched on the computer. Then, as usual, Zeke notified his partners to come pretending to be FBI for the "kiss-off"; but before they could Sam posed as the Miami Dade Police to arrest the posers. He and Fiona captured the partners and blew up their car so M could tell Zeke that the people he had borrowed the money from had ID’d two FBI men closing in and killed them. Zeke got all flustered and told M that "the deal was off!" However, M said that "his backers" would be coming after him next if he didn’t give the money back with interest. Zeke took M to his real safe, which was right behind the bar at the Velvet all the time, and gave him all the money he had ($246,000) which M then paid back to Baranski: "$200k, plus the vig, minus $300 for a lifetime subscription to Cat Fancy magazine to remind you to keep your hands off people’s mothers." Andy offered his services to M "if you ever need them." And, finally, Madeline told M that she understood about him and Fiona, and wouldn’t talk about it any more; except that she kept on talking anyway. She said “life is hard if you have to live it alone…and having kids just makes the ride more fun.” Lastly, Wasseem brought M a folder with info about Carla, including a photo, although it had been heavily redacted. M gave his blackmail photos and negatives back to Wasseem which seemed to surprise and relieve him; “you’re a man of your word,” he told M. After looking at Carla's photos, M told Sam that he thought he had just found her cover.

Michael Westen discovered that Carla’s cover in Kurdistan had been in agriculture. Fiona noticed a Lincoln Town Car following them and when M maneuvered to catch whoever was in it. He discovered that the driver was Nate who said that he had been following him in order to make sure that M wasn’t being followed. He said that he wanted M to help him with a problem that a Russian friend at work had. Katya said that her sister, Elena, had been trying to come to America and fell into the hands of some smugglers who were now ransoming her. Nate told Katya not to worry because "M does these things every day." Fiona was doing surveillance, hoping to track the slave-trader back to where the girls were being held, and Sam was working on trying to locate Carla's headquarters.  He contacted the secretary treasurer of the Agricultural Association of South Florida, President of the Miami Water Resources Board and Vice President of Soil Scientists, Harvey Gunderson, trying to get a list of agricultural specialists in the area. Harvey wolfed down his food, like he was entitled to everything he wanted, milking Sam for lunch without giving him any information. Sam came back with a $600 bill and said "I've had gunshot wounds that hurt less than this hangover."

 

M, Nate and Katya saw that Ivan, the man who had contacted Katya for ransom, had Russian prison tattoo’s all over him.  A spade meant that he was a thief, tiger meant enforcer and the skulls meant murderer.  Fiona said that Ivan only collected money and never went near the girls or made contact with them in order to prevent cops from being able to make a case against him. So, they decided to “do the interrogation thing” and sent Fiona to “bag him” which she did. Ivan knocked the stun gun out of her hand and when she grabbed it back he was holding onto her leg saying that she didn’t dare use it because she would be zapped too. He didn't know Fiona. She did, and they both went down for Sam to bundle up.  Then, even though they had Ivan gagged, Fiona told M that Ivan had "asked me to use the stun gun on him again" – using his expressive eyes. Sam’s sources found that Ivan was linked to a Russian syndicate which was active on the whole east coast and run by a guy named Takarov. Sam got excited to get back into his specialty, interrogation, and found an abandoned concrete plant which they set up to look very professional. Sam told Ivan that he wasn’t CIA but to just think of him as “Uncle – uncle Sam."  Then, realizing that Ivan was Gulag-Tough", Sam said that the only way to break him was to give him a "prison friend," for which MW was elected. Nate acted as a second guard. In order to get in character, M had to have Fiona slug him a couple of times to make real bruises. Seeing what was happening, Nate gave M a sucker punch and bloodied his nose.

 

The first thing M did was to pick a fight with Ivan using sambo, the mixed martial art of Russia, designed to sell his cover-ID. Ivan’s first revelation to M was that Takarov was near both a café and a deli, so Sam and Fiona found the place.  A thermal camera told them that the upper floor of the building was heat shielded. Sam faked a complaint with the food so Fiona could sneak upstairs to find that there was only software pirating going on. Then Fiona had to extract Sam from Tarkaov's goons by calling him “Daddy” and saying that he had dementia. Back with Gunderson, Sam had to break down the food slobbering, wine guzzling Gunderson by threatening him with the U.S.D.A.!  The fool said that he'd have the information the next day, in order to avoid loosing all his club affiliations.  Then, Ivan told M that only he knew the location of the safe-house where the girls were being kept and that if either anyone but him came to the house OR he didn’t come by Friday the girls would be killed. So, M decided that the only way to rescue Elena was to let Ivan escape and take him to the house thinking they were doing Tarkarov a favor by moving the girls.

 

At first Nate argued with M but then finally agreed. Of course Madeline was eavesdropping and tried to make M feel guilty for the way he treated Nate. She said that "his first word was Michael" but M reminded her that he had been there and he knew it to be “juice.” She countered with “well he was looking at you when he said it.” She said that Nate’s first serious trouble started right after M had left – so, she said, "you should give him a chance.” M had Ivan distract Nate while M could slip out of his handcuffs, then fought with Nate and finally shot him and Sam, outside the room, so Ivan would believe they were dead and take M to the girls. Sam and Fiona followed M and Ivan to Hialeah. After they got the girls into a van, M sent Ivan to tell Takarov what they had done. Sam, Fiona and M took down the guards and released the girls. Ivan had a rude awakening when he told Takarov what had happened. Later, M found that Takarov had skipped town and left Ivan’s body in a dumpster. Nate milked his feigned injuries which M had given him, to the max. M told Nate that he couldn’t have done it without him and that he "was not always right." Fiona complained that Sam had spent $1,350 on Gunderson and only got a P.O. Box: "0044 Coral Key." M and Fiona staked it out, which Fiona obviously hated to do and whined about the whole time.

Fiona and Michael Westen were staking out Carla’s known post office box and, as usual, Fiona is completely absorbed with her own life thinking its smug to refuse her shift at watching the box. A secretary came to pick up the mail and they tailed her back to Carla’s office. Security guards were masquerading as handy-men so they called a pizza delivery to see if there was any security response – there was. Now to plan a break-in. Sam came for a visit with intel on the building and the idea of using a webcam for surveillance – that, and to show M his $8,000 watch which Veronica had given him for their "one-month-since-we-said-I-Love-You anniversary." Waiting at the loft when he got home was Trevor an ex-con with a problem. A cell mate had told him about a guy who had busted up his organization, so Trevor looked the guy up and now hoped M could help keep him out of trouble. The boss of his old gang, Timo, wanted him to be a get-away expeditor for a jewel heist in a “do-it-or-die” mode. M really made him beg but eventually after Trevor said that he’d "promised his son to stay clean," relented. M and Sam watched at the isolated boat-house while first-line picks for Timo's crew came in for some planning. There was: C.J. – con man and hustler; Gilbert Kessler – safe cracker; Kandi – the enforcer/muscle; and, Timo – the thief. M had Fiona try to get Gilbert busted for breaking his parole restrictions for drinking, which failed; so, Sam picked a fight with Gilbert and let Gilbert beat him up in front of police.

 

Unfortunately, taking out the safe-cracker didn't cause Timo to cancel the heist; so, M had Trevor introduce him as Joseph, a replacement safe-cracker. Back with Carla, M broke into the building across the street from Carla’s and set up a web-cam.  Then, after analysis, Sam found that there was a weakness with their security: a distraction at shift change. Sam had his special dinner with Veronica that night and she asked him to marry her! He said "now there's a question" but didn't give her an immediate answer. Back with M, he practiced his safe-cracking skills and Fiona kept interrupting saying that "C-4 is the answer." Timo took M to audition by cracking a convenience store safe and threatened to kill Trevor if he didn't crack it.  Timo gave M a cell phone that he had to answer "by the third ring, even if you are in the bathroom." M was able to manipulate the conversation enough to find out the specific kind of safe they were planning to crack and when it had been installed. Later, Trevor got the locations of the scatter points which he had to arrange getaway vehicles at. Sam revealed that Veronica had popped the question. Mikes advice: "Do you love her?" [She could be the one.] "Then say yes." [But it’s complicated.] "Then say no." [You’re a true friend Mike.]

 

They were able to find the location of where that specialized of safe was installed, then when they did surveillance of the hit site, they saw that C. J. was working an inside man.  They realized that they couldn’t inform the owners of the impending heist without C.J. finding out. Back with Carla, Sam hired a boy to skateboard down the alley and create the diversion so M could sneak in. Almost at the door, Timo called, so M had to turn around and leave without going in. While waiting with Fiona at Timo's boat shack, Sam revealed that he couldn’t marry Veronica because it was "against the law – I'm sort of already married." At least he hadn’t gotten around to getting a divorce from someone he had married on a whim for a day in the ‘70s.  Fiona advised him to tell Veronica the truth because everyone had skeleton's and she would understand.

 

M realized that Timo was starting the heist right then and the only thing M could do was to drop a note where Sam might be watching him do it.  C.J. Let Timo's heating-maintenance truck in the jewelry warehouse, with them all hiding inside, and the heist began. Outside, Sam tripped the burglar alarm early so they had to abort the heist, but before they left M made sure that everyone saw him show Timo something on the inside of his bag. Sam flattened a tire on the car that Timo was supposed to escape in, so he didn’t show up back at the boat-house with the others. M told the others that he had really gotten the jewels and Fiona blew up the boathouse to make it look like Timo had double crossed them. M hit Trevor, to sell the effect, and said he was going to go kill Timo. Kandi said that she would take care of it for them and she did. Back with Carla's office another time, Fiona was stalling going with M until Sam appeared with his suitcases saying that he was moving back into the loft because Veronica had thrown him out -- thank you very much Fiona! When M got into Carla’s office he found that it was empty except that Carla had left a photo frame of him attempting his last break-in with a message about "day jobs getting in the way", a bottle of champagne, Mylar “congratulations” balloons and another crossword puzzle.

The only clue Carla left on the crossword puzzle for Michael Westen was “Tidy Pelican” in Lumus Park, which turned out to be a garbage can near the chess tables. Victor, Michael Westen’s new “wrangler,” said he thought that "the clue would just go right over your head." In sunglasses and the same kind of shirt that Sam wears, Victor exuded self-importance and arrogance from every pore. He told M that he was "supposed to make sure the bronco’s don’t buck or wander too far from the pen." So M summarized: "like a rodeo clown." Sitting at the chess boards, Ms voice over said that "when meeting a new person it’s sometimes best to open with an aggressive move – you learn about people when you make them play defense." So, when Victor handed him a phone and ordered him to "keep it with you at all times" he shoved it back and basically said "no." He grabbed Victor’s wrist and held his radial artery hostage with the sharp end of the queen’s crown. Victor calmly clicked an under-the-table weapon’s hammer and held Ms groin hostage in return. He announced that “the people we work for are in to the whole carrot and stick thing – and I’m the stick.”

 

Sam, now on his own after the "whole Veronica thing", had purchased a new, pre-owned Buick with his pension money. M told Sam about Victor and asked him to go stay with his mother, Madeline, to body-guard her. So Sam feigned depression over the loss of Veronica and Madeline said “come on over.” When he got to Madeline’s, he got the drop on Ricky Watkins who was lying on the floor and seemed to be planting a bug. Actually, Ricky was really helping hook up Madeline's stereo. His brother Andre, who M knew, was doing 25 to life up in Starke and Ricky had now become the head accountant for Sweet Valentine Enterprises (a company owned by a gangster-thug, rapper and hip-hop mogul calling himself Valentine.) Ricky told M that he was being set up for the embezzlement of $2 million out of a “charity” account by Valentine’s second in command, Eddie Ash. Ricky offered M $10,000 to break in and get Eddie’s "other" set of books. In the middle of staking out Valentine, Victor called M and demanded they meet at the beach. When M got there it was simply “were doing a job,” just to let M know that he was being tracked by his phone. When M tried to remove the bug he found a note tucked inside specifically to him stating that he better not remove it. So, M merely put the tracking phone on call forwarding and left it home.

 

Fiona said that now she was on the “open market,” i.e. M was not paying her the attention she wanted, she needed new shoes and wanted M to now pay her for her “tactical support.” They called in a bomb threat to the building next door to Valentine's building so M could break in to Eddie’s office. It worked, but he only found that Eddie had prospectuses from several money-laundering business opportunities. M had to escape out the false ceiling when the guards came back in. Plan "B" was to con Eddie into laundering his stolen money with M under a cover ID. Barry set up an introduction to Eddie for M through intermediaries and Sam set up the cover ID of Jimmy Glynn a real estate developer. While M was closing the laundering deal with Eddie, Victor showed up railing about M leaving his tail-phone at home and deliberately blew the deal with Eddie. Obviously he’d been stalking M to the point that he knew to switch into a Boston accent and call him Jimmy Glynn. Afterwards, M needed to take more time to rehabilitate his cover ID with Eddie; so, Fiona had to keep the nervous Ricky busy with conversation about discounts on new shoes. When they next met, M blamed his FBI tail on Eddie, which got him to think that the FBI was now closing on them both. M also had to have Fiona prevent a hit on Ricky at his house which was put on him by Eddie.  Then Sam and Madeline pretend to be FBI surveillance in order to make Eddie more nervous.

 

Back with Victor, he explained that M was to be the driver/lookout for a heist of something that would fit in the trunk of Ms car. So M altered the car's trunk into an x-ray device so he could find out what would be in the wooden crate.  Finally, M manipulated Eddie into coercing him into moving his money off-shore; but, M said that he wouldn't do it until after Ricky was dead because otherwise it would be too risky. M had to set Eddie up to go kill Ricky himself, of course using a gun which wouldn't fire and while Fiona had “arranged” for Valentine to be listening in the back room. When Valentine heard Eddie confess then pull the trigger several times, Valentine took Eddie out on his boat and didn’t bring him back. Ricky offered to pay M but was refused until Fiona snorted, obviously saying that she wanted paying for new shoes.  Finally, at the heist with Victor, M used incendiary rounds in a shotgun to thwart the security guards by setting their tires on fire then blowing up some barrels of inflammatory liquid. He then had Fiona develop the x-ray which revealed that they had just stolen a  Russian Dragunov sniper rifle.  Then, Madeline disclosed to M that she had figured out why Sam was at her house and thanked him for protecting her; but, she said, "the next time you think I need babysitting you should just tell me" (yeah right).

Michael Westen and Fiona waited along the beach for an arms dealer she knew to show up, so M could get information about the Russian sniper rifle Carla had Victor and him steal. Fiona made it obvious that she had just gotten a text message so that she could let M know that "it was a guy who had just asked her out." Fiona described her arms dealer, Seymour, as a “little eccentric." He eventually showed up and immediately started walking toward the beach, dragging M along, in order to trick him into being "muscle" for an arms deal.  The buyer, a Bulgarian named Pavel, only gave half the $100 thousand that Seymour claimed they had agreed on. M had to disarm Pavel and his companion in self-defense and all of them had to flee and dodge bullets. Of course the Bulgarians decided to follow M and Fiona’s car in stead of Seymour's so M had to drive so erratic that Pavel couldn’t follow in his larger SUV. When M got back to the loft, Virgil was there asking for their help trying to help the daughter of Jay Flores, an old buddy in the repo-business, who had some pharmaceuticals hijacked. The woman, Marcela, ran a medical relief agency which had a ship boarded by pirates. Virgil and Sam double teamed M into finally agreeing then Virgil wanted to borrow the phone to call Madeline. M bristled and told him he wasn’t going to see her this time because he nearly got her killed last time. [In the middle of an odd scene, the writers threw in a boy kicking a ball, one guesses in a hokey attempt to get all cutesy; but it seem to come out of nowhere and added nothing to establishing the story line.]  So, MW was after $1 million in drugs from unknown pirates.

 

Madeline had M come over and clear out boxes without telling him why; but clearly she was also expecting Virgil, who M disavowed seeing. Virgil just helped himself to wearing Ms underwear, claiming he forgot to pack “enough.” [Not sure why the writers thought we’d get a kick out of seeing Virgil blatantly disrespect M wile asking him for a favor.] Sam got a lead on a guy who dealt in black market drugs so M and Virgil went to see if he knew anyone trying to sell anti-viral pharmaceuticals. Virgil and M photographed people coming out of Feldman’s golf store while Virgil tried to belittle M for prohibiting his visit to Madeline. M told him: “I'm not uncomfortable, you attract bullets. Too risky.” Then, typical for a man who was so pathetic he’d steal underwear, he flippantly announced “what’s a few bullets?” With M threats to make his customers public, Feldman disclosed that a man named Gerard, a total psycho, had a million dollars of antivirals for sale, and was coerced into making an introduction for Sam. The next meeting with Seymour was yet again another trick to get M involved in his gun deal with Pavel. This time M bailed and let Seymour get shot at. Sam went in to Gerard’s hangout pretending to be a buyer, but was told that the drugs had already been sold.  Sam suggested plan "B" was to drag M even further into Gerard's business.  Sam posed as a buyer for a whole new heist under the condition that Gerard use M as an inside tech man. Virgil told M that he had helped a man in Ft. Lauderdale sink his Catamaran before his ex-wife could get it; so, he may be able to get him to lend them a boat for their con.

 

Madeline showed up at the loft unannounced, with a store-bought pie she had sprinkled cinnamon on and called her own, trying to get information about Virgil. M met her on the stairs saying he was leaving and told her that he’d call her if he did see Virgil. Fiona ragged on M about keeping Madeline away from Virgil in order to manipulate the conversation into putting the screws to M about her dating someone else. M just ignored her obvious treachery by saying he was "fine with it." Back at Seymour’s, he tried to give M a share of the gun sale money but M threw it back at him saying "we don't work together!" Finally, Seymour actually listened to what M wanted and said he would make some calls. Back with Gerard, Sam pitched a partnership to heist some designer performance enhancers. When he agreed, Sam told him that he had to bring in a tech from the company to make certain of their quality and safety. M pretended to be “Jackson” a nerdy, asthmatic, chemist and let Gerard dominate him. While he and Gerard were scoping out Virgil loading the boat, Madeline showed up, having tailed Virgil since he had left the loft. Virgil told her that he was in the middle of something and to go away which obviously hurt her feelings. Gerard made M stay the night with him, so M had to “called in sick” to Fiona, who then missed her date in order to come and to get the message that the heist was on for real. Sam and Virgil made up coolant containers and loaded them on the boat using Ms refrigerator from the loft. Fiona told Sam that she wished Gerard would knock M around a little for making her miss her date. “I don’t want him killed,” she said, “just bruised.”

 

On the way to the heist in the boat, M asked Gerard for the mask that they had agreed he could wear to avoid recognition and was told that he didn’t need it because they were going to kill Virgil. Voice over said that “dealing with a trained operative is like playing chess with a master. Dealing with criminals is like playing checkers with a three-year-old. They like to change the rules.” So M then demanded a gun, ostensibly in order to protect himself from flying bullets. When they boarded Virgil’s boat from their Zodiac, M went straight to Virgil and pretended to be recognized so he could have an excuse to shoot Virgil himself, knocking him in the water. Then when they got the fake drugs back to Gerard’s warehouse M had to wave off Sam and Fiona from storming in, because the warehouse was so huge that there was no way to find where the antivirals were stashed. They decided plan "C." yet another sting to get them to move the drugs. M went back to Gerard claiming that Chuck Finley was a sociopath who killed all his former partners. “If the devil had a name,” M said, “it’d be Chuck!” Gerard went to his warehouse in order to move all his drugs and took M with him.  First Fiona called the cops, then Sam (as Finley) drove a truck to the scene and blocked an exit. While Gerard was emptying his guns at Finley's supposed men inside the truck, M shot at bags of Acetone Peroxide taped under the running board which blew it up. The cops came just after M had driven off in Gerard's truck with the antivirals. In a sort of denouement, M called Madeline to meet them and told Virgil to take her somewhere without guns.

 

Seymour called for them to come back to the house, then attacked them saying that when he had asked about the gun he had found the place burned to the ground and the owner killed. M and Fiona were no match for him and he was quickly pressed into a table with gunpowder spread on his face. He finally revealed that all he knew was that a guy named Bill Johnson had picked up some stuff for the gun like: specially calibrated muzzle brakes, night sights and a fiber optic camera. Once he had the items, Johnson had killed the seller and burned the shop. M said that "put on a sniper rifle it would be for proof of death." Fiona got a gun with laser targeting assist out of the Seymour. Bill Johnson could be anywhere!

Michael Westen and Sam were canvasing every Bill Johnson in the Miami area, looking in their garbage for signs of spying. On the tenth one they found a “dog lady” and garbage sacks full of shredded documents with bottles and bottles of laundry bluing and prunes – to which MW said "we’ve found our spy." Back at the loft M was confronted by Larry Sizemore, a former sociopath/partner of Ms, who was supposed to be dead. He claimed to M that he “missed working with you.”  H said that he was now doing freelancing and had more business than he could handle. He had a job in Miami that he thought M might be interested in. It turned out that Larry wanted to pay M a lot of money to kill a lady. Apparently Larry didn’t have as much problem as M had to go through to obtain the MW burn dossier, because he said that he had read it and thought: “finally the kid gets it.” Believing that M had actually done all the things in the file, Larry now wanted to tap M as a partner. He wanted M to kill Jeanne Anderson, a cancer nurse who married one of her rich patients who had put her in his will and is now in a coma. Rather than refuse and watch the deal go down, M decided to  take the job and make it fail – hopefully also getting rid of Larry at the same time. In parting, Larry warned: “like always, if a cop gets within a mile of this, I kill everybody!” M asked Fiona to meet him, but when she came she brought her boyfriend, Campbell, who she was obviously fawning over to make Michael jealous. M asked her to help finding out who was paying for the hit Larry wanted him to do. Fiona went to meet Jeannie, the "hit" or "dead'ee" as Larry called them, at a charity event and manipulated her into the restroom where M could have a private talk with her. M explained that he had been hired to killer her, but wasn’t going to, and that Fiona would now be her protector/friend and stay with her. She told him that it must be Drew, her step son, who was very angry when she got written into the will.

 

Madeline appeared at the loft "bringing some left-overs" and saw Ms bruise from his previous fight with Seymour. When M said it was nothing, she flew in to her original purpose which was to whine about the “wall that you put up" and to get him in to counseling… AGAIN. This time with a different counselor. When M finally acquiesced she turned with a smirk and said 1 o’clock. Sam came with the military folder on Bill Johnson which he had obtained from a “buddy.”  Johnson had been a model marine for 20 years and a “big deal” sniper, but had been dishonorably discharged and now sublets a room in the house with the yappy dog. Back with Fiona, while searching Drew’s room, she planted a cell phone bug and was nearly caught. They then heard drew call his drug supplier and tell him that the hit couldn’t go down at the house because of Fiona. Obviously, Larry wasn’t the only hit-man that Drew had hired! Larry came to the loft and saw Sam, which didn’t set well. Sam told Larry that he still looked quite youthful – “still drinking the blood of children?” When Larry was told of the double booking, he picked up a screwdriver and flew into a rage, listing all the people who now had to die. M talked him into letting him convince Drew to call it off so that "if Jeannie lives the cops will never hear your name." Then M went to drew, using the cover ID of "Larry Sizemore," to put the scare of Bergeezus into him and get him to call off the two other people he had hired.

 

Madeline’s new therapist nearly put M to sleep with his blithering pontification; then, assigned them some “lifework” -- to "make a list of five things you are grateful to the other person for." Madeline thought that was a great idea, M was incredulous. M wanted to borrow his dad’s old gas company uniform, but, not finding it, eventually accepted Madeline’s suggestion that he use the "exterminator uniform instead" and tell the dog lady that "you have poisoned her lawn by mistake and now her dog is in danger." So that became the first thing on his lifework list: “mom set me up with a cover ID.” Sam put bugs in Bill Johnson’s room while M found a crossword puzzle code for “fourth floor conference room” that Carla must have sent him. Then, at Drew’s restaurant, M found him waiting with a gun behind a door, because he couldn’t call off one of the hits – a guy was on his way right then to kill her with a truck and had jammed her cell phone. M threatened to kill Drew right then but he begged to be allowed to run and never come back, to which M agreed. M stole a truck and headed to save both Fiona and Jeannie. He found the assassin in a dump truck, got in front of it and slammed on his brakes -- making the truck climb up on top of Ms truck. Seeing the crash, Fiona rushed tenderly to hold him. Larry was upset over M costing him a bunch of money but was impressed with the dump-truck stunt – "I’m a fan man," he said. “Maybe we’ll work together again,” he said. “Yea, maybe not,” M said. Larry said he had another gig in Buffalo and left; but, Drew called later and said that a man named “Michael Westen” had come by and said the hit was still ON and he’d better be ready with the money.

 

On their bug, they heard Bill Johnson make a date to meet someone Saturday at 1500, and ask if this was it and would he get his pension back. Sam said that it sounds like another play from Carla’s “do what we say or we’ll ruin your life” playbook. M realized that now he needed to do something permanent with Larry who had just robbed a pharmacy. From past experience with him, they knew Larry was going to try and poison Jeannie. At a banquet, Larry sprayed Atropine on Jeannie’s fork; but, Fiona was ready for him and wiped it off. Jeannie faked like she was having a heart attack and was picked up by Fiona’s boyfriend Campbell in a borrowed ambulance driven by Sam and his “buddy.” Meanwhile, Drew was making the money payoff at a place where M was going to take Larry out with a rifle. Instead, the idiot looked up at Ms position, which tipped Larry off. Larry then held Drew in front of him and M didn’t take the shot through Drew, who he knew Larry would probably kill anyway. Larry broke Drew’s neck and called M on the phone. He claimed that M just "couldn’t kill his old buddy," and then left.  Finally, at their next counseling session, Madeline got angry blustering that M "couldn’t even come up with 5 real things – no wonder why you ran away, I was such a bad mother." M said he didn’t run away, he joined the military when he was 17 because his dad had signed a form. Madeline finally revealed that it had been she who had forged his father’s name on the form, because she knew that if he didn’t go he would end up in jail, or worse. “I let you go,” she said, “because you needed to focus on something good.” M told her “thank you.”  Then, they followed Bill Johnson to his meeting and when they saw him use the badge that M had gotten Nefzi to duplicate, and the rifle that he had helped steal, Sam said that "Carla has turned you into the snipers personal shopper."

[Midseason teaser finale] Sam’s contact found that Bill Johnson, Carla’s sniper, was in Daytona blowing off steam. So, Michael Westen decided to throw caution to the wind and use his duplicate key card to get in and search the building that he had seen Johnson go into. The entire 4th floor was empty, except that he noticed the conference table, in a window lined room, had been moved. Tiny screw holes in the table indicated a gun perch. He noticed that the table and perch now pointed directly at a the point in the bay where a ferry passed, so he surmised that there would be a killing of someone on the boat. Of course, Carla showed up on her motorcycle just while M was in the building so he had to flee; but Sam put a tracking device on her bike. Sam began staking out Carla who was residing in a high class hotel. She swims well and is exceedingly careful to never talk in the open where anyone could use a rifle-microphone. She also had face recognition lock hardware installed on her hotel door. Sam collected all the room soaps and lotions which the attendants left and also found that the boat didn’t take reservations, so there was no way of telling who would be on it even if they found a date and time. While mike was hiding his duplicate key card in a slick in his door jam, Fiona brought Campbell over to taunt him. Campbell needed to ask M if he would do a job. One of the victims he’d been called out on in an ambulance run had been beaten up.  Even though M initially said no, Fiona manipulated him into acquiescing.

 

Henry, the manager of a private body guard company was beaten up by Lesher, a kidnapper, in order to get Henry to help them do a job. When Henry refused, Lesher killed Henry's boyhood friend and said there would be more unless Henry let him see personnel files on the people guarding a Venezuelan family, the Arroyos -- specifically the daughter Isabella. M had Fiona set him up with a cover ID as a body guard having a personnel file showing that he had a drinking problem, some money issues, an ex-wife and a couple of kids. That way, the surmised, Lesher would choose him to help with the kidnapping. Fiona incessantly kept trying to get M to comment on Campbell but she didn't want to hear Ms reply that "he's nice." M went to his mother’s for a “family thing” and found it to be a celebration for Nate’s new limo company. He had gotten his mother to mortgage her house for the money, for which M took umbrage, Nate storm out of the room and Madeline rag about not "supporting your brother."  "well, I’ll just let myself out," M said to no one.  M told Henry that he’d “done this before” and that he was just going to let slip enough information to make Lesher realize that this kidnapping wasn’t worth the effort. Lesher did pick M, targeted him at a bar and hinted at offering him a job, all the while M was pretending to be drunk and complaining that his ex wanted him to go to church all the time. Meanwhile, Sam saw that Carla was having lots of meetings with unknown international types. He was also able to obtain a copy of the hotel’s master key, along with a photo of the “room service guy” so M could get past facial recognition. M was able to find Carla’s slick and photographed pages of plans and operatives that she had hidden there, including: Jimmy, Nefzi, Bill Johnson, an unknown operative, Michael and Victor – but, no sniper target!

 

M told Lesher that he could "check him out" the next day when he dropped off Isabella to the country club. He also said that there were several more security guards than just him – "watchers watching the watchers" – and planted a bug in Lesher's car. Fiona monitored the bug while Sam and Nate acted as the extra security guards. Fiona ate Ms last yogurt then needled him that Campbell had made the tuna tahini but it was so good that they didn't save him any. M had to tell Fiona, yet another time, that Campbell was “nice.” Carla called M saying that she had a report of someone “using a keycard at a certain building” – M played innocent, saying he had given her all the keycards but he’d be happy to take her number and call her if he found anything. She warned him that things were “in the works, far, far over your head… and there will be consequences.” He said he was a “good little soldier.” Nate told M that he was trying to turn his life around when M paid him to bring him limo and look serious. Lesher was impressed with the extra security and his accomplice was scared; but, he said the kidnapping had to go on because the people paying for the job had a multinational oil concession riding on getting the girl. Lesher then beat up M with the but of his gun and threatened to kill Ms fictitious wife and kids, demanding that he was "now going to help take the girl." M played like he was becoming increasingly overwhelmed by the whole situation. Campbell sewed up Ms head.  M said he had to convince Lesher that he "just didn’t care if he called the police."

 

Bill Johnson came back into town and Carla began having more meetings. M called Lesher in the middle of the night, saying that he wasn’t going to help any more, and used Bible Proverbs 27:17 to pretend that he had been "enlightened" and saw that Lesher "was only an angel sent to tempt him." The next day Lesher still couldn’t convince M to help, so he feigned calling off the snatch; of course, he then sent a hit man which M had to lock in his trunk. Henry called to say the job was still on only using a new security guard and Lesher now wanted Henry to help kill the guard. M told him that he should still just cooperate with Lesher but “when you see me, run.” Just before the snatch, M ran his car into the side of Lesher's car pinning them inside; then, stuck a “list of sins” on their windshield for the cops to see who were just then coming because someone had previously called them. Later, Fiona told M that Lesher had "tripped and fell on a knife" in jail. Again Fiona asked M if he liked Campbell. M said “I’m happy that he makes you happy,” which Fiona said she still didn’t believe.

 

Madeline called all frantic that some men were there arresting Nate claiming that Nate's business was merely a money laundering company. She also said that a woman named Carla had called to say that "Nate was in trouble and that M should stay out of other people’s business." Sam reported that Carla was just then on the move, so they all went down to the dock following her. M saw that Carla was meeting with the one operative that they couldn't recognize in her photos. He also recognized that Carla's people were now surrounding them, so surmised the hit was on and that she wanted him to be there to watch it happen, or to be set up in some way. He escaped on a stolen motorcycle, with Fiona’s help, trying to get back to the loft for the keycard, so he could go to the building where Johnson would be to prevent the shooting. He avoided Carla's goons but then Carla chased him on her motorcycle. M needed to escape by sliding under a semi-truck’s trailer, where she decided not to follow. M had just gotten back to the loft and was opening the door when Sam called to say that the sniper had been blown up by someone who had planted a bomb on his front door. M jumped back over the stair-rail just as his own door blew to smithereens in a fireball … (to be continued).

“Work long enough (as a spy) and the line to kill you gets pretty long,” Michael Westen said in voice-over “Still, getting blown up isn’t something that you get used to.” Sam shook Ms unconscious body awake, it was on the ground where he had bounced after hitting his car’s roof. He had been unconscious for about 20 minutes and Sam had to out-run Carla’s goons in his new car by crashing through some scaffolding. Still being hunted, they tried to keep moving on foot but his post-assassination, adrenaline, hyper-awareness made him spot a guy who was about to kill himself by running into a bus. Of course, they had to take the guy, Kenny, back home where he revealed that he had a son who had a heart condition, had blown all his money in a drug scam and now couldn’t afford a real treatment. M offered to help him which blew Sam’s mind. Sam told M, “I know you, if it hadn’t been this guy it would have been someone else.” “I’m running on fumes here Sam, this is all I’ve got,” M replied. They spotted one of Carla’s goons tailing them so M picked up a rock and went to greet him in order to have it out with Carla. Sam threw up his arms in disgust and M next appeared wearing a black hood and bound to a chair. He eventually screamed at Carla that "I'm flattered that you think me so devious that I would blow himself up.!" He yelled: "I want my brother out of jail" and "I want my life back." As though she had a stench under her nose she screwed up her face in disgust and only said: “we’ll be in touch.”

 

Fiona went to check the explosive signature of the bomb and Sam found that the medical scammers had gotten their leads from a source at a Coral Gables clinic. Sam posed as a patient with a liver problem trying to bribe the receptionist into fitting him into the appointment schedule; and Fiona posed as an additional scammer who sold him Apatadine out of her trunk. The real medical scammers were watching and sent Todd, their enforcer, to deal with the unwanted competition. M posing as Donnie, Fiona's partner, put Todd in Fiona’s trunk. Then Sam set up an empty-for-remodeling building for interrogation, saying that his buddy was the building manager and they could use it. Doing the interrogation, Sam cut his own thumb with a knife to impress Todd that he was nuts so he would spill the beans. Todd said that a guy named Phillip, who hangs out at a bar named Teasey’s, had hired him for muscle. While Kenny made treatment arrangements M took Jack, his son, to Madeline’s for babysitting. Madeline put out her cigarette just long enough to go find some of Ms old toys for Jack to play with, "if they haven't been blown up or taken apart" – giving M a scowl as she did it. Fiona decided that she would make M beg too, by claiming that she was supposed to meet Campbell her new boyfriend. Eventually Fiona agreed to stay with Madeline in order to keep them safe from Carla.

 

They ID'd Phillip at Teasey’s and took him to their interrogation building to be with Todd. Sam overheard the two talking about their "lady boss" who would be worse on them than M would if they talked. So… M and Sam played “who talks first” by tossing Todd out the window tied to a chair, which got Phillip to spill the beans about their boss, Rachel. Phillip was coerced to make an introduction for M and Fiona as Donnie and Kate, two new medical scammers to the area.  Carla called M back to her hideout, apparently worried about being targeted by the bomber as well. She told M that “they” wanted M to work to “catch the bomber” with the idea that whoever it was might take another shot at M. M said he wanted his brother out of jail and she agreed, then smirked that M could go back to his “side-job” and that he should “say hello to all the desperate little people for me.” M called Fiona for help but she said she was playing army men with Jack. Fiona and M met with Rachel in order to ostensibly “co-exist” in the scam market. However, as brain dead as some of their clients, Fiona picked a fight with Rachel and blew the deal, just after Rachel had bragged about her last deal buying a house in Keystone Island.

 

Completely exhausted M sent Fiona home and didn’t see any other alternative for them than to go to Carla and ask for money because she had offered it before. Sam, however, stood in front of the door and wouldn’t let him do it. M shoved him, Sam shoved back and M clobbered him. Sam said that he was going to stand there and take it, "until you get your head back in the game." M eventually backed down. M had the idea to recruit Campbell’s ambulance in order to make a run in Keystone Island with its sirens going, while M called Rachel on her phone.  That way Fiona and Campbell could triangulate her position using the sound of the siren. While in the ambulance, Campbell said that he had had enough and broke up with Fiona. He said that he was "just the guy you fool around with and borrow ambulances from,” but M was “the important one in your life.” M then called to make Rachel a new offer, she was to give them $250,000 and clear out.  Then he and Sam played like they shot Todd and Phillip over the phone, in order to convince her. She still refused but they were able to get her address from the triangulation and went to captured her just as she was leaving. Threatening her by shooting at her, they made her tell where her money was and then call the cops to confess and go to jail instead of being shot. “You better make it stick,” they said, “because when you get out…” they shot the wall behind her head.

 

M gave Kenny more money than he needed and Kenny gave M a drawing that Jack made of M and Fiona together. Fiona told M that the explosion in his loft had been caused by a professional; but, she said, they couldn’t go out the front door after they had set the bomb. M concluded that he could scan the security cameras of surrounding businesses. Then, he found that Carla had broken into the loft and had helped herself to one of his yogurts. He told her that the explosion had been done by amateurs, but she didn’t believe him and said that she expected results. He noticed that Carla was doing her own errands now and she replied: “exceptional times call for exceptional measures.”

The episode began, as it too often does, with Fiona ragging on Michael Westen for something that keeps him from doing what she selfishly wants in their relationship. This time she didn’t like that he was trying to find his bomber for information (and a possible friend) who could help him take down Carla instead of just doing it for simple revenge, like she would do! Fiona had found a security camera which would have covered the bombers entrance and exit to the loft, the company which installed it and even the model number of the device. M posed as an IT tech and blustered his way in to “switch out” their recording unit. They did see the bomber coming and going and were able to get a photograph of a guy who like he probably worked for the City of Miami Public Works.  Sam wanted to score some Dolphin tickets by doing a favor for a buddy, Shawn Martin, and committed M to help him with a problem for some 50-yard line seats. Martin was a junior league football coach for troubled kids and one of his players, Corey Jensen, had beat up a gangster, Felix Cole and was now being targeted for a hit.  Corey's sister had been molested by Cole and Corey went at him with a baseball bat, without realizing he was a gangster. M was just supposed to go get Cole to stop but obviously ended up doing more.

 

Carla appeared at the football field to bring M in for a “talk.” She disclosed that there were also other of her “operatives” which had been attacked and let M review all of her files, look but don't take. Sam, having picked up “the kids” to stay at Ms for safety, was on the way out to pick up pizzas when M returned to the loft looking – "remarkably un-bruised." He warned M that "this one has Fiona remarkably fired up.” Corey was relating to Fiona that Cole had taken Tanya for a ride then attacked her. She did escape so Corey went to "teach him a lesson." Cole had his guys try to shoot Corey in the streets and had put a hit out on him. Fiona kept talking like she was running the show so M asked her to step outside for a discussion. She rounded on him in such a rage that M had no choice... they were going to help. She acknowledged that she was letting her feelings run the show.  Their reconnaissance revealed that Cole stole cars for the "24K syndicate" where Tony Soto was the boss. Fiona wouldn’t listen to reason and decided that M, Sam and her were going to be a "new gang of car thieves who were coming to town." The two kids went to stay with Madeline and helped her clear out her cupboards of outdated food. Madeline said that someone had erased Nate’s arrest record. M replied that it was his “friends” who had put him into jail then had gotten him out. Madeline said that "sometimes I forget how complicated your life is."  Fiona, Sam and M put on white shirts, slacks, coats and sunglasses to become the new gang, which began harassing Cole by first pepper bombing their car, shooting their tires and letting a can of thermite burn through their GTOs hood and engine before telling them to get out of town.

 

Corey recognized mug shots of three of Cole’s “boosters.” Sam warned Coach Martin to "not hide exactly… just to be someplace where no one can see you.” They put together some shape charges to blow through the door at Cole's club and roust him a bit. M told him in a monotone, threatening voice that his name was Johnny and Cole had 48 hours to be gone.. and that his place was on fire. Fiona said that she liked this Johnny cover because it reminded her of when they first met in Dublin and he was Michael McBride who she fell in love with. M said it was because they had caused a lot of mayhem together, which is really what Fiona had liked. "With cover IDs", he told her, "you become who you need to be." "And everyone gets to guess who you really are," she countered flounced away.  Fiona posed as a "creator of calendars" to A.S.A. Dismantling and Demolition where Ms bomber probably worked. The foreman gave her photos of all his workers and she found the bomber. Back with Cole, M, Sam and Fiona rounded up all three of his "boosters" and put them back on Cole's porch all wrapped in duct tape with the message that they only had 23 hours left. Tony Soto called on Ms phone and demanded that M come to meet him. M told Soto that his crew "takes high end cars, cleans then and clones them and ships them overseas," not like Cole's crew who were amateurs. He said that he wanted to replace Cole. Soto tested him by having him a "clean" a hot car which he had just stolen. M and Sam got it ready for sale and Soto was impressed.

 

In a car meeting, Carla gave M the list of everyone who had ever blown anything up in Eastern Europe, which M had requested, and Fiona was on the list. Carla gave him the ultimatum to find the bomber within 2 days, then abandoned M on the causeway. Back with Corey at Madeline's, she showed Corey a Christmas photo that she had taken of her family when M was 15, and had a black eye from fighting his father about knocking his brother around. Fiona found the bombers name: Derek Poole; and that he worked part time for A.S.A. as well as getting his address. Coach Martin showed up at the loft after getting beaten up by Cole who had demanded that he "set up" a meeting with Corey. M told him to set it up then armored Corey’s car so they could take Soto to the meeting with Cole instead of Corey. As anticipated, Cole showed up in ambush and sprayed the car with bullets; so, Soto decided to get rid of him for good. M said that his gang was leaving town until Soto had cleaned up his mess.

 

On her own, Fiona found Poole’s house. It looked vacant so she called M who told her to wait for him.  She went in alone anyway and found it to be a fire-trap when the house blew up. M worried himself to distraction, looked all over town and left many messages on her phone. When he got back to the loft, she was already there complaining about him not having a land line. They got all tender that night. The next morning, M went out to get breakfast but when he got back he found Fiona gone and Carla there, not at all happy about being told M had struck out finding the bomber. She said there were "people who thought you were more trouble than you are worth," and asked him what he thought would happen to him if he didn’t find the bomber.  He replied "the same that would happen to you, I suppose." She threatened that he better start worrying about himself or he "wouldn’t be around to help anyone else."

The episode began, as pretty much most of them seem to do, with Fiona ragging on Michael Westen about something. This time she was whining about “if we looked for everyone who tried to kill you, we’d do nothing else.” Apparently she is so self-centered that she thinks spending time with her is more important than trying to find out who is trying to kill him!  She and M were crashing a pool party at Seymour’s to find out more information about the bomber who had now tried to kill both M and Fiona. M told Fiona that if she wanted to talk about what happened the other night (sleeping together after she was almost killed) he would; but, she said “we were just blowing off steam, right?” When Seymour saw M he called: “Security” but by that time Fiona had his security guy on the ground. Then, when Seymour pulled a gun, M had to subdue him as well. Seymour agreed to help if M would teach him some of his moves, and with the anticipation that he and M would be a “team.” Seymour said he’d front the cash to find Poole and Fiona pointed M to a job that he could take under a cover ID, but saying that she expected a commission. Sam made M the cover ID of Miles Parker and he went to see what Scott Chandler, Fiona's job, needed. Chandler said that his art gallery phone had been tapped and that he needed to protect himself from spies.

 

Seymour found that Poole, the bomber, worked for the city during the day but also moonlighted for the Russian mob, where he was their “go-to” guy. Seymour couldn’t get an address but said that the guy had a girlfriend, Bianca, and he had told his bodyguard to plant a bug in her car.  M told him it was stupid to do it in front of the Russian mob and had to stop the bodyguard before he spooked the girlfriend. M surmised that Chandlers spy was coming in the back entrance with the cleaning crew. He found and disabled a computer key logger on Chandler's computer and stayed overnight in the office so he could catch Melanie, the secretary, when she came to fix it. Melanie told M that she was trying to locate her father’s stolen painting. Her father had been the famous artist, J.D. Blake, whose health was failing when he had struggled to paint "Lady in White" worth at least 7 million. Chandler kept badgering him to finish the painting, despite his ill health, so Blake had fired him as the agent. One night Blake was beaten to death and his place was burned, the painting gone – Melanie suspected Chandler had done it because she found that the painting was now being moved on the black market. M said that he would erase the security tape if her story checked out – which Sam found that it did. M used a homemade electromagnet and a car battery in a backpack to set on the surveillance computer and erase the hard drive. M then told Chandler that he was dealing with "someone very good" and that "it would get worse before it got better." Sam cross referenced Chandlers calendar, for the week back when Blake had died, with his phone records and came up with the name of Jacob Orr, a security consultant, who had already done a stint in prison for manslaughter.

 

Sam and Fiona went to plant a bug in Orr’s cell phone, but it didn’t go well and she had to clobber him. Sam figured out that M and Fiona were a sort of an "item” again, but M just changed the subject and Fiona said: “don’t look at me, he started it.” The bug revealed that Chandler had set up a holding company for the money, once they sold the painting, and that Orr was concerned someone had found them out. M went to Chandler feigning fear, and told Chandler that a man and a woman had broken into his place too, and demanded "what have you gotten me into?"  Chandler still wouldn’t admit anything about the painting, so M demanded access to his camera feeds.  They enabled him to break into Chandler's office and hunt for the painting. He still found nothing, except a hidden wall panel and an armored safe. Back with Seymour, he found the place where the bomber was hiding by following the girlfriend. The place was heavily booby trapped with motion detectors. While M was out scouting, Seymour talked to Fiona about her and M. “We’re in different spaces,” she told him. Seymour contradicted her and said that it was "karma" and they should "go with the flow of the universe." Chandler, on his own, set a trap for whoever was after him, and Melanie fell for it by going into the office on Saturday. She called M who told her that it must be a trap and to get out; but, Chandler was already in the parking lot. So M told her to quickly make a fake bomb and leave it wired to the front door. Then M called Chandler and told him too "that it must be a trap." He came to Ms office and they "found" Melanie’s fake bomb together, just as Fiona blew up Chandler's car. Finally, Chandler was so frightened that he admitted he had the "Lady in White" which M said they could trade for their lives.

 

While M was at Chandler's house, holding him at gun point and getting the painting, Sam was convincing Orr that Chandler had hired him to kill Orr. Orr went to Chandler's house and found him bleeding from where M had hit him. He demanded that Chandler give him the painting and then killed him. Later Orr was arrested trying to dump Chandler's body in the Miami River (wonder who notified them?) Melanie paid M for the job and gave him a small original painting that her father had painted especially for her when she was little. M, Fiona and Seymour went with "disrupter" shells to capture Poole. When M offered to get Poole and his girlfriend out of the country if he would tell them who had hired him to bomb the loft, Poole said that he had no name or address; but, he said, he had been wired $100,000 and had the account number it came from: 7595163003. M did keep his promise by having Seymour sent Poole to Suriname. As a “partnership present,” Seymour had made them all matching throwing daggers with the symbol for “destiny” on the handle. M told Fiona that the morning after we… ahh… you know... he brought her a Spanish omelet, egg whites only – her favorite; but, she had gotten up and left before he got back. She said that maybe the "next time I will have to stay."

Sam was a little more than pissed that Michael Westen was taking Barry to the Chadwick for lunch; but, it was because the money launderer had tracked down the bank account in the Cayman Islands which had paid the bomber of Ms apartment. “The enemy of my enemy may be my friend,” seems to be Ms motto these days. However, it was obvious from the way Barry was acting that he was wearing a wire – which, indeed was attached to Jason Bly on the other end. Bly had caught Barry illegally looking into a bank account which had a trail back to MW, so he figured that was enough of a club to enable him to relieve himself of the blackmail threat that MW had over him. Bly said: “Barry is the brick that I will tie around your neck before I throw you into the ocean.” So, before M even had the chance to argue with Fiona about shooting Bly, the guy had Ms loft quarantined as a toxic mold biohazard. In fact he confiscated everything M owned except for the bag of clothes that he had packed for M which, he said, “looked like he dressed as an Easter egg.” M had to ask to stay at Madeline’s and funny thing, she just happened to have another “friend” that needed a problem solved. Paula Foster had met a guy on the internet, Tom Prescott, who had begun stalking her even where she worked (an appointment-only private bank and safe deposit company). She gave M the guys dating profile and address, but the whole thing turned out to be bogus. Sam was helping M but kept talking about his new “woman of my dreams,” Angela, who had a beach house in Antigua with a quad keg-erator. Paula called M and urgently said that Prescott was outside her bank, so M ran right over. Funny thing, Bly showed up at the bank as well, with demands and threats.

 

M sat Bly down, heart-to-heart style and said: “Do you really want to do this Bly? Do you really want to go nuclear?” – Just as Prescott and his team burst in saying "this is a bank robbery!" Prescott blocked everyone's cell phones and herded them into the conference room. Bly and M definitely had different styles of dealing with issues – M said to wait, Bly got shot in the arm attempting to disarm a guard. M pretended to be a doctor and began his long string of sabotage on the crooks. He first began by figuring out how to remove the bullet from Bly's arm. M was told where the building's data server was and set one of the captives to cutting through a wall into the next room. He coerced a guard to let him search for medical supplies, then slipped into the data room and used the network cabling on a cell phone to overpower the jamming and alert Sam and Fiona. He asked them to blow a hole in the building into the room that they were cutting into. He also gathered alcohol and several drugs, some of which he slipped into one of the robbers Red Bull drink. He also slipped a matchstick into a power hammer. Ms call to Sam came while Sam was dining with his new love and she was telling him about how she had streamlined her life down to only 7 beach houses in order to get rid of any stress. Sam had to leave their date, telling her point blank that he had to go rescue his buddy from a bank heist. As M was disinfecting Bly’s arm, he said that the green chair in loft that Bly had cut up – "was my favorite!"  Back with Sam, of course Fiona argued with Sam about M calling Sam first instead of her.

 

M had just finished sewing up Bly’s arm when Prescott wanted him downstairs to attend to the air hammer injury of a robber’s leg. M asked to use their liquid nitrogen gun and when Bly wasn’t looking froze the inside of his gun. Prescott was called to the conference room because they found the attempt to cut through the wall. Bly stepped in and admitted that he was the one that had the scissors, so the “civilian” wouldn’t get into shot. Prescott pointed his gun at Bly to shoot him, but it blew up in his hand. Then Prescott ordered another goon to shoot Bly, but M stood in front of him saying if Prescott wanted M to save his life he needed to back off.  They began putting all the hostages downstairs in the vault, intending that they should die. M heard one of them say that they were "running 20 min behind, should we call the boat." That meant that they needed a plan "B."  M had Bly collapse in the doorway to the data room in order to buy time so that he could make another call to Sam. He told Sam to call off the explosion and to listen to radio frequencies to see if something could be done about the boat. On the way downstairs to the vault, M jammed the elevator door with a door stop so it would look broken. Back with Sam, Fiona was still whining and Sam had to tell her: “sure, lets get M and all the hostages killed just because you have the attention span of a three year old.” While Prescott was screaming from the alcohol poured on his wound, and complaining about a “cursed bank,” M stole a wrench then asked if he needed any pain meds.  He went upstairs to get more bandages.

 

Sam called Angela while he was waiting with Fiona and asked her for a date later that night. Angela said that she would cancel her other plans just as Sam needed to hang up. Some cops showed up outside the bank, so Fiona stayed to distract the cops and Sam went to track down the getaway boat. Fiona stole a street vendors tip jar and made a scene. Meanwhile inside the bank, M got the pain meds he had given to Bly and slipped him the wrench. M gave Prescott Pilocarpine pills to sort of poison him, but he wouldn’t take them unless M took some first. So M took some, then later went to the kitchen to throw them up. While there, the robber with the Red Bull mixed with medicine told M about his funny symptoms, and while checking him M knocked him out and took his almost empty gun. Sam did find the getaway boat and when M called again they decided to do “Operation Quicksilver” like they did once before.  While on the boat dock, Sam answered his cell phone and it was Angela who said that she was just trying to leave a message about breaking up with him. While he was trying to talk her out of it by saying his life was really calm and stress free, he was capturing the boat-driver crook. He had to tell Angela that she was probably right, his life was too fast paced for her, then took it out on the crook. M came to tell Prescott that his man "had a stroke in the kitchen" just as Sam forced the boat-crook to call on the radio and pretend that he was being killed by a psyco-man. Then Sam came on the radio and claimed to be the "owner of the bank" who was now after them. M embellished that he recognized the voice, and said that the guy had once made him try to save another robber so he would take longer to die.

 

Bly knocked out the basement guards with the wrench and Fiona blew up their getaway truck which was parked outside. The other crooks began to mutiny against Prescott, so he shot them. Prescott defiantly walked out the door and into the hands of police who Fiona had called. M walked back into the bank and sat down exhausted next to Bly, in the same seats they were having their previous heart-to-heart in. "Where were we," one of them said. "I think we were just agreeing to ruin each others lives." Bly said that he was going to the emergency room and then would take care of the thing with the loft and with Barry. M asked, "as long as you are in a helpful mood" could Bly find out the name of who owned the account that he was trying to have Barry track. M gathered up all his blackmail papers that he had on Bly from Madeline’s stove broiler – knowing she’d never use it. Not needing to stay at Madeline's any more he began to leave. Madeline looked disappointed and said that she was going to order take-out; so, M decided that he could stay the night. M told Barry that everything was OK now and that the next time he was wearing a wire he should give him a signal by "offering to pay for lunch." Sam and Fiona were still arguing over who was more important to M and who did the most work; so. M had to admit that he had really called Fiona first. "But you didn’t answer so I called Sam, who I will be calling first from now on." Back at the loft M taped up his cut chair then triumphantly set down in it.  Bly looked at his blackmail papers and said that “this would be a Good Michael Westen story if people were allowed to tell Michael Westen stories.” Bly said the Cayman Island account M wanted to know about was just a number, no attached name, and that it had a “tripwire” which had been tripped so now, whoever it is, “knows you’re coming.”

The episode opens, as usual, with Fiona ragging on Michael Westen about what he is doing: going to meet and bribe a bank manager for information about the bomber. “I was warned by people not to see you,” he said. “Yea, and I almost blew off your hand with a block of C-4,” she countered. “And, I made a friend,” he said, “watch my back.” It became obvious to M that the man he was meeting, Gustavo, was an imposter; but, when M broke his arm in the knife fight and the guy fell over the railing – he could get no information from him. In the loft, while M was practicing moves to disarm a knife, Sam came in holding a huge fish saying that "you could use the protein" – and also that the real Gustavo had been found dead elsewhere. Fiona was supposed to find whoever had smuggled in the imposter assassin, and M told Sam he should "bring the fish to the Carlito and maybe they would cook it for you." As they left, on the stairs waiting for them was an old man, Claude Laurent, from Haiti who had "found someone who had worked with you before." He said that several years previously his daughter, Veronique, had been murdered by Jean-Pierre Duman who was now in Miami with a new name. He had a letter from a local government in Haiti that Duman should stand trial, but Sam told him that the letter wouldn’t work in an American court. Laurent asked “who is this man with the fish?” M turned down the job and Laurent claimed that M wasn’t an honorable man. Unhappy with Ms choice, Sam stared down M until he asked if Sam wanted him to check out Duman.  Sam then handed over addresses of where he found that Duman hung out.

 

Madeline called demanding that M come over because "there’s been a break-in." She was actually complaining about a tape-deck stolen from her car which she kept at Mrs. Gartelman’s. She was hoping that she and M "could work on this case together." He said he’d rather buy her a new radio; but, now the whole car needed re-wiring because his father had put it in himself. They found that Laurent was indeed correct and actually saw Duman masquerading as Luc Reynard at a club. Sam said Duman's father had been a regional governor before he had died. With Sam’s urging, M called Fiona to come and meet Duman -- which she did using her fluent French. They hoped to get into his secure house on Star Island and find something to prove his real identity. Fiona did get in and planted a bug; but Laurent showed up outside, thinking he was on his own, and began broadcasting through a megaphone. M needed to rescue him from being shot. M then told Laurent that he would take care of the problem, but Laurent refused to go home, only saying that he “understood” when M said it would be safer for him to go home. Sam found a connection between the Duman family and Flintwood Industries, who had built their prisons, and told M that the FBI had been nosing around them for years. So they decided to "inform" the FBI and Sam burst in on one of agent’s Lane and Harris' stakeouts giving them the whole dossier on Duman. M went to Duman under the cover ID of Owen Matthews, a “sanitizer” of sorts, who could help him clean up the trail to his past and claiming that he was doing it for Flintwood Industries which had led him to Duman. To sell his cover, he pointed to the two FBI agents who were now watching him from outside the bar.

 

Sam went to help Madeline rewire her car but she said that she was doing it for herself as well as looking into several neighborhood thefts; so she said that she only needed "a ride to her Partner-stretching class!" Their bug heard Duman saying that people knew his real name and that some men had traced Laurent to a downtown hotel. M raced to save Laurent, yet again, and had to back Duman down by showing that the complications of killing him would bring the whole world down on both him and Flintwood. He got an invite to Duman's house. Laurent said he still wasn't going to go away. He said that he had been a coward when his daughter needed him before, but “never again!”  So he was invited to stay at the loft – M realized that “with true believers one needed to either help or get out of the way,” and he wanted to keep an eye on him. The smuggler who Fiona went to meet, already knew who she was: “you set fire to Paco’s boat and you set fire to that guy’s place up in Boca.” She was able to fairly readily obtain the information that Gustavo had been brought in, paid cash, was dropped off at a storage unit and she got the address. Back with Madeline, she told M that she was rewiring the car by herself but whined about "what are you doing that is more important than going to look at mug shots with me?" Unexpectedly, he cowed her by saying “helping a man find justice for his murdered daughter.” She said “well, you let me know if I can help.”

 

Back with Fiona at the imposters storage unit, she told M that he should consider living in one of those storage units because "it would be a step up." She notified the storage company that Gustavo had passed away and that they’d be coming after hours to check the unit. Back with M, Duman showed M his documents from the old days which would need "cleaning"; but then said that his father wanted to meet him first - it turned out that he had faked his own death and another man had been buried in his place. M had to jump out a window in order to escape when Duman Sr. Said that "nobody at Flintwood Industries never heard of you." So, the only thing left to do was to capture Jean-Luc and take him back to Haiti where he would be recognized. Fiona was able to get him to an apartment where she drugged him and they were able to drop him over the balcony through the break-away roof of a truck they had borrowed. Sam got Harris and Lane to “unofficially” make sure that Laurent and Duman were able to get back to Haiti without being stopped by the Coast Guard. Being in trouble, Jean Pierre turned on his father before he left so daddy Duman also was sent back. And finally, using himself for bait, M and Fiona went to the storage shed as they had previously announced.  As anticipated, they found someone lying in wait to kill M; but, got the drop on him and gave chase, only to find that it was… Victor.

Michael Westen asked Fiona to show Victor’s photo around to "her people" just as Sam brought Madeline in to rag on him. Madeline was going to have to stay with M because of the danger with both Carla and Victor. Noise coming up the stairs unannounced sent them all scurrying for guns and even Madeline picked up a butcher knife. It was “Sam” (Samantha) Ms previously unrevealed ex-fiancé!  Samantha admitted that she had found M by breaking into his mother’s house and finding his address in her kitchen drawer. She was a thief who a black-market trader, Tyler Brennen, had made her steal an important piece of prototype guidance hardware from a A.F.C. Industries as a ransom for her kidnapped son. Now before the payoff, she decided to involve M to get her son back. Of course she made it sound like her nine-year-old son could be Ms although she denied that he was. They decided that they should grab Brennan after he had released the boy and while they were scouting the place Fiona delivered a speech so hokey that must have been written by a soap-box drama writer.  While M was hanging out at Carlito’s not wanting to go home, Sam brought information on Victor; he was involved in black-ops and murder – "you were just the first one he had missed." M said that if Carla’s people burned him it was all fiction. Sam said that in July ’03 a job got bloody in Mexico. "Victor denied the hits but Philip Cowan burned him anyway!" M said that after 5 years working for Carla alone Victor may be ready to make a new friend. Sam warned that “Victor was a lot like you, only you know, with rabies.”

 

When M snuck back into the loft, Madeline was waiting up to take another run at a soap-box drama sequence and nosily demanded to know everything. He told her: "She’s a Pisces, does 'security' and hasn’t been in my life in 10 years." Victor called wondering why M hadn’t shot at him the previous night – he wondered if M was trying to make friends. M said they had “so much in common, we should meet.” Victor said he would, but it would be a surprise and called him “sport.” Brennen came, took the chip, but delivered Charlie with a bomb planted inside an arm cast with a remote detonator. Therefore they had to let him get away. However, M wouldn’t let Samantha just get on a plane and disappear. He argued the point that Charlie was only seven (not nine like she had intimated) and it wasn’t fair to drag him to a hut in Nicaragua. They had until Friday to return the chip so decided to work a con on Brennen. When M returned, Sam and Fiona were on the steps of the loft because Madeline was “like a chimney” and “miss commando” wanted to do an armed assault on Brennen’s condo. M and Fiona broke into Brennen’s apartment without cover IDs, claiming to be disaffected ex-partners of Samantha’s who could help Brennen keep the chip safe because Samantha was coming after it. In his condescending, smug, arrogant manner Brennen said he just didn’t believe them, so they said he should check them out and call.

 

Carla said that M had truly given her good information, but it was ridiculous to think that he could “get his life back.” He demanded that she keep her promise and back off her goons so the guy doing the bombing would make contact. She said that she couldn’t give much time because “Management’s… getting anxious”; and M said to “tell them I know the feeling.” Brennan called M and took he and Fiona to an airplane hangar at gunpoint, calling Fiona “punkin.” Brennen had the chip in the air 23 hrs. a day and it landed to have a tech check to make sure that Samantha hadn’t taken a piece out of it as M had told him that she had. When the tech said that it was "all there," Brennen was going to shoot them both; except, that just at that time, Victor was staking them out and M used him to sell his cover story midst a blaze of gunfire. Brennen hired M and Fiona to make his hanger “secure” for 5% of the sale price “if it worked out.”  Then Victor phoned and called M an “enigma wrapped in schizophrenia” for first not shooting and then "setting up the firing squad.” M told him that it was nothing personal he just had to sell a cover ID; but, if he waited till Friday he could keep guns out of the equation. Back with Madeline, in her obligatory nosey-body segment, sneaked up on Samantha and wanted to know all about their engagement. M just happened to be outside the door listening. Samantha said that it was she who had proposed to M.  They had fun, she said, but one day he just said goodbye and he was gone. It was over and she never knew why. Of course, Madeline said "that sounds like Michael."

 

M and Fiona did the scam and Sam and Samantha snuck into Brennen's hanger in a false compartment of a truck; but, Brennen changed the plan and closed the hanger for the sale. M protested but was told that Brennen didn’t need Ms precautions he had just wanted to keep him where he could keep eyes on him. Inside the hanger with the door shutting, Sam improvised and began shooting when the buyers landed. That way there were scared off and Samantha drove a stolen car around and picked him up just to seal the point. M pointed out that when Samantha knew she’d be caught, because she couldn’t get the chip, she did the next best thing and took Brennen down with her. Brennen came up with the idea that M could put the chip back – and that was what M wanted all along. M didn’t admit it, but said that the only way out for all of them was to put the chip back – which Brennen very angrily allowed them to do, all the while casting treats at M. M and Samantha put it back, but the only way they could do it was to get out “dirty” with blasting and alarms going off. Brennan ostensibly was then on the run from his South American contacts and Samantha said she was giving up stealing in order to live with her son in Chicago. She was also supposed to never let Brennen find out that they were working together.

 

Madeline was feigning sleep, when M got back to the loft and explained to Fiona that Samantha and he had worked because they both lied and seemed to fit each other… "it was easy." Then, he said, he met Fiona and knew that he and Samantha couldn’t work, so he left her. He said that Fiona knew a side of him that Samantha didn’t, but "it was NEVER easy." He said left Samantha “because you don’t marry someone when you love somebody else.” The next day, M woke Madeline up by shocking himself with a Taser he was making out of a throwaway camera. He told her that, if his meeting with Victor went well, she could go home and not have to “pretend to sleep” in his bed. She opinioned that he had “picked the right girl.” Meeting Victor in the restroom of the Dade County Police Office, Victor would not agree to talk about any why or wherefores leaving M no choice but to zap him, conk him on the sink, wrap him in gauze and smuggle him out in a wheelchair for questioning. Hopefully in the next episode.

[Season Finale] Inside her stretch limo, Carla offered Michael Westen a chocolate covered pomegranate seed as a "taste of your former life" in the "good old days" as a “carefree spy in the deserts of Afghanistan” before the burn notice went out on him. In an approach that she’d not used on Michael Before, she became kind of “chummy” and disclosed that she also had once been a spy who had been burned; but found that she liked the new life and he would too, eventually. When he asked "what if I want my old life back" she said “they’re worse things than being burned.” She showed increasing anxiety over his resistance stating that: “Management is not happy and will be in town shortly to make sure everything is resolved." Avoiding any tails, M drove back to the isolated factory where they were holding Victor for interrogation. Fiona was guarding him with bean-bag rounds in her gun; but said she hadn’t opened the door, so M was weary of entering. Victor had cut through his cable-ties and put up a fight which Fiona quelled with a shot to his chest. Back in the chair, M eventually convinced him that he had "nothing left to loose and the possibility of everything to gain"; so, Victor revealed that he had been burned in Mexico at the same time his wife and son had been killed. Later, he found out that it had been Carla who had killed his family "as part of my recruitment," so he began to gut the entire organization. He told M that he had a booby-trapped boat at Randall Key where a suitcase held the only proof he had. While M and Fiona went to check the boat, M told Sam to give Victor some air and see what else he had to say. M and Fiona found a magnificent booby-trap on the boat and a suitcase full of newspaper articles and photographs. Fiona commented on Victors instability and M told her that people don’t get that way on their own.

 

Back at the holding place, Sam and Victor sparred for a while because they both had read the same military interrogation handbooks. Eventually Victor described what he knew about the “organization.” They run black ops, could be multi-national, could be work for hire, they break jobs in pieces so no one gets the big picture and are in cities all over. "Although," he said, "They may need to pull out of Miami for a while." If M doesn’t give him to Carla she will cut her losses – beginning with Ms family. When M got back and found this out, he dispatched Sam to "take Madeline on a day-trip to Orlando" and Fiona to keep her appointment with a gun dealer. Surprise, surprise, Madeline acted all stubborn and refuses to leave! Victor pointed out to M that they’ve been incognito long enough that Carla will be tracking them down so, to his amazement, M cut Victor's bonds. “You mean,” he asked, “I get to be one of the desperate people to whom you lend your razor-sharp mind and fists of fury?” Just then Carla’s goons began closing in and Victor drove while M shot bullets and made fire-bombs to toss out windows. While looking for a parking lot and car they could steal, Carla called Ms cell phone and said that “actions have consequences.” M told her that he was thinking the same thing about her. Victor asked: "did she just give her 'actions have consequences speech?"

 

Back at Idiot-Madeline’s tantrum Sam finally got angry, which seemed to “enlightened” her; but it was too late. Men were already closing in outside. After shooting through her door to keep them back, Sam had to booby-trap her door with flash bombs made from shotgun shells and Christmas lights. After the explosion, they escaped out the back door and through the fence to “borrow” Mrs. Reynolds car.  M called Fiona on the only phone he had, which he knew was being monitored, and asked her to "do something similar to the drive past the factory where we first met” at the “spot where we picnicked last month.” That was also the clue for both of them to ditch their phones. Victor revealed that he had found out that Carla had been “using her ops teams for personal errands: making extra cash, payback, that kind of thing.” He had a file at a safe-house in town which they decided to go get and use to blackmail their way to safety. They escaped the parking lot by using one car as decoy and another to crash the barricade. Then, they drove past Fiona and she blew up cars along the route which crashed into their tails. They found that Carla’s guys were already at Victor’s safe house, so they had to use subterfuge to get Victor's file which he had hidden in an electrical box on a telephone pole. Victor was all for killing all the tails but M pointed out the tails could be completely innocent. Victor demanded that “no one’s completely innocent” and M shot back “is that what you told yourself when you tried to kill me?”

 

Back at Madeline's the explosion distracted the goons long enough for them to escape in a vintage Buick; but, she made Sam pull over, let her out and promise to go back and protect her son. Seeing Victor's file, M said he could see why Carla wouldn’t want it to be made public, it showed that “she would send a black ops team to deal with a parking ticket.” Victor told him that the higher-ups in the organization pretty much were hands-off with only two rules: "don’t screw up and don’t get caught." They decided to make a run for Cuba in Victor’s boat, then use the codes and personal phone numbers he had for Carla’s boss to tell him about her. M made Fiona promise to go protect his family. Back at the boat M was surprised that after all this time Victor had never found out who burned him. He said he didn’t care – “ just a name in a file, behind another name in another file. You know how these things start. Someone runs an operation off the books. It’s supposed to be a one-time thing but when it’s over there’s power to be had. It takes on a life of its own. It’s the organization, not some guy.” M asked: “Why me?” Victor explained: “It was no secret that you were good at your job.  The machine wanted you, so it took you. Now we’re both part of it.”  At the rally-point, Fiona and Sam tried to figure out which promise to keep, Ms to go protect Madeline or Madeline's to go protect M – no brainer! While Victor was casting off the line to the dock he was mortally shot in the chest by Carla’s sniper. She called on Ms cell phone, with the whir of “management’s” helicopter rotor’s in the background. She told him that boat was wired with C-4 and a remote detonator. M must deliver Victor and be part of her explanation to Management or she would blow them both up.  As M delayed she became more urgent and almost frantic. Before she could press the button, Fiona took her down with a rifle shot to the chest.

 

Sam and Fiona barely escaped through the trees from all of Management's “backup” as the helicopter landed. Barely able to talk, Victor reasoned with M that he should spin the story that he was “not the traitor who helped me”; but “the ace operative who shot me.” He knew what the organization would do to him if they had control of him so put the gun to his chest himself and begged M to pull the trigger. “It was great playing with you sport, no you get out while you can.” With great mental anguish… M complied. M came out of the boat with his hands up, and the file which he refused to give to anyone but Management -- a deceptively kind looking old gentleman who described himself as "not nice." Flying above the coast he reviewed the folder and said “two rogue operatives in one day?” M told him that he had some “staff issues” to which he agreed, then asked M what he should do about their “new recruit.” MW, he said, was “wonderfully effective, terrifically resourceful, the best I’ve ever seen, but doesn’t seem happy.” M said he wanted them out of his life. Management countered that instead of being under their thumb he had been under their protection and gave M the choice of jumping out the door above the ocean or filling the vacancy in the organization that he had created. To his absolute amazement, M jumped out the door and fell feet first into the ocean, leaving his signature glasses in the helicopter. Management flew away northward and M removed his suit coat to began the long swim toward shore.