This week Carla meets with Michael face to face and asks him to get in contact with a skilled Tunisian counterfitter who can duplicate a high tech key card for her organisation. Also, Michael is approached via Sam by a waitress who's being stalked and asked to help her out.


[Episode Spoilers Below]


Thankfully the writers of Burn Notice have decided not to drag out the moment before Michael and Carla meet face to face, the episode pretty much opens with it - following on almost directly from the scene where Sam met her the following week. Michael heads out with Sam and Fi for the meeting, with the intention of getting Sam to photograph her while Fi follows her. Predictibly this doesn't work, in fact I was left wondering why Michael thought it would work. He's such an astute spy he should have known his friends would be clocked the moment they were in the same area as Carla. But he doesn't and they are.


Carla hands him the afformentioned key card and explains that there's only one man in Miami who can make something like this. Michael has to set up a meeting and get the counterfit duplicate made. Sam then meets up with Michael and explains about helping Sophia, Michael is reluctant to help at first but decides to do so at least in part for Sam. While scouting out the "stalker" Raul they realise he isn't exactly what Sophia made him out to be, as he's packing a Mac 10.

Meanwhile, Fi goes to the one man who'd know where the counterfitter would be, Barry the money launderer. It's nice to see Barry back on screen again; even if it's only for a moment, and he's suitbly sleezy when dealing with Fi. Something she's more than happy to respond too in her prefered manner, with violence and threats. I do find Fi's love of violence refreshing in some manners, it's great that the most trigger happy character in the show is in fact a woman. But it's a little stereotypical that she's also Irish.

Michael confronts Sophia over Raul and after some shrewd observations about inconsistencies in her story he gets her to admit to the truth. She's a DEA agent, Raul is part of a drug cartel and she's been trying to get enough to arrest him for two years. Unfortunately she's in over her head, but unwilling to tell the DEA as that would get her pulled from the case. Michael learns about the organisation and comes up with a plan to get her out of there and take Raul down in about 30 seconds. You have to wonder why they burned him if he's that good at this job.

Michael meets the counterfiter with another flimsy cover identity, this time he dresses up in a terrible shell suit top and puts on a slight voice while he pretends to be a low skill counterfitter who specialises in cheque washing (once again Burn Notice teaches you something the public shouldn't learn about, this time it's how to blank cheques that have been used before). It's nowhere near as funny as his British performance last week, but it's still entertaining to watch.


Once again Carla and her people break into Michael's mother's house, this time to replace the coffee maker with a new one. He takes this pretty well, they're consistently trying to rattle his cage but he hasn't gotten angry or worried about the bunch of trained spies who seem to treat his mother's place as a place to leave him messages and screw with his head. His mother also seems to be completely oblivious to the events, assuming Michael bought the new coffee maker for her. She also asks that he go to councelling sessions with her, counselling sessions that don't work out.

Michael manages to work his way into Raul's confidences and starts to put his plan into motion when he hits a few setbacks, the first of which is when Raul discovers that Michael and Sophia have been talking on the phone to each other. Something Raul mistakenly assumes is to do with them sleeping together, but Michael keeps his cool and doesn't give anything away while talking Raul down with a believable story about "checking him out in advance". The second snag he hits is when Raul turns out to be far more loyal than Michael had estimated. His initial plan to get Raul eliminated as a potential leak of information becomes impossible because Raul brings him to meet his boss Campos. So Michael rigs the situation to make it seem like Raul wanted to have Campos killed and this forces Raul to go to the DEA rather than get killed.

Michael returns to collect the duplicate from the counterfitter and also asks him to find out where the keycard would be used. But Carla's organisation are ahead of him and attempt to kill Nezi right after their meeting. Michael realises this but gets back too late to save him. He does manage to reclaim his money and gets another copy of the key card for his troubles.
Finally he meets again with Carla to give her the money, the counterfit and the original and he gets her to show off by communicating in Arabic. Which gives him a clue to her identity as she has a Kurdish accent. It's not much, but Sam agrees to do what he can.



Turn and Burn is classic Burn Notice, but with an added layer of complexity. The 'problem of the week' format is followed but this time the 'big season metaplot' also gets equal screen time. As such you get two stories in this episode, but it doesn't feel too packed in or rushed. All of the cast are excellent when on screen, Bruce and Jeffery provide the best performances (as usual) but Tricia is very good when she's on screen and looks very good with a more natural appearance to her (compared to BSG) except for her smile, sometimes it's just darn creepy and really unflattering.

Clues as to Carla's agenda continue to arrive, previously we had a collection of high security data files and this week we have an exceptionally high tech key card being duplicated. It's clear there's a major heist on the books, but why, who, where and how come everything needed is in Miami hasn't come to light yet. Next week promises to reveal even more about her.

There's a lot to enjoy in this episode and it's probably better than the season opener (which was still good).


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[Naturally this review will contain mild spoilers]


It's been about nine months since Michael Western drove on board that truck and we were left wondering what would change about Burn Notice. Well, the wait is now over and the answer thankfully is "very little". The season premier kicks off directly after the last season ended, Michael is still in the truck and he's deposited at a location where we can hear gunfire, explosions and shouting. After all this dies down Michael heads out to discover an exploded plane, several dead people and one trussed up man laying on the ground in an airfield.

The woman who's got in contact with him at the end of the last season, (she identifies herself as 'Carla') tells him he needs to assist the guy in stealing some data from a computer system he designed. Which means Michael is going back to Miami, returning to Fiona, Sam and Madeline. While this is a somewhat predictable move, it was also a fantastic one as I'm thrilled that there haven't been any major cast losses as the gang were great last season.

Speaking of the cast, how are they on their return?
Well Jeffrey Donovan is still on top form as Michael Western, he's able to charismatically propel the narrative along and looks just as believable in the role as he did last season. He's obviously comfortable playing the straight man of the series and provides a solid board for everyone else to bounce off. But that doesn't mean he's above being funny on occasion, his English accent in this episode is so unbelievably bad that it moves around the scale to being so bad it's hilarious.

Speaking of accents Gabrielle Anwar's American one has improved since last season and she sounds more natural and comfortable using it. Of course, I'm not a native to the big old Isle of USA so take my comments on American accents with a pinch of salt, but it does sound less jarring to my ear at least. Gabrielle's character; Fi hasn't changed much since the previous season. But given that there has only been a 48 hour gap since she last saw Michael that's understandable. Her best scenes remain those where she interacts with Bruce Campbell's character - Sam Axe and the longest scene she has with Michael essentially wraps up any emotional interest she had in him last season. Does this mean the plot will move on to getting Michael involved with a different woman? (Carla?)

Bruce Campbell is every bit as brilliant as he always is, right from his first appearance in this episode wearing one of Michael's too small shirts and all the way through he's just funny and charismatic. He doesn't have that much to do in this episode except look beaten up, talk to Fi and chat up women. But he does that well, he's superb as Michael's sidekick and knows how to provide just the right about of flair. Bruce doesn't overact and steal the scenes from Jeffery, but you do always notice and enjoy his time on screen.

Sharon Gless also reprises her role as Madeline Western, but she has little to do in this episode apart from complain at Michael a little and look put upon, she's obviously unhappy to learn her son is a spy. She also gets mildly harassed by the people who are involved with Carla, nothing major happens to her here, they just do it to send a message to Michael.

The surprise in the show has sadly been signaled well in advance, it was advertised that Tricia Helfer would be joining the cast as Michael's handler. She's such a distinctive individual for people who've watched BSG that will recognise her voice immediately and clock her as soon as she appears on screen. She hasn't had a lot of physical screen time at this point, but the phone conversations she's had with Michael have been good, although sometimes they do give you flashbacks of Number Six conversations with Baltar.

The story is all you'd expect and want from an episode of Burn Notice, it's fast paced, energetic and fun with almost everything wrapped up by the end of the episode apart from a teaser about the main plot. I'm hoping that the later episodes give the viewer a little more evolution in the show style (shows can get trapped just providing the same thing over and over) especially after the tense and exciting last season finale, but this is not a comment on the first episode. Which was funny, exciting and great to watch.

Till next week, here's a shot of everyone's favourite hunk showing a little chest hair!


;)
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