I realize that I’m extremely late getting my Burn Notice recap posted, but I wasn’t able to watch the newest episode until last night. The fifth of the season was called “Scatterpoint”, and served to inch the burn notice story arc along ever so slightly. I realize that this particular mystery has to last a good long time in order to keep the series going, but I’m starting to lose patience with how little Michael is able to learn every week. I’d rather see more twists and turns in that plot than these fractional reveals that the writers seem to favor. But I digress…
Odd Job of the Week: Michael’s reputation for getting people out of jams is making its way through Miami, as evidenced by the fact that some random ex-con named Trevor just shows up at his apartment one day asking for help. Trevor used to be a getaway driver for a gang of thieves, but after a stint in prison, he promised his son that he would go straight. Now out on parole, Trevor is trying to keep his promise, but his old gang leader Timo has other plans. There’s another job that Timo wants to pull off — a jewel heist — and he’s more comfortable working with people he already knows. Trevor has to be the wheelman one more time… or else.
Michael decides that the best way to thwart Timo is to get his regular safecracker thrown in jail just before the heist is to go off. Given Timo’s reluctance to work with new people, that ought to keep Trevor out of trouble until the window of opportunity for the heist safely passes. But Timo has no intentions of stopping, so Michael has no choice except to join the gang as a safecracker (on Trevor’s recommendation) and screw things up from the inside — which he, Fiona, and Sam easily do.
Burn Notice Progress: After staking out Carla’s post office box for days, Michael and Fiona finally spot a secretary picking up Carla’s mail. They follow the person back to a nondescript office complex, and think they’ve finally caught up with Carla. After seeing the type of security system in place (namely, gardeners and other regular-looking folks wielding weapons), they’re sure they have Carla.
Of course, it’s far too early in the season for Michael to simply barge in on Carla, so she manages to be long gone by the time he actually makes it inside the building. She leaves him some photographs of himself staking out the building, some balloons, and a bottle of champagne, all as little insults to show that she’s way ahead of the game. Finally, there’s also another crossword puzzle, but the hidden message wasn’t revealed in this ep.
Character Development: We learn a bit more about Sam this time. Specifically, he was married 20 (?) years ago, but never bothered to get a proper divorce even after he and his wife went their separate ways. Thus, when current squeeze Veronica asks him to marry her, he has to confess that he’s already hitched. Veronica dumps him, leaving him with no place to go except Mike’s apartment.
My Reaction: I thought this was a decent episode, but I can’t help but be bothered by a rather disturbing trend. I don’t like the way Michael often ends up having people killed by the end of the ep. This happened last week with the human trafficker, and it happened again this week with Timo. I know these aren’t exactly classy, stand-up citizens we’re talking about here and I know Mike isn’t pulling the trigger himself, but still… it’s a bit bothersome to consider the moral implications of what he’s essentially doing to these people. I like it much better when Michael manages to arrange for the cops to show up at just the right moment. Hopefully we’ll start seeing more of those episodes soon.
Like I said, I feel there’s way too little actual progress on the burn notice stuff in recent eps. I think we need to see more of that; after all, it’s what Michael is supposed to be focused on, not all of these little odd jobs!
I was looking through my archives and saw that I finished Season 2 of Boston Legal way back in early November of 2007. Then I didn’t start Season 3 until just a few weeks ago because I was busy trying to catch up on a bunch of other DVDs that I had, and didn’t get to episode two until yesterday. The 9-month layoff must have really whetted my appetite for the sheer craziness at Crane, Poole & Schmidt, because I ended up reeling off 5 straight eps in a single day as I went on a mini BL marathon!