Last night’s episode of Burn Notice was the sixth of the season, which means we’re right at the halfway point. The ep was called “Bad Blood”, and was your typical BN combination of Odd Job + work on tracking down Carla and the reason for the burn notice. I liked this one a lot more than last week’s offering, mostly because of the new character Victor and the different nuances he brings to the Carla storyline. Anyway, here’s what happened in 2×06.
Odd Job of the Week: Ricky is the younger brother of one of Michael’s childhood friends. He’s an accountant for a hip hop record company run by a former thug named Valentine. Valentine is on a rampage because $2 million of the company’s money has gone missing from a special charity account, and he thinks Ricky had something to do with it since Ricky has access and opportunity. But Ricky insists that he’s innocent, saying that Valentine’s right-hand man Eddie is the real embezzler.
Michael agrees to take the case for old times’ sake, and poses as a big shot money launderer from Boston who can help Eddie wash his money. After getting close to Eddie, and with the usual close calls and missteps along the way, Michael is once again successful at proving his client’s innocence. At the end of the ep, we hear that Valentine took Eddie out on his boat — but Eddie never came back.
Burn Notice Progress: The crossword puzzle from the end of last week’s ep leads Michael to a public park, where he meets Victor, his new wrangler. Apparently, Carla wants a middleman between her and Michael. At any rate, Victor has a job for Michael. They have to intercept some cargo before it’s moved, with Victor doing the dirty work and Michael merely serving as the getaway driver.
Unlike past black ops assignments from Carla, this particular task didn’t seem like something that specifically needed Michael’s skills. After all, anyone can drive a car. But Michael goes along with the plan because otherwise his family and friends would be in harm’s way. Though Victor doesn’t tell Mike what’s in the crate they steal, Mike had the foresight to rig an x-ray machine in his trunk. He scans the cargo and sees that it’s some type of assault rifle.
Character Development:There wasn’t much in the way of character development this ep. We learned that Mike used to run with a guy who’s now serving 25 years in prison, which tells us that he easily could have ended up on the same path. We learned that Fiona likes shoes. And that she’s currently on the “open market” dating wise. Sam bought a used Buick to replace Veronica’s Caddy. And Madeline isn’t quite as clueless about what’s going on as Mike would like to believe.
My Reaction: I thought this was another solid episode, and am convinced that Burn Notice is really hitting its stride as a series. The formulaic approach has the potential to get a bit tiresome, but as long as the Odd Job of the Week brings us interesting characters and cases, then things should be ok.
I like this new Victor character, but am still trying to figure out what exactly it is that Carla wants from Michael. I mean, seriously, was Mike the only guy who could have handled that getaway car when Victor had to steal the rifle? And what kind of a rifle was that anyway, that a spy had to come up with a big plan to steal it? If Carla and Victor needed any old gun, they could have just bought one, you know? So that makes me think that this is no ordinary gun they took. Maybe it’s got advanced capabilities or maybe it was used in an illegal political assassination and Carla wants to use it as blackmail. Who knows.
On the whole, I liked this episode, and like where the season is headed. Hopefully the writers can make the second half of S2 even better than the first!
Although I’m not much of a music fan, I do have a healthy respect for Rolling Stone magazine because of all the great writers who broke into the biz with that publication. We’re talking about legendary scribes such as Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe, as well as screenwriter Cameron Crowe, who penned a great film (Almost Famous) about his early days with the mag. In other words, Rolling Stone is as well-known for its tremendous articles and photographs on a wide range of pop culture topics as it is for its music content.