Episode 2×13 of Burn Notice was called “Bad Breaks”, and I thought it was the best of the series thus far! There was a definite break from formula, and the change really worked. Though Jason Bly wasn’t all that interesting to me when he first appeared in Season 1, but it was cool seeing him team up with Michael this time around. The second half of Season 2 hadn’t been all that exciting, so I was thrilled to get a great episode like this!
Odd Job of the Week: Madeline’s friend Paula is having trouble with a guy she met on the Internet. They went out on a date, and after Paula didn’t have a great time, she called everything off. But the guy won’t leave her alone. He calls her, sends emails, and stalks her at the private bank where she works. Michael agrees to get him to back off.
The next day, Paula calls Mike in a panic. The guy is right outside. She can’t afford to have him make a scene at work, and wants Mike to come immediately. He does. While inside, Jason Bly, who met up with Michael earlier in the ep, approaches him now to get back the blackmail file that Mike has. The two of them are then trapped in the middle of a heist when it turns out that Paula’s “stalker” Prescott is really a bank robber.
Stuck with no tools, no way to communicate with the outside world, and a room full of hostages to protect, Michael sets to work on orchestrating an escape. He gets some help from Bly, but after Bly is shot in the arm, he’s not much use. Mike then has to get very creative and find ways to wreak havoc on the bad guys while making everything appear to be natural occurrences, or “bad breaks”. Some of the stuff he did was just brilliant!
Burn Notice Progress: Michael appears to be at another dead end here. He had Barry the money launderer try to track down the Cayman account number that he got from Derek Poole, but Barry wasn’t able to get anywhere. Moreover, he thinks he might have tripped an electronic booby trap, letting whoever owns the account know that someone’s looking into their business. Oh, and don’t forget, thanks to Barry’s latest actions, Jason Bly was able to get some dirt on Mike — but at least those two traded files at the end, so they’re even-Steven now. And Jason wasn’t able to find out anything about the account holder either.
Character Development: Not much in this episode. Michael called Fiona first when he was in distress, but since she didn’t answer and Sam did, Sam will be the first call from now on. Mike also hid files in Madeline’s broiler, apparently under the assumption that she doesn’t use her oven all that often. She doesn’t. The nature of Madeline’s friendship with Paula was never explained, but I had to kind of wonder why Madeline was friends with someone so much younger than herself.
As I said, this was a top-notch episode, the best of the series! It’s going to be very hard to do better than “Bad Breaks”!