Burn Notice 3x09 to 3x12
Jun. 25th, 2011 02:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixie3x09
...SO I GUESS WE KNOW WHERE MICHAEL STANDS ON THE ISSUES THAT HAVE BEEN SWIRLING ABOUT, HUH? WITH BULLETS, EVEN.
Much as I love the funny, I think this might be working its way up to being my favorite episode. Fiona backstory! Michael choosing sticking with the truth and staying out in the cold over coming back in on a lie! Michael choosing Fiona over empty promises of getting back in the game! Paul Blackthorne as a bad guy! Really, there was no bad here. (Well. JD's Irish accent was kind of awful. Nevertheless.)
I liked what Fiona said about how she'd been changed by living in Miami and working/being with Michael. We have seen her get a little less trigger-happy over the length of the show; she's into the jobs more to help out the clients than to blow stuff up, now. She's also changed in how she relates to Michael, finally walking away and protecting herself when she finds that she can't convince him to give up working with Strickler and getting off the blacklist.
I think we also got a good object lesson in how Michael's changed when he just mowed down Strickler when he got in the way of saving Fiona. Given his shooting of the Nigerians in the pilot, I think that's more in line with his old life--but it was different enough from his usual actions on the show that it was really quite shocking. (I gasped, anyway.)
Meanwhile, Maddie was trying to make a change when she wanted to sell the house, but found more comfort in the continuity of still living there, and letting Michael use it as a safehouse/field hospital/storage unit. She's the kind of person who keeps boxes of her kids' toys. Michael's the kind of person whose mementos consist of a few photographs and his ex/semi/sometime-girlfriend's gun.
And Sam...will always be Sam.
Shorter bits:
- "Don't. We're no good at this." Awww.
- Ah, Fi. We should talk. You know how you got really mad at O'Neill for killing children with his IRA bombs? More power to you, and hey, maybe you stuck to bank-robbing while you were on their payroll, but what exactly did you think the money you stole was used for? There's some logic!fail on someone's part here.
- Let me guess: the dead Glennane sister (PS, OMG, five brothers) was killed as a child by something the English did, and that was how the family got involved in the IRA. Probably it's also the root of Fi's extreme emotions in cases where children are involved.
- Aw, her Irish accent comes back a bit when she's talking to her brother, or to Michael when he's putting on his "Michael McBride" cover.
- *snort* And then Sean calls his "fake" American accent "a bit dodgy"! Ahahahaha!
- "I'd do anything to get Fi back! Don't tell her I said that." Heh. Oh, Sam.
- "Fiona is NOT my past." *bang bang* ♥ You finally made the right choice, friend.
- Although, uh, Strickler was kind of right about a couple things. The show has consistently presented spying as basically lying your ass off all day every day, and the method of getting back in the game he was offering to Michael was just continuing this practice. And while a lot of the criminal acts Michael commits to right greater wrongs can probably be waved away, a gun-running, bounty-hunting girlfriend is not going to look so good to the CIA.
- If Michael tripping while he was carrying Fi out of the water was unscripted, both JD and GA played it beautifully. That scene worked for me on gazillions of levels.
- After this episode, I wikipedia'd the IRA, and I ran across this interesting tidbit. Given how unusual Fiona's last name is, I imagine Matt Nix knew of the Glenanne Gang when he chose it; the weird thing is that they were Loyalists.
3x10
In which Cagney and Lacey are reunited! Only for it to become the saddest thing this show has ever done. :( I guess Madeline won't be participating in any more operations for a while. On the other hand, maybe now she won't be so cavalier about volunteering Michael's help to everyone in the neighborhood?
(...Although if Michael broke in and "stole" some records afterward, why couldn't he have just done it in the first place rather than having to get Maddie to blackmail Tina? Right, I know, drink more, think less.)
- "Gotcha." Heh. I imagine Fi saw that as revenge for Michael hitting her in the face to keep their cover intact in 3x08. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if she took that so personally because him caressing her cheek (and vice versa, rarely) has always been kind of Their Thing, since "Broken Rules" in S1 and presumably in their first relationship, and that was such a huge subversion or betrayal of it.
- But anyway, them flirting and nearly kissing while they built the bug = OVERWHELMING CUTENESS. And of course she would've saved herself. You know, eventually.
- Uh-oh. At the end, I'm pretty sure I heard a duduk (the ultra-mournful reed instrument Bear McCreary was so fond of for BSG) enter the soundtrack. That usually signaled a change to the White Board of Death on BSG, so I can't imagine it means good news here.
3x11
BWAHAHAHAHAHA! That was hilarious. Maybe not quite as funny as the car thieves episode from last season, but definitely up there in the running. The crazier Michael's cover IDs are, the more I like an episode. And showing up in Little Dominica (BTW, good job on finally setting an episode in one of the many Caribbean-influenced barrios in Miami, show) as "el Diablo"* in a black suit with a red shirt and tie, with a gravelly Clint Eastwood voice, and making things blow up with snaps of his fingers (thanks to Sam, Fi, and her C4) was definitely crazy. I loved how after a couple demonstrations of that, the gangsters were just like, "aw, MAN, not him again!" when he came around, and then verrry conciliatory when he went to snap his fingers. And then Omar snapped his fingers to see if anything would happen at the end! Bwahaha!
Also, THE ENDING. YAY. Finally, they sleep together and neither one of them wakes up thinking it was a bad idea the next morning. And he freaking GOT IT and LISTENED for a moment, both to her complaint at the beginning about never using hotel rooms for anything but surveillance and to her tirade at the end about how he's going to get himself killed if he keeps working on jobs and the burn notice 24/7, and did something about it. HURRAH.
Although...he's still kind of in the same situation with Gilroy as he was with Strickler, and that was what made Fi walk away in the first place. Is she okay with it now that she knows he does actually have a line, and that line is danger to her? Or because he's doing this not just to get back in, but to stop a "freelance psychopath" who killed a CIA agent who might've become a friend?
...Drink more, think less. And enjoy the cuteness.
* "Louis," I assume short for "Louis Cipher." And now I'm having flashbacks to Angel Heart, which I really never wanted to think of again after that Faust class.
3x12
Not bad, although not as good as the previous three. Loved Michael's expression when he heard that Maddie was getting a police award for reporting the cars he stole, then told her to report, and that she wanted him to be at the ceremony. "You're getting an award for reporting crimes I committed?"
And of course he does come, after the timely offhand remark from Sugar about faaaaaaaamily, and he even wears the ugly tie she guilt-tripped him into wearing ("I got it on clearance...you might as well keep it..."), because that is the kind of relationship these two have.
Speaking of Sugar, I'm all for bringing back one-off characters, but did it have to be him? I guess he wasn't so bad, but there were better choices. Though he did have his moments, especially the "NOW you want to use duct tape?" as he's lying all shot up on the floor, not to mention his car trunk full of guns and duct tape. Boy's got a good memory, even if he doesn't really have the smarts to put it all together.
Did enjoy Sam hiding his gun so Fi wouldn't shoot the bad guys for being jerks. Heh. Oh, and the microwave bomb was excellent.
Gilroy has a big crush on Michael! "Our hearts will beat as one." Heh heh.
...SO I GUESS WE KNOW WHERE MICHAEL STANDS ON THE ISSUES THAT HAVE BEEN SWIRLING ABOUT, HUH? WITH BULLETS, EVEN.
Much as I love the funny, I think this might be working its way up to being my favorite episode. Fiona backstory! Michael choosing sticking with the truth and staying out in the cold over coming back in on a lie! Michael choosing Fiona over empty promises of getting back in the game! Paul Blackthorne as a bad guy! Really, there was no bad here. (Well. JD's Irish accent was kind of awful. Nevertheless.)
I liked what Fiona said about how she'd been changed by living in Miami and working/being with Michael. We have seen her get a little less trigger-happy over the length of the show; she's into the jobs more to help out the clients than to blow stuff up, now. She's also changed in how she relates to Michael, finally walking away and protecting herself when she finds that she can't convince him to give up working with Strickler and getting off the blacklist.
I think we also got a good object lesson in how Michael's changed when he just mowed down Strickler when he got in the way of saving Fiona. Given his shooting of the Nigerians in the pilot, I think that's more in line with his old life--but it was different enough from his usual actions on the show that it was really quite shocking. (I gasped, anyway.)
Meanwhile, Maddie was trying to make a change when she wanted to sell the house, but found more comfort in the continuity of still living there, and letting Michael use it as a safehouse/field hospital/storage unit. She's the kind of person who keeps boxes of her kids' toys. Michael's the kind of person whose mementos consist of a few photographs and his ex/semi/sometime-girlfriend's gun.
And Sam...will always be Sam.
Shorter bits:
- "Don't. We're no good at this." Awww.
- Ah, Fi. We should talk. You know how you got really mad at O'Neill for killing children with his IRA bombs? More power to you, and hey, maybe you stuck to bank-robbing while you were on their payroll, but what exactly did you think the money you stole was used for? There's some logic!fail on someone's part here.
- Let me guess: the dead Glennane sister (PS, OMG, five brothers) was killed as a child by something the English did, and that was how the family got involved in the IRA. Probably it's also the root of Fi's extreme emotions in cases where children are involved.
- Aw, her Irish accent comes back a bit when she's talking to her brother, or to Michael when he's putting on his "Michael McBride" cover.
- *snort* And then Sean calls his "fake" American accent "a bit dodgy"! Ahahahaha!
- "I'd do anything to get Fi back! Don't tell her I said that." Heh. Oh, Sam.
- "Fiona is NOT my past." *bang bang* ♥ You finally made the right choice, friend.
- Although, uh, Strickler was kind of right about a couple things. The show has consistently presented spying as basically lying your ass off all day every day, and the method of getting back in the game he was offering to Michael was just continuing this practice. And while a lot of the criminal acts Michael commits to right greater wrongs can probably be waved away, a gun-running, bounty-hunting girlfriend is not going to look so good to the CIA.
- If Michael tripping while he was carrying Fi out of the water was unscripted, both JD and GA played it beautifully. That scene worked for me on gazillions of levels.
- After this episode, I wikipedia'd the IRA, and I ran across this interesting tidbit. Given how unusual Fiona's last name is, I imagine Matt Nix knew of the Glenanne Gang when he chose it; the weird thing is that they were Loyalists.
3x10
In which Cagney and Lacey are reunited! Only for it to become the saddest thing this show has ever done. :( I guess Madeline won't be participating in any more operations for a while. On the other hand, maybe now she won't be so cavalier about volunteering Michael's help to everyone in the neighborhood?
(...Although if Michael broke in and "stole" some records afterward, why couldn't he have just done it in the first place rather than having to get Maddie to blackmail Tina? Right, I know, drink more, think less.)
- "Gotcha." Heh. I imagine Fi saw that as revenge for Michael hitting her in the face to keep their cover intact in 3x08. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if she took that so personally because him caressing her cheek (and vice versa, rarely) has always been kind of Their Thing, since "Broken Rules" in S1 and presumably in their first relationship, and that was such a huge subversion or betrayal of it.
- But anyway, them flirting and nearly kissing while they built the bug = OVERWHELMING CUTENESS. And of course she would've saved herself. You know, eventually.
- Uh-oh. At the end, I'm pretty sure I heard a duduk (the ultra-mournful reed instrument Bear McCreary was so fond of for BSG) enter the soundtrack. That usually signaled a change to the White Board of Death on BSG, so I can't imagine it means good news here.
3x11
BWAHAHAHAHAHA! That was hilarious. Maybe not quite as funny as the car thieves episode from last season, but definitely up there in the running. The crazier Michael's cover IDs are, the more I like an episode. And showing up in Little Dominica (BTW, good job on finally setting an episode in one of the many Caribbean-influenced barrios in Miami, show) as "el Diablo"* in a black suit with a red shirt and tie, with a gravelly Clint Eastwood voice, and making things blow up with snaps of his fingers (thanks to Sam, Fi, and her C4) was definitely crazy. I loved how after a couple demonstrations of that, the gangsters were just like, "aw, MAN, not him again!" when he came around, and then verrry conciliatory when he went to snap his fingers. And then Omar snapped his fingers to see if anything would happen at the end! Bwahaha!
Also, THE ENDING. YAY. Finally, they sleep together and neither one of them wakes up thinking it was a bad idea the next morning. And he freaking GOT IT and LISTENED for a moment, both to her complaint at the beginning about never using hotel rooms for anything but surveillance and to her tirade at the end about how he's going to get himself killed if he keeps working on jobs and the burn notice 24/7, and did something about it. HURRAH.
Although...he's still kind of in the same situation with Gilroy as he was with Strickler, and that was what made Fi walk away in the first place. Is she okay with it now that she knows he does actually have a line, and that line is danger to her? Or because he's doing this not just to get back in, but to stop a "freelance psychopath" who killed a CIA agent who might've become a friend?
...Drink more, think less. And enjoy the cuteness.
* "Louis," I assume short for "Louis Cipher." And now I'm having flashbacks to Angel Heart, which I really never wanted to think of again after that Faust class.
3x12
Not bad, although not as good as the previous three. Loved Michael's expression when he heard that Maddie was getting a police award for reporting the cars he stole, then told her to report, and that she wanted him to be at the ceremony. "You're getting an award for reporting crimes I committed?"
And of course he does come, after the timely offhand remark from Sugar about faaaaaaaamily, and he even wears the ugly tie she guilt-tripped him into wearing ("I got it on clearance...you might as well keep it..."), because that is the kind of relationship these two have.
Speaking of Sugar, I'm all for bringing back one-off characters, but did it have to be him? I guess he wasn't so bad, but there were better choices. Though he did have his moments, especially the "NOW you want to use duct tape?" as he's lying all shot up on the floor, not to mention his car trunk full of guns and duct tape. Boy's got a good memory, even if he doesn't really have the smarts to put it all together.
Did enjoy Sam hiding his gun so Fi wouldn't shoot the bad guys for being jerks. Heh. Oh, and the microwave bomb was excellent.
Gilroy has a big crush on Michael! "Our hearts will beat as one." Heh heh.
