Burn Notice - The Fall Of Sam Axe

I figured since this aired between Seasons 4 and 5, and since certain characters in it appear during Season 5, we ought to at least touch on it.

Plot: So this is how Sam winds up in out of the military, and in Miami. He sleeps with an admiral's wife (he didn't know she was married), and the admiral sends him to Colombia. He's going to help the local military there deal with some terrorist group called Espada Ardiente. It doesn't take Sam long to learn that Veracruz, the military commander, plans to destroy a clinic and pin it on this group. After a lot of arguing with Ben and Amanda, who run the clinic, Sam's able to convince them he's sincere, and they flee into the hills. After blowing up the clinic themselves, but hey, they needed the cover.

There's also a nosy teenager named Beatriz in tow, who just so happens to know where the Espada Ardiente are holed up. Turns out they're a bunch of farmers who don't like being caught in some territorial pissing match between Veracruz and drug traffickers. They number about a dozen, have almost no training, and almost no ammunition. And they're all Sam's got. So he tries to stall by returning to Veracruz, pretending he escaped the "terrorists", and trying to lead them on a wild goose chase while he calls the admiral for help. Too bad Veracruz' boss listened in on that phone conversation. Sam narrowly escapes, but no Veracruz is really gunning for them. So he leads everyone to a CIA outpost an familiar friend of his mentioned, where he can presumably call in some real help, if they can hold Veracruz off long enough.

Quote of the Episode: Sam -'And the only reason I called the one guy a goatherder is because he has goats and he herds them.'

Sam Axe Drink Count: We saw at least 3 beers, but that only covers up to the time Michael left the bowling alley. Sam clearly did a lot more thinkin' drinkin' after that.

Sam Getting Hit Count: 8. Yeah, Veracruz really teed off on him.

Other: It occurs to me that if he Sam was already in Poland by '92, then high school must have been several decades ago. Did the zone blitz even exist yet? Would the Analee High School J.V. football team have used it if it did?

At least the Espada Ardiente hated the idea of the prevent defense, as all right thinking people should. The Prevent Defense sucks, and the person who devised it should have been slapped across the face the moment they suggested it. It's like the DH, or the possession arrow, utter nonsense.

Ben went from staunchly against violence and soldiers to building all the explosives he could awful fast. He built a pressure mine before anyone even asked him to, and another bomb on top of that. Was he inspired by the heroic actions of the part-time farmer army, or did he decide his first duty was to his patients, so screw those soldiers trying to hurt them.

Absolutely nobody believes anything Sam tells them. He tells Veracruz something, Veracruz doesn't believe it. He tells Admiral Maitland what Veracruz is up to, Maitland doesn't believe it. He tells Ben and Amanda he's not abandoning them, they don't believe him. Sam tells them the downed tree is suspicious and they should back in the trucks, no one listens until after they come under fire.

I didn't buy the chemistry between Sam and Amanda. She had so much hostility towards him at the start, I think it would have been enough for them to part as friends. But this is Sam we're talking about, so I guess romance was inevitable.

About the time Sam first met Beatriz, I made a note, 'His Spanish seems pretty good.' Two notes later I wrote, 'Maybe his Spanish isn't so good.' I think that was the point when he said something about 'to sleep'. I actually think his Spanish got worse the farther in we got. Maybe he was just having difficulty with tenses.

The most significant scene to me was the bit where the come across the roadblock, which Veracruz' men have set up to delay them. When the soldiers open fire, Sam's first response is to grab Beatriz and get her behind cover. I figure that tells you who he is at his core. Whatever else he might be - boozy flirter, loudmouth - he protects people who can't protect themselves.