Burn Notice 5.6 - Enemy of My Enemy

Plot: Michael and the rest of the crew have chosen to ignore the fact Michael obviously has an evil alternate personality that took control and killed Max. Instead, they've decided to hunt down someone who looks like Michael, by having Fiona and Maddy travel to the country clerk's office, under the auspice of searching for Fi's deadbeat ex. They find a sympathetic clerk who grants them access to the DMV database, and track down a limited list of people similar to Michael, leading to an aspiring actor, Jakob Starkey.

In the midst of all this, Michael is trying to keep Pearce off his back by helping her with other problems. In this case, that's a Predator drone that was stolen, then sold to the Serbians. Pearce is adamant about finding it without blowing her asset's cover. Since these particular Serbians are into all sorts of things, he enlists Carmelo Dante to find them. You remember Carmelo. Appeared in the Season 1 Finale? Second biggest heroin dealer in Miami? Promised to kill Michael Westen the next time he saw him?

Which is why Sam has to play the poor sucker who helped the Serbians hijack Carmelo's smack shipment. Which puts him dangerously close to Carmelo when he's in an irate mood. And the Agency people in charge of this operation are the two pinheads from The Fall of Sam Axe, so they aren't in a helpful mood.

The Players: Pearce (CIA Bloodhound), Sugar (Drug Dealer), Carmelo (2nd Biggest Heroin Dealer in Miami), Djovic (Serbian Syndicate Leader), Gabriel Manaro & Matt Bailey (Not Fans of Sam Axe), Jakob Starkey (Fake Michael Westen)

Quote of the Episode: Jesse - 'Damn. It's like one of those nature documentaries, where a snake eats another snake. I can never watch those.' Fiona - 'Really? I love those.'

Does Fiona blow anything up? She shot a oil drum with something in it that went boom.

Sam Axe Drink Count: 1 (10 overall). I don't know if he brought that beer to the meeting with Pearce, or if he raided her supply, either way, he earned it.

Sam Getting Hit Count: 3 (7 overall). Carmelo's very hands on. He even does his own torturing, while wearing white no less.

Michael's Fake Laugh Count: 0 (3 overall).

Other: Michael had no alias, because he didn't need one. Unless we consider him to be Fi's deadbeat ex, in which case he said his name was Dave.

I would say between the nature documentary thing, and seeing what she's done to Mike's place, Jesse is well over his crush on Fi.

I'm not sure how I feel about how Fi treated Sugar. Yes, he's a drug dealer, yes he's sleazy. But he has helped them in the past, and he came to them once with a problem, out of concern for his cousin Dougie. I'm not saying they have to be back slappin' pals, but intimating he has some sort of transmittable disease while he's trying to chat up some women? Not very nice. Funny, but not nice.

Even as someone who tends to arrive early, I don't like criticizing people for only arriving a certain amount of time early, as Pearce did. What's the point of that? If you want someone there earlier, tell them to arrive at that earlier time. It's not hard.

I feel like this is the first episode so far in Season 5 I've really enjoyed. Most of the other have been too serious, too focused on Michael's inability to move on, or simply too obviously repetitive in terms of the case. Now that Michael has something concrete to work on - finding Max' killer - he can actually move in some direction where we can discern progress. And in the meantime, this episode was a bit funnier. Maybe that's a strange thing to say for an episode about a stolen drone, but it had a lot of amusing bits. Fiona's crying face at the clerk's office, and her complaint about the earrings Maddy loaned. The bit about the nature documentaries. Sam forcing Michael to sacrifice his blueberry yogurt to convince Carmelo he was telling the truth. Michael one-upping Fi when it came to sniping. Fi stealing Jesse's shot in response. Fi then letting Jesse be the one who convinces Carmelo not to shoot Michael and Sam. Jesse doing that with a bullet hole frowny face. Manaro and Bailey are infuriating with their indifference towards Sam's life, but it makes their frustration at Sam "losing" the 50K surveillance equipment all the sweeter.

Oh, and the story Carmelo cooked up to explain how he found the Serbian weapons stash. He and his boys went on a picnic at the waterfront, with no food, but lots of guns, and just happened to see these Serbians loading a weapon. So they heroically attacked them and saved the day. That was fantastic. To be fair, Manaro and Bailey's utter exasperation with having to sell this story gives it a boost, but still, it's a really good story.