Saturday, November 13, 2010

Burn Notice 4x13

Burn Notice, Eyes Open, on USA Network
Welcome back, Michael Westen, we’ve missed you! Glad you’re still alive, though barely. He’s been in a coma, on life support for three days. “Where Am I?” “Miami.” That telecom CEO John Barrett is dead – thanks to Sam and Fiona – and so are most of his henchmen. But the briefcase with Simon’s coded bible is still missing. He’s barely on his feet and he already attracts an unwitting client in the hospital after a large explosion in South Beach brings in many wounded victims to the emergency room. This is where the plot’s credibility gets stretched beyond my comfort zone, because apparently the criminal defense attorney who Michael last helped retrieve his daughter, is now hell bent on revenge: for the target of the South Beach bombing was the gang leader behind the kidnapping. Very effective method of elimination: blow up explosives on a busy stretch of town to kill your archenemy. Naturally, the attorney did not get his hands dirty, but employed your average run-of-the-mill fantastically fanatic narcissistic paranoid psychopath with delusions of grandeur wishing to rid the earth of all the scum willing to blow people to smithereens in the process.

With the media all over Barrett’s global conspiracy, Vaughn stops by to apologize to Michael for busting in on their meeting with Barrett guns a-blazing, and to say goodbye. Jesse is back on board, reluctantly, not to make nice – on the contrary, he’s meaner and leaner than ever – but to finish the job and find the coded bible. It leads to another trail of blood. (No doubt they are not going to get their hands on the thing until the end of the season.) At the end of the day, Madeline asks her son why he does what he does, the vigilante stuff and the pursuit of those who blacklisted him. He has been thinking about it every day since the day he got burned, but he doesn’t know. A little trite. There were some good bits this episode. Fortunately Michael was evidently still suffering from his wounds – rather than walking out of the hospital kicking ass. It all did feel a little contrived, though, and so much got crammed into the episode it was hard to keep track.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.