Saturday, November 10, 2012

Burn Notice - Desperate Measures / Means & Ends


Betrayed by his mentor (John C. McGinley), Michael (Jeffrey Donovan) finds himself trapped in Panama with no exit strategy along with Fi (Gabrielle Anwar), Sam (Bruce Campbell), and Jesse (Coby Bell) as the Burn Notice returns from its mid-season hiatus with a two-hour premiere. With the CIA, FBI, and a Panama drug cartel on their tails (after they steal a plane full of their drugs) Michael has to forgo killing the man (Kenny Johnson) who killed his brother (Seth Peterson) in order to make it home and use Gray to take the fight to Card.

With limited time and even more limited resources Sam and Fi find a pilot willing to fly he group out of Panama, no questions asked, while Michael contacts Madeline (Sharon Gless) and sends her after a computer hacker (David Fickas) who can help hide the flight from Card and the FAA. Although the rest of the group manages to make a suicidal escape, Michael and his prisoner are left behind. Refusing to abandon their friend the group makes an emergency landing and prepares to trade the 400 kilos of cocaine aboard their stolen plane in return for Michael.

After being tortured by the cartel's leader (José Zúñiga), Gray makes a deal to burn Michael and his friends and retrieve the man's drugs in exchange for his freedom, but he has second thoughts when he realizes Michael isn't the man Card ordered him to kill. With Gray's help the entire team makes it back alive and to take down Card he'll have to continue to rely on Gray's help.





Withe Gray's help Card believes Michael and his team are dead. Michael's mentor orders Gray to collect any intel in Michael's loft before torching his home which allows Westen the opportunity to delicately choose what false information to feed his former mentor at the cost of burning everything he and Fi own to the ground.

While trying to stay dead Fi and Sam agree to help her old prison pal Ayn (Zabryna Guevara) who needs help with a dirty cop (Antonio Jaramillo) who still holds a grudge for the crime that landed her in prison years before. Unfortunately for them the cop plants drugs in Ayn's apartment violating her parole leaving Sam and Fi to look after her son and figure out a way to clear her name. Fi guilts Jesse into helping by posing as confidential informant who can give him the one thing he craves most - the untouchable gang leader who is responsible for the death of his partner.


When the cop doesn't go for the plan and decides to march into the gang's turf and take the gang leader himself Jesse, Fi, and Sam have to figure a way to stop him from committing suicide and leaving them nothing to use to keep Ayn out of prison. Michael has his own problem to deal with after Madeline figures out who Gray really is and demands to sit down face-to-face with the man who shot and killed her son. When she doesn't get the answers she needs Maddie decides it's time for a change and announces her plans to leave Miami for good.

Although their plan to help Ayn doesn't go quite according to plan, Fi and Michael are able to get her released from custody. Michael's meeting with Card doesn't go as well as Card kills Gray and forces Michael to make a split-second decision that will likely haunt him and his friends over the season's remaining episodes. The two-hour premiere ends the Gray/Card storyline and gets Michael his vengeance but it also puts Weston and each member of his team in serious danger for at least the foreseeable future. It will be interesting to see how Michael finds a way out of the latest mess he's gotten them into.

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