Smallscreen Features

'Burn Notice' Recap, Past and Future Tense

By Alicia Sutton Jul 23, 2010, 6:05 GMT

Jeffrey Donovan and Bruce Campbell - Con faves © Sylvain Gaboury / PR Photos

“Burn Notice” continued this week using two storylines – one a client of the week story and the other regarding Jesse (Coby Bell) and his burned status. 

Full of great one-liners and some decent acting, “Burn Notice” is really starting to hit its stride this season after the funk that was last season. 

While at a hotel doing some research on the Jesse front, Michael (Jeffrey Donovan) and Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar) find a black ops Russian who is in town to kidnap an old spy Paul Anderson (Burt Reynolds). 

The Russians come to Paul’s bar to kidnap him but Fi and Mike got there first and they help Paul escape by incapacitating the Russians one by one.  In one of the funnier moments of the night, to get a Russian’s attention Paul shouts “Boris!” and when the Russian is distracted and then knocked out he claims – “They always answer to Boris.”

To get protection, Paul has some documents that showcase a congressman in bad light.  While Mike and Paul go to get said documents, Sam (Bruce Campbell) and Mike’s mom (Sharon Gless) threaten the congressman into going home to meet with Paul. 

At the congressman’s house, Mike and Paul learn that he is unable to be blackmailed as he has cleaned his record by already passing blame to someone else.  Meanwhile the Russians show up – Mike, never to be caught off guard, tricks the Russians and they surrender – but Paul is not easily talked down after the Russians surrender and he kills one all while saying “Are you telling me I can’t kill Russians when they invade Florida”.  Classic. 

Though unhappy about the dead Russian, Mike is smart enough to blackmail the congressman with the dead body and Paul gets his protection.  Case closed.  Burt Reynolds was fantastic in this role and he really brought the best out of all the actors in this episode.  I hope to see him again.

Meanwhile on the Jesse front, we find Fiona, Mike and Jesse at the beach.  After noticing Jesse staring at an older overweight woman, Mike and Fiona learn that Jesse is watching his old bosses wife as he wants to find his old boss to get information on the bank heist gone bad that will get him one step closer to finding out who burned him. 

After seeing the unattractive wife Michael proclaims “Well if that was my wife I would know where I’d be” – cut to a bar where…ta-da…Jesse’s old boss Marv is!  Marv agrees to get the bank information for Jesse as he really thinks Jesse is innocent. 

Stepping up the heat in regards to Jesse getting closer to discovering Michael was the one who (accidentally) had him burned, Fiona gives Jesse a lecture on living his life and not focusing on who burned him.  This doesn’t go over so well and Jesse proclaims he won’t rest until whoever burned him is dead.  Fiona starts to get worried for Michael. 

After recovering the bank heist information, Marv delivers it to Fiona and tells her that he thinks Jesse was set up.  He even goes so far as to give her evidence that Jesse’s keycard appears to have been duplicated.  After he leaves Fiona destroys the evidence. 

She is upset at this and goes to Michael.  She is unhappy about lying to Jesse and informs Mike that he is becoming someone she doesn’t like.  After storming out it’s hard to see if they are going to be able to stay together after everything goes down. 

Great acting, great story, and a great guest made this week’s “Burn Notice” a stand out episode.