Smallscreen Features

Recap: Burn Notice 'Blind Spot'

By Alicia Sutton Aug 20, 2010, 6:01 GMT

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

Leading up to next week’s finale, “Burn Notice” sets the stage for a dramatic showdown on multiple fronts.  With some tension, suspicions, and lies, Team Westen is starting to fall apart.

The case of the week seemed a little weak to me this time around.  Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar) has agreed to help a friend from yoga class who was scammed by a womanizer out of her life savings. 

Sam (Bruce Campbell) and Fiona do some legwork and scouting and they come to realize this womanizer is bad news and has even killed some women.  Trying to lure him into giving his account information, Sam approaches him with a scam deal, but being wary, the scammer, Charles, declines.

Fiona wants to threaten Charles, but Sam talks her down.  They come up with a new plan to scam the scammer by drugging his drink and making him pass out.  While out, Fiona bugs his phone. 

When he wakes up, Sam convinces him that he went on a money spending spree.  Team Westen even goes so far as to magically make a Bentley appear at Charles’s house, making him believe he bought the car last night. 

Furious and scared, Charles goes to his lawyer, who turns out to be his money manager and starts yelling at him for giving him money last night.  To hear the conversation, Fiona and Jesse (Coby Bell) have to park right outside the office. 

While the lawyer insists he did no such thing, a guard notices Fiona’s car.  To not give themselves away, Fiona and Jesse kiss and the guard tells them to move on.  After the kiss, both Fiona and Jesse seem a little shaken up, though really, it wasn’t all that convincing to me. 

Plan C takes place in which the team makes Charles so paranoid, he turns to Sam for help.  Sam sets up a meeting with Michael (Jeffrey Donovan), who is posing as a fixer of sorts.  During the meeting, Charles gets a call from his money manager letting him know that the problem has been taken care of - that some woman he scammed set private investigators after them and that he is going to have her killed.  Fiona races over to the clients house and single-handedly saves her. 

On to plan D: Sam drugs Charles again, and when he wakes up he thinks he killed the woman and that he needs help covering it up.  Michael comes to help but asks for one million dollars.  Charles gets the money, but not before he pisses off his money manager.  On the way to the airport, Sam tells Charles that he basically is a schmuck and that his money manager is going to come after him and then dumps him off on the street in the middle of a bridge.  The client gets all the money, and everyone leaves happy.  Case closed.

On the Jesse-being-burned-by-Michael-but-he-doesn’t-know-it-yet-front, Mike and Sam forge a government file that points Jesse toward the name Michael learned from Simon last week: John Barrett (Robert Patrick).  They call John Barrett and let him know they have the bible he wants. 

John tells him they have the wrong man and hangs up.  Mike and Jesse, going on the presumption that John will have the phone traced, build a booby trap and wait for John to send someone down.

Meanwhile, Madeline (Sharon Gless) is unhappy with Michael and lectures him on lying to Jesse.  Michael brushes it off.  John Barrett sends someone to retrieve the bible, but the booby trap zaps him and Michael takes him hostage.  The hostage’s phone rings and Michael answers, tells the person on the line that Barrett has to come down to Miami if he wants the bible.  He then sends the hostage home with some photocopy pages of the bible. 

Then gee, guess what happens next?  Michael gets a call from Barrett that he is in face in Miami and that he wants to meet.  Michael walks in on his mom packing and she tells him she is leaving town, that she can’t watch Michael lie to Jesse any longer.  Michael still doesn’t see too worried. 

The episode ends with Fiona coming to talk to Michael (about the kiss maybe?) and Jesse is there waiting.  He holds a gun on Fiona and tells her he figured out that Michael burned him (through a video of the day he was burned - Michael leaving his building) and that her and Team Westen helped cover it up. 

She tries to plead their case, but he won’t hear of it.  He tells her goodbye and cocks the gun.  Fiona closes her eyes and after a few heartbeats opens them to find that Jesse has left.  Panicked, she calls Michael and lets him know that Jesse knows and that he is going to make them all pay. 

Jesse looks to be the fool this episode and it makes me wonder why he didn’t think to look at other sources of tapes, rather than the one that was scrubbed.  It seemed kind of out of the blue to me, as it seemed the show was really dragging out the Jesse storyline, and then BAM!  He finds out. 

Next week does look fantastic though, and it will be quite interesting when Jesse confronts Michael.  Though I doubt either of them will end up dying, my money is on Michael, hands down.