#dead larry

The blocking on this scene is so interesting. And like. Thematic.

Great Characters: Larry Sizemore, aka “Dead Larry” (Burn Notice)

You can tell a lot about someone from the way they smile. People smile when things are going their way. If they work in the intelligence field, a business of waiting, listening, and frequent inconveniences; it tells you they probably don’t do things by the book. If they are an undead spy doing mercenary work for the highest bidder, they probably enjoy their work a bit too much. If they call targets “Dead-ees” and chuckle when admiring a dead cartel hitman bleeding out on your couch, they probably kill a lot of people. Most importantly, if they smile with a weapon pointed at you, they have plans much worse than killing you in mind.

Larry Sizemore, aka “The Spy With Nine Lives”, is a former Marine turned contract killer after “retiring” from the service by faking his death. 15 servicemen witnessed him walk into an oil refinery before it exploded and Larry was declared K.I.A. (Killed In Action). This assessment was proven to be inaccurate when Larry resurfaced and tried to bring his former protégé, Michael Westen, back into business with him. Michael, now a blacklisted spy without an agency, does his best to keep Larry at a distance, thwart his plans, and minimize the excessive collateral damage Larry defaults into when things don’t go according to plan. True to his name, Larry has survived numerous attempts at execution, retribution, and termination by various nasty organizations, operatives, and explosions. But he keeps coming back, and he keeps finding Michael, and he keeps trying to reawaken the killer he knew Michael to be back in their Marine days.

Larry appears in four episodes of Burn Notice alive, and a fifth as a hallucination of Michael’s. Each appearance serves to reiterate the point that Larry is a terrifying monster posing as a father figure. Everything about Larry is evocative of an older, wiser, more experienced version of Michael, but with a much different moral compass. A lifetime of field operations in some of the nastiest parts of the globe has only sharpened Larry’s killer instinct into an all-purpose tool. His response to any whiff of police involvement or potential setback is to “Just kill everybody, and I mean everybody.” A braver man could try to deduce Larry’s kill count, or even just the number of digits in Larry’s kill count, but it ain’t me. An operative of that age, with that caliber of skill, and that sort of cleanup mentality, could crack three digits easily. All it takes is for something to go wrong. In the field, something always goes wrong.

Actor Tim Matheson does some amazing work bringing The Spy Who Never Dies to life. Larry is almost never seen without a smile and a chuckle, cementing himself as both a fatherly persona and a depraved sociopath in one clever motion. One of the most distinct qualities about Larry is just how much he smiles, and unlike Michael, who only ever smiles when he’s putting on a fake performance, there’s a sincerity & earnestness to Larry’s toothy grin that sells just how much he's enjoying himself. This man likes his work. On the few occasions when Larry isn’t smiling, the atmosphere shifts dramatically. This is a man who does not tolerate discouragement well. Underneath the warm exterior is an explosive temper, seething anger issues, and a little voice in his head that only says “kill them all, stack the bodies, sort it out later”. The closest we get to seeing Larry lose control comes in a law office while trying to get access to a federal database. When the desk clerk checks into Larry’s ad-libbed story and tells him (in that trademark desk clerk manner of professional detachment) that he can’t help him; we get a glimpse of what can only be described as pure, unfathomable fury. The look on Larry’s face lasts only a moment, but the stare could melt steel beams. It’s not an over-the-top, teeth-grinding, nostrils flaring sort of rage. Larry’s eyes don’t widen or redden, the veins in his neck don’t bulge or pop, and he doesn’t lean any closer or start reaching for any weapon. The expression he gives can only be compared to the eye of a storm, a single moment of stillness and quiet in the center of unmatched destruction and carnage. It’s the look of someone who already sees you as dead and just needs to figure out where to dump the body. Michael’s timely arrival is likely all that saved the clerk from becoming one of Larry’s Dead-ees.

Story-wise, Larry exists as this alternate path for Michael. The spy he could have been if he didn’t have his morals. If he stopped trying to do things the hard way and just let the bodies hit the floor to get what he wanted. There’s a piece of Michael that recognizes that he’s as good a spy as he is because of the time he spent with Larry creating piles of dead bodies on foreign soil. Whatever reasons they may have done it, Michael and Larry are both government-sanctioned killers. No amount of Good Samaritan work will ever wash that away. The job of a spy is to take whatever avenue has the highest chance of success for a mission and see it through, even if it requires eliminating enemy forces or collateral damage. Every job has risks, if the mission’s success is on the line, you do what you have to. Stubbornly refusing to kill is an easy way of getting yourself pointlessly killed in the field. Bad guys usually won’t share that sense of moral integrity, it’s a lot easier to just shoot you in the head and feel bad about it later. Larry is a reminder of the power of simplicity. Simple job, simple approach, simple method. Get target, kill target, get paid. And while he may not be as smart as Michael, he’s still smart enough to disrupt Michael’s plans and force him into a situation where Larry’s “kill ‘em all” mentality is the only way out.