Burn Noticed 7x03 Down Range
Bri: As I watch this season, I’ve had this weird journey with Burn Notice, where it was fun for the first season or two, then even when the show was getting better, the amount of work it takes started to get to me, but now I’m on the other side of the bell curve and I’m like, awww, this is almost over. What am I going to do if I don’t get to see my friends every week? (I had that feeling the first time I watched Burn Notice. Not the work part, since I wasn’t doing a podcast about it, but I did put off watching the last couple of eps because I didn’t want it to be over. I was well into a re-watch before I actually let myself finish it.)
Bri: First we have our typical bummer Michael opening, where Michael comes ‘home’ to the DR to mope with a hidden photo of him and Fi.
Chris: The same photo!
Bri: The same terrible photoshopped photo that we get so many close-ups on.
Chris: Do you think the first time that somebody made it they thought they were going to be using it that many times?
Bri: No. Absolutely not.
(It’s in character, though, for there only to be that one shot of Michael and Fi. Michael would absolutely avoid being photographed, he’s a spy. And also deeply emotionally reserved. Posing for a photo with his girlfriend is something he would only have done once or twice, and only under the deepest duress and guilt tripping by Madeline.)
Bri: Then he sees a police sketch of himself on TV and has to shave, which I’m devastated by. Scruffy Michael Westen is such a good look. But apparently no-one else agrees, because the next two scenes, every time he meets up with a contact, they’re like, ‘Ooooh, you look nice!’
Chris: No, he looked better before. The people on this show have the exact opposite taste of us. Every time they have to make Michael Westen look not like Michael Westen, he looks better. (There are a couple of exceptions, like when they make him look truly greasy and skeevy, but generally yeah.)
Bri: Was that the goal?
Chris: Is Michael Westen a boring man who dresses boringly?
Burke has a job for Michael to steal a truck. Burke has someone in mind to help with the job, but that guy has figured out how valuable the truck’s contents are and wants a bigger cut. This disagreement end’s with Burke’s man dead, so Michael suggests his friends from Miami for the job.
Chris: This feels like what they did in part of season two, where each episode is part of some convoluted plan to get some goal. Specifically, it feels like they’re putting together a sniper rifle, like they did that one time.
Bri: But this feels more personal. They’re doing it better.
Chris: It really is about execution.
Bri: Then we have a quick scene where Jesse and Sam agree to come and Sam finds Jesse playing basketball, though apparently he’s on a job, waiting for some guy to come out. And he’s like, well all right, I can go tomorrow, and Sam’s like no, we have to leave in an hour, and Jesse’s like okay, I’ll take a shower and we can go to the airport, and I’m like, what is your fucking job, Jesse, that you can just leave in the middle???
(The subject of Jesse’s job and how he manages not to get fired is an ongoing one through seasons six and seven 🤪)
Madeline and Charlie are out by the beachside when Madeline is approached by Nate’s old bookie, who wants Madeline to pay her dead son’s debts. Before he leaves, he hands Charlie a bullet.
Bri: That is legitimately chilling.
Chris: It is an effective thing, because it’s not actively bad, but it sends a message. This guy is a nobody, but I get why he has this job, because he has a flair for the dramatic.
Madeline calls Fi to babysit while she gets money together, and Fi’s all, fuck that shit, nobody's paying anything. We know Nate had debts with more than one bookie, and if you pay this one, they’ll all come after you.
Back in the DR, Sam and Jesse fly in in a small plane to meet Michael and Burke. Unfortunately the plane was spotted flying low under the radar and the cops show up expecting to find a drug plane. They blow up the plane as cover while they make their escape.
Bri: It serves as a useful mini-audition for Burke to see how well these three dudes can immediately jump into action and work together.
They go to the warehouse where the truck they’re stealing will be and scout the place and go over the plan. Burke wants to know what happens if Michael is seen, and Sam says they bail and try again later. Burke says nope, no bailing, if there’s a problem, just shoot the problem.
Sam and Jesse go back to Michael’s place and make it clear how unimpressed they are with being told to murder security guards. Michael tells them that this is not a choice thing – if he doesn’t get fully in with Burke and find out exactly what he’s up to, the CIA will put all of them back in jail forever.
In Miami, Fi has a plan to get Maddie to give the bookies some jewellery as collateral – they’ll put a tracker in the jewellery, so they can then go to where the bookie keeps his valuables and steal it all. This will put the bookie In a very bad situation with his mafia boss and then he’ll have bigger concerns than Madeline Westen.
Back to the DR again, where the plan to steal the truck goes well until a guard comes out and Sam has to shoot him with a sniper rifle to stop him raising the alarm. They get the truck, but Sam is Not Happy.
Sam and Jesse go to meet up with Strong to get debriefed and give their take on Burke. They really can’t add much to what Michael’s already told him, so Strong wants to put them on the first plane back to Miami. Sam says fuck that, we’re here now, I had to kill somebody for you to get this job done, and we’re staying to see how it wraps up.
Madeline and Fi are watching the building where the bookie took the jewellery and they get to talking about Nate and what a screw up he was. Madeline feels terrible because she loved her son, but she knows who he was and now she’s in this situation because of him. She’s worried about raising Charlie and how he might turn out. When the bookie leaves, Fi teaches Madeline how to place explosives to blow out the wall by the safe.
Bri: This is like a take your mother-in-law to work day.
Chris: It’s so good.
Bri: Madeline’s like, ‘That was really satisfying,’ and it was so cute to watch them do a little montage together. (It is a great couple of scenes ❤️)
Chris: Sharon Gless, when the wall blows up, the look of genuine glee in her face – it’s one of those times where it’s like, that’s not acting.
Bri: They’re having a ball and I love that for her and for them. I’m a little confused why Carlos wasn’t there, but I like that it’s girls’ day. (Maybe Carlos, unlike Jesse, has a day job that he can’t just run out on at an hour’s notice without getting fired 🤣)
Burke and Michael are meeting with a guy who’s going to buy the contents of their stolen truck. Sam and Jesse tell Strong the meeting point seems suss, it’s a bad place for a deal with no escape routes if anything goes wrong. Inside the warehouse, Michael is telling Burke that he really doesn’t like this meeting place, it sucks.
Strong and the CIA are listening in on everything – they want to know what Burke and the dude he’s selling to are planning, their conversation might be very interesting, so shooting everyone when they first turn up is not on the agenda. Strong has snipers on the rooftop of every building around.
Serano turns up to meet Burke with a couple of henchmen, and Burke instantly kills the henchmen. Burke never had any interest in selling anything, the truck was just bait to get Serano. All of this is a surprise to everyone but Burke, and then a helicopter approaches. The pilot calls Burke and says, ‘Dude, there are snipers everywhere, I’m not landing to pick you up!’
Michael instantly says to Burke, ‘WTF, Serano brought snipers,’ and Serano says, ‘No, I didn’t, I brought cash to buy your stuff.’
Burke says, ‘Hmmm, no, the Serano thing doesn’t make sense actually,’ and pulls a gun on Michael.
Michael says, ‘They’re not my snipers, I promise you, they’ll kill me if they see me,’ and edges kind of close to a window.
Strong is listening in on this still going WTF??? and trying to catch up, so Sam grabs a rifle from one of the snipers and takes a shot close by Michael.
Michael grabs Serano, holds him in front of him, marches him to the window, and says, ‘Tell your snipers to stand down!’
Bri: Serano throughout this scene has been so sweet and polite.
Chris: Serano seems like a nice guy.
Bri: I mean, we know he’s an international terrorist, but he really does seem like a nice guy, and he’s like, ‘What? They’re not my snipers.’
But Michael threatens to kill him if he doesn’t tell the snipers to stand down, so a very confused Serano calls thorough the broken window, ‘Uh, dudes? Go away?’ And then Strong calls the snipers off and the helicopter reports to Burke that the area is safe and lands. Burke, Michael and Serano all depart in the helicopter leaving a very forlorn Strong with nothing to show for all of this.
On board the helicopter, Michael is demanding answers from Burke, wanting to know WTF is going on. Burke says that’s not his call, only the boss can decide whether to let Michael in. And now Michael is all oh fuck, because Strong told him Burke was The Man, and apparently that just isn’t the case. This is all getting a lot more complicated…
Fi and Madeline are watching the very despondent bookie at a cafe. Madeline goes over and shows off the stuff they got from his safe, including his notes on his business dealings, and she says, ‘If you come near me or Charlie ever again, I will call every number in this book and I will end you.’
Bri: It’s a pretty good scene. I was punching the air a lot in that scene. I was having a great time watching Madeline take hers, even though, if you zoom out a little bit, there have been like four scenes.
Chris: It is very much a C plot. There is no B plot, it is an A plot and a C plot. There’s not a lot to it, but it is a great scene.
(Yeah, timewise, it’s pretty thin for Fi and Madeline this episode, but the writing and the actors make a lot of the screen time they have.)
The episode fails on spy tips (there are only three interesting, practical ones) and nobody has an alias. They’re still judging Sam on whether he’s being Bruce Campbell and not good Sam (😡) so he doesn’t get credit this episode and Jesse doesn’t do a whole lot. So the ep fails to be a great ep of Burn Notice even though Fi and Madeline get credit for their roles.
It’s not a great episode of television either.
Chris: It was solid.
Bri: It’s a fine episode, but this is going to be a short podcast episode because there wasn’t a lot to recap. They stole a truck, they learned that the truck wasn’t the point. Fiona and Madeline stole a safe.
Chris: I think this is the consequence of this kind of plotting, where you can’t really sink your teeth into one aspect of it, because it’s all just this leads to this leads to this.
(There is a lot of setup through this part of the series, leading into the James section. They have a way to go to get Michael from where we were at the end of season six to where it’s heading, and with the shorter number of episodes this season, there was inevitably going to be some plot-heavy eps to get there.)
