Burn Notice: A little less conversation

Tonight's Burn Notice was all action, baby. No family stuff, not too much relationship drama, no sitting by the pool sipping cocktails (unfortunately for Sam). Just a lot of kicking ass and taking names. Man, I love this show.

Sam provides us with our quasi-charity case of the week, a friend of his "lady friend" who's landed himself in a bit of a pickle. Incidentally, said lady friend has finally provided Sam with his Cadillac! And while I'm sitting here wondering if Cadillacs are cool again as we go to commercial, heeeey...what a coincidence: Burn Notice is sponsored by Cadillac! Who woulda thunk it?! And according to the clearly impartially-written Sam, it's like driving on a cloud, or some junk like that. Sigh. I guess it's better than Alias's "Quick! To the incredibly awesome Ford F-150! [Zoom in on logo]" scenes, but still... Sam manages to win me back by describing their job as "freelance superhero Robin Hood kind of guy," which is pretty much exactly how I describe Burn Notice to people, minus the awesome sarcastic narration, of course.

At any rate, this week Michael is helping out a housesitting surfer dude whose penchant for pretending to be wealthy has gotten his fiancée kidnapped. Oh, and she thinks he's rich. Whoops. According to Michael, "about 40% of kidnapping victims are returned safely," which is a pretty frighteningly low number, if you ask me. Do you think they just make these statistics up? Because if not, yikes. Luckily, though, Michael and gang manage to kidnap one of the kidnappers and force him into working with them. Even so, it takes some crazy stalling techniques, undercover work, and massage-getting (lucky Michael) before they can find out where the girl is being kept. After that, it's a simple matter of throwing together a flash grenade and a lock-melting bomb thing using ingredients easily purchased at your local pharmacy. Gotta love that American ingenuity. Irish in Fiona's case, I guess. So the hostage is rescued and delivered to her worried surfer boy, and which point she (rightfully, I'd say) proceeds to beat the tar out of him.

In the meantime, Michael gets an opportunity to clear his name by meeting with a government paper-pusher and going over his file. Don't ask me how, exactly, since he's not supposed to have the file in the first place. Anyway, before taking advantage of this great opportunity to tell his side of the story, Michael gets the guy arrested to make sure he's not an assassin or whatever, thus completely pissing the dude off. Michael's really a people person. Luckily, the paper-pusher is willing to come to Michael's place and meet with him anyway (which probably should have been a red flag, given all the inconveniences he'd suffered). Unluckily, the dude's totally an assassin after all, and tries to garrote Michael. Bananas! This show is the best! Michael manages to grab his handy "taped under the sink for situations just like this one" gun, and shoots the guy right through his middle. Sadly for Michael, it still seems this one got away, without any clue as to who sent him (the man who burned him being an obvious suspect).

We get a happy ending, too, as Michael gets Fiona a fancy new (or possibly old--I don't know guns) gun for her birthday. God, though, I would hate to date Michael. The constant smiling, difficult to tell between genuine and sarcastic. The obsessive focus on that whole “getting his life back” thing. The ever-present danger of an assassination attempt. The related paranoia. It would drive me crazy. Of course, his charm, hot bod, and general adorableness would prooobably make up for at least a few of the above annoyances. Still, though, I’m feeling a bit bad for Fiona. Although dating a freakishly strong skeleton can't be easy for Michael, either.

Here's hoping that next week will bring on the Richard Schiff!