In ‘Burn Notice’ Season 4 Episode 1 ‘Friends and Enemies’ Michael Weston finds himself in the hands of the people who have been blighting his life ever since he was burned. But in this case ‘they’ are represented by the smiling, affable Vaughn.
Too smiling. Too affable. Spoilers follow.
While Carla was cold and slimy, Management just cold, and Gilroy just slimy, Vaughn is all sweetness, light, and apologizes. Yes, we have been having some staffing issues, but that is all behind us. Michael, we need your help.
Michael is, naturally, a little skeptical. But there does seem to be a vast, world-wide terrorist conspiracy behind Simon, the psycho Michael helped to put away at the end of Season 3, who is doing all sorts of major badness across the world. ‘They’, which is apparently a private spy agency that does the dirty work the government won’t do, would like to put a stop to it and would like Michael to help.
A visit to an arms dealer, played by a porcine Michael Ironside, in South America seems to buttress the idea that there is something there. The arms dealer is killed by a drone equipped with a Gatling gun and a rocket launcher. Michael agrees to help.
Back in Miami, Madeline is naturally very glad to see her son. Fiona is glad to see Michael as well, not just for his own sake, but because she and Sam took this job, you see, concerning this lawyer who helped a girl escape the clutches of her biker lover. Now the biker gang, called ‘The Breakers’, has marked the lawyer for death.
Nice to see you again too, Fi, Sam.
After warning off a posse of bikers with a pair of Tech 9s, Michael uses Barry to do a little hacking to make it appear that the lawyer has been doing a little work for the Breakers. Thus, if the lawyer is wacked, the wacking will bring on a federal investigation that will end the Breakers as a motorcycle club.
Big Ed, the really porcine leader of the Breakers, is ready to see reason. Hunter, the aggrieved now girl friendless biker, is not. A car and motorcycle chase involving pistols and shot guns ensues. Everything turns out fine, though, with Hunter out of the Breakers and the lawyer made an honorary member, with leather vest, tattoo, and the unsavory associations that go with it. But at least he will live.
Michael infiltrates a top secret military facility on behalf of Vaughn to hack into a computer system to get some information on the conspiracy. He succeeds, but a counter intelligence agent takes the blame and he is burned. Michael now has helped to burn another operative. Full circle.
The taunt the Simon gave Michael at the end of Season 3 seems to have affected Michael. Is he on his way to becoming Simon, with no lines he will not cost. Madeline assures him that she did not raise her boy that way.
