I’ve been contemplating the best way to cover Burn Notice, since it’s not the kind of show that demands a lot of thematic unpacking, like Mad Men, nor is it the kind of show with a dense mythology to navigate, like Lost. Last week I mostly wrote a general appreciation of what Burn Notice does well, but I can’t really fall back on that with every episode. Nevertheless, there are a few points I failed to cover, so I can use that tactic once more—at least a little bit.
For example, I forgot to mention the running gag of labeling the players in each Burn Notice episode, including the moment of truth when the poor soul telling Michael his or her sob story becomes “The Client.” (I rank that in the same tier as It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’s title cards when it comes to TV moments that never fail to kill.) And this week we got the added joke of the bad guy getting tagged as “Gangster,” before Fiona complained that he’s really more of a pervert. Right on cue, “Gangster” slides off the screen, and “Pervert” slides on. Golden.
I also haven’t really talked about Michael’s mom, Madeline (played by the crafty Sharon Gless). To be honest, early in the first season I thought the mother was Burn Notice’s weak link, part of the show only to add one more annoyance to Michael’s day. But ever since the two have essentially reconciled their differences, she’s become a nice bit of comic relief, as well a narrative convenience. Michael has gotten so reliant on using his mom’s house as a place to stash clients that tonight she even cracked a joke about it: “If you didn’t bring people over, I’d never see you.”
In “Hot Spot,” the clients hanging with Madeline—and eating all her old, stale food—are Corey Jensen and sister Tanya, who are being hassled by local car thief Felix Cole. It seems Corey punched out Felix after he tried to abduct Tanya, and in order to save face with his crew, Felix is determined to kill Corey. Fortunately for Corey, he has a protector in his football coach (played by Michael Irvin!), who’s buddies with Sam.
It doesn’t take much for Sam to convince Michael to take the case—which involves frightening Felix into fleeing Miami—even though Michael, as always, has other business to attend to. Carla is insisting that Michael step up his investigation into the people who firebombed his apartment, and she’s using the agency’s resources to provide him with a list of names to investigate (drawn from a piece of hardware that Michael boosts). Michael subcontracts some of the legwork to Fiona, setting up a subtle rivalry between his ex-girlfriend and his new boss. I’m starting to think that Carla just enjoys binding and blindfolding Michael, regardless of what she needs him for. At the least, she’s decidedly irritated when she learns at the end of “Hot Spot” that Michael and Fiona are back together.
As to how Mike and Fi end up back in the sack, it all starts with her reminiscing about their days on the job in Dublin, and how she fell in love with his cover before she ever really got to know the man behind it. And then the rekindled flame turns into an all-out blaze when Fiona steps into a booby-trapped house and sets off a four-alarmer—thereby literalizing the metaphor of passion reignited. The scene where Michael stands outside the burning house, begging for information about whether a woman was seen entering or leaving, provided a strong emotional beat to this episode. And then when he finds Fi safe back his place, that hoary old visual cue of a rain-dampened face standing in for tears worked more than it had a right to. The writers set up that moment beautifully.