This week’s Burn Notice fits nicely with my blog post earlier today about “modern inconveniences.” Michael Westen has always excelled at turning technology against the people who rely on it, and even the title of this episode—“Shot In The Dark”—speaks to the way frustration at failing electronics can turn into outright fear, and then panic. When Fiona uses a car’s own electronic safety mechanisms to disable it, and when Michael uses a circuit breaker to switch off a streetlight, the two of them are able to create a situation in which the protective devices embedded in technology lead to a man walking through darkness to a car that won’t start. And with his world suitably shaken, the man becomes much easier to manipulate.
The man in question is Erik “Ted” Luna. (I call him “Ted” for reasons that should be obvious.) Erik’s the plugged-in puppet for his brother Quinn, who masterminds several shady operations in Miami, using Erik’s powerful connections to grease the wheels. The problem is that Erik’s a bit of a bastard in his private life, prone to beat on his wife April and his stepson Joey. So Joey steals a gun from his neighbor, Fiona, intending to shoot Erik—except that Michael and Fiona catch him in the act, hear his story, and decide to help him by running Erik out of town. (Though first, naturally, they park April and Joey with Madeline.)
The helping-a-battered-woman-and-her-kid element of “Shot In The Dark” is a bit maudlin, and the way Michael and company finally get around the much shrewder Quinn and get Erik to flee—by convincing Quinn that Erik’s gone crazy—borders on the ridiculous. But I don’t much care. Although I prefer it when every element of Burn Notice (from the master-plot through the case-of-the-week through the improvised gadgetry and undercover work) all click, I also recognize that sometimes the formula’s just there to provide the proper kick. And “Shot In The Dark” had plenty of kick.
For one thing, I enjoyed the way Michael came up with a cover—as a disgruntled customer for one of Erik’s shady businesses—that allowed him to punch Erik in the stomach at every available opportunity. Never not funny. And I loved the con our gang ran on Erik, convincing him that he and Michael were being hunted, and that Fiona and Sam could take out the hunters, only to fake their own deaths with the help of some exploding blood bags and more slow-motion convulsions than a Sam Peckinpah film.
Eventually, when the fake deaths don’t sway Quinn, Michael has to drag out Plan B, which involves them coming back to life and pretending that Erik only imagined the murders, because he’s cuckoo. That’s where I checked out. But by then, the episode had made its point. For all the meticulous planning, the core of this week’s operation revolved around something Fiona said at the start: “In my experience, if something’s too good to be true, it’s best to shoot it, just in case.” That kind of fear of the unknown can be a useful tool in the hands of a master craftsman like Michael Westen.