Following the strangest cliffhanger of the series to date, Michael Weston finds himself in a brand new situation in tomorrow’s fourth season premiere of Burn Notice, Friends and Enemies [USA, 9/8C]. That posh library in the middle of a very secure prison leads to a real game changer for everyone’s favorite burnt spy!
In the library, Michael [Jeffrey Donovan] meets Vaughn [Robert Wisdom, The Wire], an elegantly attired black man of indeterminate age and cloaked in a veil of complete affability under which lurks a current of menace. He offers Michael an opportunity. Being as how he comes across as the smiling face of Management, and professes to be one of the good guys, Michael views him with understandable skepticism. He does, however, take the file Vaughn offers him and, after he reads it, agrees to work with him on an investigation into the power behind a specific arms dealer. Following his agreement, he is free to go home.
Meanwhile, Sam [Bruce Campbell] and Fiona [Gabrielle Anwar] have gotten in a bit over their heads in trying to persuade a biker gang from killing a meek lawyer named Winston [Rich Sommer]. Before Michael’s even home for five minutes, they’re asking his help. It seems that Winston ticked off a biker gang by helping one their members’ ex-girlfriend – when the restraining order didn’t work, he got a judge to impound the guy’s bike. Now the gang has been given the order to kill him.
As you might expect – this is Burn Notice, after all – things don’t work out exactly right with either arc and the potential for messiness of a physical nature becomes likely.
Friends and Enemies moves along like a train afire. It’s filled with the kind of crackling dialogue that has become synonymous with show – and why, not? Series creator Matt Nix wrote the script. He has definitely elevated his game and it shows in both the elegant solution Michael comes up with for dealing the biker gang and the manner in which Michael is now working alongside a representative of Management. Most especially, though, it shows in what is, for the series, the ultimate moment of irony.
More than that I will not say, except that you shouldn’t miss the last scene of the episode – no matter what your bladder might be trying to tell you. It’s that exceptional a moment and its consequences will likely be far reaching.
Final Grade: A+