Burn Notice Season 3 Preview
Michael Westen is a Free Man ... But for How Long?
For two seasons, Burn Notice has operated on a fairly basic but effective formula. Each episode is based around Michael's two-pronged attempt to play Good Samaritan to a friend or stanger-in-need and figure out who ruined his life. The “Who Burned Me?” storyline wasn’t wrapped up as neatly as even the main character of the show would have like during the season two finale, but as John Mahoney made clear at the end of the episode, Westen and the gang have bigger problems now.
(Side note: Did anyone else find it weird that the Dad from “Frasier” was playing the head of an intimate and globally influential black-ops agency?)
Season Three will return the viewer, Michael, Sam Axe and Fiona Glennendale back to Miami, but the past will come calling as well. As we’ve seen in the show’s limited history, Michael has a penchant for making enemies even through his freelance help-for-hire work throughout the Sunshine State, so it’s safe-to-say the Rouges’ Gallery he acquired through years of covert spy operations is relatively vast.
So who exactly will be taking the coolest spy this side of James Bond to task when Burn Notice returns to our TV on June 4th?
Who Wants To Kill Michael Westen?
After the season two episodes structured around Michael’s former mentor, it’s not a stretch to assume that corrupt ex-spy Larry Sizemore will turn up on our screens again. The audience has seen a select few characters from Mike’s past, and after Westen nearly killed him in the middle of season two, Larry has to consider Michael a threat at most and an obstacle for his underworld contracting business at worst. This could provide an interesting rivalry between the pair since they were, at a different time, very close friends, and now both work in similar fashions with clashing morals. Both men were pushed out of the spy game, and are trying to live normal lives by using the tricks they learned in spy school, but Larry has devolved into a bounty hunter and essentially a murderer.
The final lines of dialogue from the season two finale, appropriately titled “Lesser Evil,” could also hold some clues. Management may have been keeping the past at bay, but they never said it was only Michael’s past. Sam’s womanizing and Navy history or Fiona’s IRA past, which hasn’t been alluded to since Season 1, could produce several new foes for this summer’s sixteen episode season. There’s also a good chance that some of Carla’s soldiers, who as far as we know are a collective of rogue and burned spies, could come looking for revenge. Fiona did put away their leader with a tangerine sized exit wound during all the chaos of last season’s finale.
Fiona and Michael In Love … Again
Burn notice is so steeped in swagger, between Michael’s unwavering calm and his smooth, sarcastic mid-scene narration, it’s easy to forget the sexual tension and romance between the main character and Fiona is one of the main themes to drive each episode. The love scenes have been few and far between, and they’re usually prompted by an outside circumstance. It’s pretty easy to assume that ex-lovers would find comfort in each others' beds.
Michael won’t be living a completely “normal” life now that Carla’s dogs have been put down, but this story arc should take an interesting turn now that Mike and Fiona aren’t fighting a secret war against her. We’ve all seen the Michael grow stoic and uncaring towards Fiona for the sake of protecting her, which is typical anti-hero fare for this kind of series, but watching him try and grow into a more agreeable lover and potential boyfriend for his femme fatale could be just as interesting as watching him blow things up.
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