| 1 | See also BurnNotice/TropesAToH and BurnNotice/TropesIToP |
| 2 | ---- |
| 3 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 4 | |
| 5 | [[folder:Q-R]] |
| 6 | * QuipToBlack: Sam does it twice as part of a CSI parody, posing as a crime scene investigator at a crime scene (a fashion house). The first time, he dramatically slips on his sunglasses and says, "It looks like murder...is in style this year." The second time, he dramatically slips on his sunglasses and intones, "It looks like our killer's plan... is coming apart at the seams." |
| 7 | * RapIsCrap: Exploited in the episode "Bad Blood". Sam comes up to rap mogul and ex-{{gangbanger|s}} Sweet Valentine, the mutual boss of the client and the MonsterOfTheWeek, and lays into him about how he's "what's wrong with America" etc. [[WeNeedADistraction This is meant as a distraction]] to get Valentine's bodyguards to run Sam off so that Fiona can get Valentine into their car at gunpoint [[spoiler:so they can take him to hear the Monster of the Week's EngineeredPublicConfession]]. |
| 8 | * RatsInABox: |
| 9 | ** Subverted/Inverted when the second rat is ''Michael'', trying to get some information out of the baddie by pretending to be a previously-unknown colleague. |
| 10 | ** Later in season two, they manage to get two subordinates of the episode's BigBad in a room together. Cut to Sam sitting right outside the door with a notepad and listening device. |
| 11 | ** Attempted in "You Can Run" with the twist that there is no other rat but Michael tries to make it seem otherwise. |
| 12 | * RealityIsUnrealistic: The rare in-universe example -- when Fiona's brother shows up, he, having previously known Michael under an Irish cover identity, thinks Michael's American accent needs a little work. |
| 13 | * RealStitchesForFakeSnitches: This is one of Team Westen's more common tricks: |
| 14 | ** They get rid of a drug cartel enforcer who is trying to kill a witness to him beating up a pizza delivery driver by planting a fake recording of him discussing turning state's evidence. The cartel ships him back home in the trunk of a car. |
| 15 | ** Team Westen deals with Raul, an enforcer for a Columbian drug cartel who is stalking an undercover DEA agent, by framing him for trying to go to the cops and trying to assassinate El Jefe. He quickly surrenders to the DEA to save his own skin. |
| 16 | ** Backfires on them when Michael frames a LoanShark's enforcer as an undercover detective. Instead of finding the ID that Mike hid in the enforcer's apartment, they find the enforcer's ''real'' FBIAgent credentials. |
| 17 | * TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: |
| 18 | ** In the Season 4 finale, Michael gives Larry an epic reason why the phrase "[[NotSoDifferentRemark Not So Different]]" doesn't apply to them. |
| 19 | ---> You want to know the difference between you and me? I really do know you. You only ''think'' you know me. |
| 20 | ** Throughout the series, Fiona, every now and then, gives one of these about the CIA because of the burn notice they put on Michael, trying to dissuade him from going back to them, but... |
| 21 | ** In "Sea Change" after [[spoiler: his FaceHeelTurn]], it's [[spoiler: '''Michael,''']] of all people, who gives a scathing one about the CIA after they [[spoiler: hired an old enemy]] in "Tipping Point." |
| 22 | --> "The CIA [[spoiler: hired '''''Simon!''''' They burned me and they left me out in the dark! They ruined my life! I don't owe them anything!"]] |
| 23 | * ReassignedToAntarctica: Pearce is reassigned to a soul-sucking desk job in Mumbai after an underhand ploy of Michael's is uncovered by her bosses. |
| 24 | * RecruitingTheCriminal: Michael doesn't have any qualms enlisting the services of Barry or Seymour, as they're still more or less decent guys. |
| 25 | ** Barry, at least, is strictly white-collar in his crimes; he calls himself a "friendly neighborhood hide-your-money-from-the-taxman guy", as opposed to a VillainOfTheWeek "rob-and-kill-for-hire-and-call-it-an-investment guy" with whom he wants nothing at all to do. Indeed, Michael gave a client Barry's information to help resolve things. |
| 26 | ** The drug dealer Sugar was also invited to be one of Michael's frequent contacts, and shows that despite having once [[DefeatMeansFriendship tried to kill Michael (and got a bullet in the knee for it)]] he still had certain standards he worked by. Again, unlike the VillainOfTheWeek, he avoided territory wars with other dealers and wouldn't harass local businesses (and he mostly dealt relatively harmless club drugs anyway). |
| 27 | %% ZeroContextExample: * RedOniBlueOni: Jesse is red, Michael is blue. |
| 28 | * RedShirt: Detective Paxson's partner, although not killed, was the one to take the fall for a political trap Michael set up for her. |
| 29 | * RefugeInAudacity: |
| 30 | ** Sometimes, when Michael's cover risks getting blown, instead of panicking and dropping it, Michael just ''gets more in character'', which is often enough to convince his targets that he's legit. At one point he ''shot at his friends'' in the season 2 premiere, to which Fi replies "I think we just got drafted into Michael's cover". |
| 31 | --->"Inexperienced operatives abandon a cover ID under pressure; experienced ones just play their roles harder." |
| 32 | ** Something that gets turned on Michael in 4x02 when it's Michael that's getting shot at unexpectedly to maintain a cover. |
| 33 | ** The 2X12 episode "Seek and Destroy" is '''filled''' with this, with Michael tempting fate with comments (while undercover as a spy hunter, no less) such as "A spy could be in front of you, and you would never know it." |
| 34 | ** At one point Michael tricks a group of drug pirates into practically handing over their drugs to him by telling them that an ex-spy is coming to steal their stuff - essentially telling them ''exactly what he's doing to them''. |
| 35 | ** In one episode, Mike, Nate, and Fiona sneak a stolen car into the backyard of a drug dealer to set him up as the thief of both the car and the drugs it was carrying. He manages to smuggle the car's parts in through the back gate past the guards and assemble the entire thing quietly enough that no one notices it being built. Then, in front of the drug dealer and his boss, he uses the fact that it would be ''nearly impossible to pull something like that off'' as proof that the car was legitimate. |
| 36 | ** Mike needs to convince a scam artist that he's legitimate. He does this by saying that cops "don't do this" and hurling a molotov cocktail into said scam artist's nice car, effortlessly blocking his enraged punches, and then pushing into an even ''better'' car and says that it's his now. (Also, it's ''Jessie's'' really nice car that Mike just gave the scammer.) |
| 37 | ** In "Hard Out" Mike sneaks onto an island filled with mercenaries, destroys their satellite commlink, posed as a security specialist from the merc's clients who turn the entire mercenary operation inside out, and makes the mercenary commander look like a complete fool. When they end up confronting the mercenary's backer and Mike makes it look like the backer stole critical and valuable files, the backer outs Mike, only for Mike to point out one of two things are possible: either the backer stole the files back to sell them for profit, or a mysterious mastermind snuck onto an island filled with mercenaries, destroyed their satellite commlink, posed as security specialist from the merc's client who turned the entire operation inside out, and somehow convinced them to turn on their own backer for taking the files. Which one sounds more plausible? |
| 38 | ** At one point, Mike is faking a weapons demonstration, using guns he doesn't actually ''own'', in a warehouse that isn't ''his.'' So when the ''actual'' weapons dealer shows up in a truck to crash the party, Mike keeps his cover intact by including the new arrival's truck as part of the demonstration and blowing it up with an RPG. |
| 39 | * RelationshipUpgrade: Michael and Fiona start as AmicableExes, more or less. They have a couple rounds of GladToBeAliveSex, and then in season three they sleep together in a hotel while waiting on a contact. In season five, Michael asks her to move in with him. |
| 40 | %%* RelationshipResetButton ZERO CONTEXT EXAMPLE |
| 41 | %% ZeroContextExample: * RememberThatYouTrustMe |
| 42 | %%--> '''Nate:''' Jesus, bro. [[AbusiveParents Dad's dead]]. You're not in Afghanistan anymore. I mean, when are you gonna learn [[YouAreNotAlone there are people you can trust]]? |
| 43 | %%** Counts as a CMOH as unlike in many instances during the show where Team Westen calls each other to check up, Nate shows up in person because he was worried about Michael. |
| 44 | * RetCon: A subtle one. In the pilot, Michael pretty much says he's not CIA. By Season 5, it's pretty clear that he always was CIA, albeit under unofficial cover (that is, he didn't pretend to be employed by the US government as a diplomat or some such). |
| 45 | -->'''{{Mook}}''' (indicating Michael to fellow mook): CIA.\ |
| 46 | '''Voiceover Michael:''' What do you say to that? "No?" Explain that a lot of spies don't work ''directly'' for the CIA? |
| 47 | * RetiredBadass: |
| 48 | ** Sam, in the pilot, who un-retires pretty quickly. |
| 49 | ** Paul Anderson from season four is another example. |
| 50 | * {{Retool}}: Starting in Season 5 the individual episodes become less about helping random people around Miami and more about actual CIA jobs, though "client of the week" episodes were evenly dispersed. By Season 6 it has become primarily CIA jobs. This has resulted in a slightly more traditional spy story, as now Michael doesn't have to jury-rig his own spy gear and there are more "international points of interest" rather than just getting a bad guy to back off an innocent. The show is also slightly more serious, evident by a new end credits theme. |
| 51 | * ReusableLighterToss: In the second to last episode, Fiona tosses a Zippo lighter like it is a simple match [[spoiler: to burn down Michael's mom's place.]] |
| 52 | * ARiddleWrappedInAMysteryInsideAnEnigma: On the penultimate episode of the second season, Victor calls Michael "an enigma wrapped in a schizophrenic." |
| 53 | * RightWingMilitiaFanatic: Zachariah and his followers in "Besieged". |
| 54 | * RippedFromTheHeadlines: "Broken Rules" features a female crime Hispanic boss blatantly based on Griselda Blanco. [[spoiler:Though Blanco was assassinated by a man on a motorcycle with a gun, not one of her own men with a bomb.]] |
| 55 | * RoaringRampageOfRevenge: |
| 56 | ** [[spoiler: Victor]] against Carla's organization, and unfortunately Michael fell into that category. Michael himself said that it isn't helpful holding grudges because the guy who hit you with a baseball bat yesterday could be a valuable ally today. |
| 57 | ** To a certain extent, [[spoiler: Simon. Though considering his [[PsychoForHire personality]], it's hard to say whether it's him being angry and wanting his life back or him on a normal day and wanting his life back.]] |
| 58 | ** Michael and Sam when [[spoiler: Fiona is taken by O'Neill]] in "Long Way Back". |
| 59 | * RomanticFalseLead: Campbell, Fiona's boyfriend in season 2. She never explicitly chooses between him and Michael, but eventually he correctly judges that Michael is always going to be her most important person and gently dumps her. |
| 60 | * RuleOfFunny: Sam's CSI shout-out. Realistically, that would seem like the kind of thing that would alert the target of the con. But who cares? It was funny. |
| 61 | %%* RuleOfPerception: Frequently subverted. |
| 62 | * RunningGag: |
| 63 | ** Whenever Michael's cover is about to be blown and if he manages to defuse the situation, as soon as the bad guy turns around Michael often gives some sort of exasperated expression, either a "whew" or an "OhCrap." |
| 64 | ** Michael's habit of finding alcohol (probably the same prop, reused each time) hidden in drawers whenever he needs to ransack cubicles. |
| 65 | ** Mama Westen's relative ignorance of actual domestic chores like cooking, although subverted when she rewired her car by herself. |
| 66 | ** Sam's frequent cover-id "Chuck Finley." This one is frequently [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]]. |
| 67 | ** Yes, [[FakingTheDead dead]] [[EvilMentor Larry]]. |
| 68 | ** That time Sam blew up Maddie's house. It kept coming up for a while. |
| 69 | ** Michael, despite growing up in Miami and [[{{Omniglot}} speaking several foreign languages]] (Russian, Urdu, Czech, French, German, Arabic, and counting), being completely unable to speak even basic Spanish. "Oir sey por fa... ''please''!" |
| 70 | *** This one even comes up in the season 5 premiere. The audience gets to see a rare moment where Michael actually looks completely flustered while in a cover when someone asks him if they can speak in Spanish. As it turns out, Michael's so bad at Spanish, he can barely say the word in some of the other languages he's fluent in. |
| 71 | *** By the start of the final season, he's ''finally'' added Spanish to his list of languages spoken. |
| 72 | ** The show's various spies using each other's names as aliases. |
| 73 | ** Fi's never-ending supply of C-4 and other explosives. |
| 74 | ** Sam's inexhaustable supply of "old buddies" and his love of mojitos. |
| 75 | ** Westen eats yogurt, mentions yogurt, holds a yogurt container, or goes shopping for yogurt in every episode. |
| 76 | ** Single-episode example: In the Season 6 summer finale, [[spoiler: Jesse has no shoes.]] And he wants you to be very aware of this. |
| 77 | ** One of the members of Team Westen makes up an on-the-spot cover ID, often emotionally-wrenching, to get someone's attention or fool someone watching them. The moment the danger is past, they drop the act and bolt as quickly as they can, leaving the person they were acting at completely befuddled. |
| 78 | * RussianGuySuffersMost: A majority of Team Westen's unambigious bodycount consists of Russians. He's apparently something of an urban legend in Spetsnaz, too. |
| 79 | * RuthlessModernPirates: The VillainOfTheWeek in "Rough Seas". |
| 80 | [[/folder]] |
| 81 | |
| 82 | [[folder:S]] |
| 83 | * SacrificialLion: |
| 84 | ** [[spoiler:Michael's Charger]] gets exploded in the season four finale, just to make sure you know [[DarkestHour just how bad things have gotten]]. |
| 85 | ** In season five, [[spoiler:poor, poor Max]]. And it was deliberately shown in that episode that he was one of the good guys. |
| 86 | ** In season six, [[spoiler: Nate]]. It straight up pushes the show into NothingIsTheSameAnymore. |
| 87 | * {{Safecracking}}: Seen from time to time, and anytime Michael expects to be dealing with a safe, he can be seen practicing on a safe mechanism beforehand. |
| 88 | %% ZeroContextExample: * SafetyInMuggles |
| 89 | * SamusIsAGirl: [[spoiler:In "Entry Point", "Mr. Slippery" is a woman]] |
| 90 | * SarcasticConfession: |
| 91 | ** Michael once played a "spy hunter" while being the spy he was hunting for, and he essentially explained his entire plan to the bad guy. It was a method of psyching him out. |
| 92 | ** At one point he's explaining to the villain of the episode that a hard drive containing video footage was erased (by Mike, via electromagnet) possibly by "a security guard with a grudge, a hacker, maybe even some guy with an electromagnet." |
| 93 | * SayYourPrayers: In a season 6 episode, a cop goes on a suicide mission, intending to either bring in the gangster who murdered his partner... or provoke the guy into killing him in broad daylight. Just before he starts, he says the Lord's Prayer. |
| 94 | * SceneryPorn: Lots of establishing shots of beautiful Miami beaches. Given the propensity of including good-looking ladies in bikinis, this makes this a somewhat more literal interpretation of "porn" than usual. |
| 95 | * ScrewTheMoneyThisIsPersonal: In "[[Recap/BurnNoticeS3E6TheHunter The Hunter]]", Michael and a contact he was meeting, John Beck, get chased through the Everglades by a bunch of ex-Spetsnaz enforcers for TheMafiya. After Team Westen manages to get the drop on them and rescue Mike, Beck informs the enforcers they've been MuggingTheMonster: he's friends with their boss's boss. The leader offers bribes to let them go, but he isn't having it. |
| 96 | -->'''Beck:''' All those KGB colonels in the Russian mafia, well, they work for an old KGB general, who happens to be a business associate of mine. Now, I don't want to name names, but he controls about 800 miles of the Siberian oil pipeline. Yeah. Yeah, I do all their import-export work. You nearly cost him a lot of money today. I'm gonna have to give him a call, see how they feel about that.\ |
| 97 | '''Vlad:''' I give you fifty thousand and I swear you'll never see me again.\ |
| 98 | '''Beck:''' I ''know'' I won't. Get this fool outta here.\ |
| 99 | '''Vlad:''' Stop. One hundred. Come on. Don't be stupid, come on!\ |
| 100 | '''Beck:''' There's not enough money in the world! |
| 101 | * SecurityBlindspot: |
| 102 | ** In "[[Recap/BurnNoticeS2E5ScatterPoint Scatter Point]]", in order for Michael to break into Carla's office, Sam observes the guard patrols and discovers that there's a point during shift change where there's only one guard outside, who has to get up and follow if anybody goes down the alley behind the building, leaving the front unguarded. Michael attempts to exploit this but is interrupted by the Client of the Week plot; when he tries again, he finds that Carla's people spotted him on his previous attempt and have decamped. |
| 103 | ** "[[Recap/BurnNoticeS2E12SeekAndDestroy Seek and Destroy]]": Michael breaks into art dealer Scott Chandler's office in hopes of finding evidence linking him to the murder of his business partner. Since Chandler still thinks Michael is on his side, Sam has access to the store's security cameras and is able to guide Michael to the office through their blind spots over their cell phones--though he once nearly accidentally gets Michael seen by mixing up his right and his left. |
| 104 | * SeenItAll: |
| 105 | ** Incidentally, you ''know'' the excrement's hit the cooling-device when something comes up that neither Michael, Sam, nor Fiona have ever encountered in some form. |
| 106 | ** Lampshaded by a client, Emily, when the crew came up with their third improvised plan against the bad guy and she wondered, "Do you guys have a manual on this stuff?" |
| 107 | * SelectiveObliviousness: Voiceover Michael calls Madeline out on this in an early episode. Her knowledge of what he did for a living was said to vary depending on what she needed from him at any given time: at one moment she thinks he works for the post office, another she can name all the members of the National Security Council. |
| 108 | * SelfDestructingSecurity: In Season 4, an important MacGuffin is buried in a graveyard in an airtight container, which also contains highly reactive chemicals that would explode when exposed to the air. [[spoiler: Filling the grave with machine oil allows them to get inside safely.]] |
| 109 | * SentimentalSacrifice: Michael explains several times that you can't get too attached to items because they can get in the way. When finding pictures of Victors family, Michael immediate felt sympathy for him because a spy doesn't keep pictures of his family with him unless they are already dead. And when FakingTheDead that means much the same thing. On more specific occasions, various beloved cars have been destroyed in the name of keeping them alive. |
| 110 | * SeriesFauxnale: Seasons 1-5 all ended with a definite {{Cliffhanger}} for the next season, but the back half of the sixth season built up to a possible finale. The 7th season wasn't ordered until a month before the last episode of the 6th aired, so they prepped for the possibility of no renewal. |
| 111 | * SexIsViolence: Definitely for Fiona, Michael rejects her early in the series for this reason. Later it is more mutual. |
| 112 | * SexyDiscretionShot: |
| 113 | ** In "Broken Rules" after a violent [[InterplayOfSexAndViolence foreplay fight]], Fiona and Michael end up collapsing in bed. The camera pans away, and comes back to them sleeping in bed post-coital. |
| 114 | ** In "Friendly Fire", Michael and Fiona are alone in an apartment waiting for a call. Fiona's pulls a DressHitsFloor and the camera pans cuts away to the morning after with Michael answering the call while Fiona tries to [[ComeBackToBedHoney drag him back to bed]]. |
| 115 | * ShaggyDogStory: Done intentionally many times, as a reflection of how sometimes the mission involved will lead to dead-ends and are sometimes irrelevant to the interpersonal issues going on. As for specific examples: |
| 116 | ** Michael spends a good three episodes tracking down who Carla is only to have been played with. Michael is just as frustrated as we are (it's possible Michael was closer than we can tell, since he had to back out of an initial search due to the client of the week story). The details of what exactly Carla's operation in the second season mid-finale was turned out to be irrelevant. |
| 117 | ** This ends up making the reveal of Simon at the end of season three more interesting because it subverts the tendency for the show to leave the "mysterious backers" mysterious. |
| 118 | ** One of the most personal vendetta's in the series regarding Michael trying to find out [[spoiler: who killed Nate alongside Anson]] ended up being revealed as having no specific purpose. [[spoiler: The sniper didn't have a clean shot that wouldn't harm Nate and took it anyway just because he was ordered to]]. |
| 119 | * SheIsNotMyGirlfriend: Michael referring to Fiona. Frequently. |
| 120 | * ShellShockedVeteran: Michael struggles with PTSD in season 5. |
| 121 | * SherlockScan: The main three can decipher things out with just a quick lookover, but they are also aware of the need for more concrete information like FBI reports. |
| 122 | * ShockingVoiceIdentityReveal: In the Season 2 episode "Bad Breaks", Michael is unexpectedly stuck in a bank in the middle of a robbery. Michael pretends to be a doctor (which gives him various opportunities to cause trouble for the bad guys.) After many fun shenanigans, it ends up with Sam calling the head bank robber on his cell phone, pretending to be a powerful, scary guy who "really owns the bank." Michael confirms that he "recognizes the voice," and relates a story about what a powerful, scary guy he is, which causes dissension in the ranks of the remaining robbers. |
| 123 | * ShooOutTheClowns: |
| 124 | ** The long-running FunWithSubtitles gag is nowhere to be found in the final season, the darkest and most serious of them all. |
| 125 | ** Notably, the series takes a more grave tone shortly after [[spoiler: Larry (who, for all his sociopathy, had a sort of levity to him) and Nate were killed.]] |
| 126 | * ShootTheDog: In order to maintain his cover with James, Michael is forced to assassinate one of his old spy friends. |
| 127 | * ShootTheFuelTank: |
| 128 | ** Subverted. Turns out that shooting a car's gas tank mostly just results in an empty gas tank. Shooting a gas tank with plastic bags full of acetone peroxide taped to it, on the other hand.... |
| 129 | ** In another episode, shooting a propane tank merely results in a cloud of cold gas, unless there happens to be an open flame nearby... |
| 130 | ** Averted in the episode where Michael fills the air with gunpowder in order to prevent muzzle flash which might ignite said gunpowder. |
| 131 | * ShootTheHostage: Season 4 midseason cliff hanger Jesse shoots through Michael to get the bad guy. Michael is actually recovering from his injuries for several episodes in season 4.5 |
| 132 | * ShownTheirWork: While it is hard to tell if they are portraying the spy experience accurately (as it is likely many of the exact details are not known to the public), every episode features at least one very deliberate [[SubvertedTrope subversion]] of a variety of common tropes, which would actually be [[AvertedTrope aversions]] if it wasn't for the voice-over narration. And the narration also makes this show a goldmine of clever and effective quotes to describe tropes on this site. |
| 133 | ** Though probably prettied up for TV the production actually does have a retired spy, Michael Wilson, on staff as a consulting producer. They'll usually come up with something and then ask him how he might do it. Jeffrey Donovan said that he would be in contact with Wilson and told he would be gone for a few days. When he returned there is something in the news about a recent political event and he can't help but wonder... |
| 134 | ** {{Showrunner}} Matt Nix films short commentaries for each episode online. He frequently mentions how each episode they usually call up Michael Wilson (Retired espionage advisor) or another specialist (ie an X Ray technician for the trunk x ray machine) so they can get things right. |
| 135 | ** This shows up in the little stuff too--like when Garza calls the UsefulNotes/{{CIA}} "The Company." |
| 136 | ** In "Signals and Codes," the discussion of a cryptographic algorithm with a 4K key length being impossible to crack within the projected lifetime of the universe is ''absolutely right,'' and the sort of incidental detail that only an experienced cryptographer or computer programmer would have known about. |
| 137 | * ShowSomeLeg: Fiona is often used as a distraction, but this trope is also frequently {{Averted|Trope}} or {{Subverted|Trope}}. Michael points out that Sam pretending to be an irritating businessman makes a better distraction than Fiona, because the guys would want Fi to stay around. |
| 138 | * ShutUpHannibal: [[spoiler: In "Long Way Back", Strickler gets Fi kidnapped, and then holds a gun on Mike and tells him to "Forget the past!"]] |
| 139 | -->'''Michael:'''[[spoiler:Fiona is ''not'' my past. (QuickDraw[=s=] his gun and shoots Strickler twice.)]] |
| 140 | * SiblingRivalry: Michael and Nate ''constantly''. |
| 141 | * SiblingTeam: Michael and Nate, ''occasionally''. |
| 142 | * SiblingYinYang: Michael and Nate, ''pretty much all the time'' unless one of the above applies. |
| 143 | * ASimplePlan: |
| 144 | ** Played straight pretty often, but with some justification, insofar as the screw-ups are usually the result of normal people making understandable mistakes. One plan called for Michael and Fi to watch while a client, Nick, picked up some ransom info from a dead-drop. Michael and Fi were to find and capture the kidnapper, who would probably be watching as well. All Nick had to do was walk in, pick up the info, and leave without looking at Michael or Fi. Guess what he does? |
| 145 | ** And played with in 4x05. Michael's plan is fairly convoluted and intricate. The plan that actually solves the problem? Blow up a few things pretty much out of context and call it a day. Astute viewers will note that Michael The Narrator actually reveals this plot twist on the opening narration... but it's disguised as advice on Michael The Spy making a cold approach to the villain of the week. |
| 146 | * SimpleSolutionWontWork: The "simple solution" for whatever problems of the week Team Westen has to deal is [[MurderIsTheBestSolution murder]], preferably [[JustShootHim a bullet to the criminal's face]]. The villains are [[AssholeVictim vile enough]], the stakes are [[GodzillaThreshold high enough]], the clients are desperate enough... and Michael Westen refuses to use this method because 1) it will just draw too much attention from law enforcement, 2) it's only going to lead to an extreme escalation in violence (and as good as Team Westen is, it's still five people vs. the virtual armies most criminal organizations seem to have), 3) the complete destruction of the organization hurting the clients is required, not just shooting the one soldier, and/or 4) he needs information on the people who burned him that he won't get if the leads are dead. This is why villains like the Burned Spies Organization and [[EvilMentor "Dead" Larry]] are showcased to be completely wrong, with their eagerness to murder anything that is even theoretically an obstacle, and when Michael finally ''does'' start to just shoot the problem, it's a sign that he has fallen into DarkerAndEdgier territory (and [[FromBadToWorse it doesn't helps him as much as he wanted]]). |
| 147 | * SixthRanger: Jesse. Nate, when he's around. By season 6, Pearce. |
| 148 | * SkipTheAnesthetic: In one episode, Michael gets a bullet in his back -- a ricochet, so it wasn't deep, but it wasn't something he wanted to explain to a hospital so he got his brother to dig it out. The narration indicated that it wasn't the first time Michael had dealt with third-world medicine. |
| 149 | * SlasherSmile: |
| 150 | ** Kendra, after [[TooKinkyToTorture bashing her own head open]] during an interrogation. |
| 151 | ** Also, Michael after [[spoiler: Anson nearly gets away from the chemical plant in Season 6's premiere and Michael catches him.]] |
| 152 | --->'''[[spoiler:Anson]]:''' ''(confident)'' You don't want to do this, Michael.\ |
| 153 | '''Michael:''' ''(demonic smile)'' Oh, yes I do. |
| 154 | * SleepDeprivationPunishment: It's a recurring point in ''Burn Notice'' that physical torture doesn't work. The show mentions, and even sometimes uses, "non-violent" methods that do break someone such as prolonged isolation, being subjected to loud noise for long periods of time or sleep deprivation. |
| 155 | * SmugSnake: Brennan would be a MagnificentBastard if Michael didn't keep foiling his plans. When [[spoiler:Larry fatally stabs Brennan]], he states that Brennan's weakness is that he can't deal with an IndyPloy. |
| 156 | --> "You're so busy thinking ten steps ahead that you don't see the movements in front of you." |
| 157 | * SoftWater: Averted and lampshaded; the times Michael has had to jump into a body of water, he'll either dive correctly or toss something in front of him to help with the impact. In one instance, someone following him didn't hit the mark properly and ends up breaking his ankle. |
| 158 | * SpannerInTheWorks: In the episode [[spoiler:"Out of the Fire", Undead Larry exemplifies this trope. [[TheChessmaster While Brennen and Michael are too busy staring down each other from across the chessboard]] and using Larry as a pawn, Larry goes along with their plans until he's in the best position to wreck the board with a pipe wrench. In the end, Brennen is dead and as a result Michael's hours away from winding up on Management's hit list.]] |
| 159 | * SpecialGuest: |
| 160 | ** Hey, it's Method Man! ...playing more or less the exact same character he did on ''Series/{{CSI}}''. |
| 161 | ** [[Series/XenaWarriorPrincess Lucy Lawless]] and [[Series/StargateSG1 Michael Shanks]] playing rival agents. |
| 162 | ** In season 3, [[Series/CagneyAndLacey Tyne Daly]] guest stars (and fans get an unofficial "Cagney and Lacey" Reunion). |
| 163 | ** Creator/BurtReynolds played a retired spy. |
| 164 | ** Creator/RobertPatrick played a very powerful businessman. |
| 165 | * SpiesAreDespicable: A multitude of characters on the show are spies or ex-spies of one sort or another, and they while there's a full spectrum in terms of personality types and morality, even the best regularly utilize the tactics that make spies distasteful for most people, such as lying, betrayal, backstabbing, and engaging in ruthless and underhanded deeds. |
| 166 | * SpoilerOpening: |
| 167 | ** Near the end of Season 2, Michael Westen is looking for information on the man who almost killed him. [[spoiler: Michael Shanks' name appears in the opening credits. With five minutes left in the episode and no appearance so far by Victor (Michael Shanks' character), fans of ''Series/StargateSG1'' probably already know who Michael Westen's going to bump into at the storage facility.]] |
| 168 | ** The "PreviouslyOn ''Burn Notice''" recap at the beginning of the Season 3 finale [[spoiler:shows clips of Management from the end of Season 2,]] thus spoiling the surprise when, [[spoiler:after an entire season of not being mentioned at all, Management suddenly pops up again later in the episode.]] |
| 169 | ** The list of guest stars in episode 7x11 "Tipping Point" quite needlessly threw out [[spoiler: Garrett Dillahunt's]] name, so anyone with a memory of the earlier seasons knew that [[spoiler:Simon]] had returned. We couldn't guess what the nature of [[spoiler:his]] return would be, of course, or that [[spoiler:he would end up dead with his own knife in his chest after trying to kill Michael]]..... but there was no reason not to save the star's name for the end titles. Nice job breaking it, Matt!! |
| 170 | * ASpyAtTheSpa: In "[[Recap/BurnNoticeS1E9HardBargain Hard Bargain]]", Michael poses as a hostage negotiator trying to rescue a kidnapped girl. The leader of the kidnapping ring, Reyes, meets him in a massage parlor, which Michael tells him is smart, because it means Reyes knows Michael isn't wearing a wire (or anything besides a towel, for that matter). After Reyes leaves, Mike asks the masseuse if they paid her for the whole hour. |
| 171 | %% ZeroContextExample: * SpyFiction: Michael is stale beer in a more martini situation while trying to get back to stale beer. |
| 172 | * StalkerWithACrush: Creator/LucyLawless and Mark Sheppard both play characters like this. [[spoiler: Mark Sheppard]]'s character was faking it in order to get information. [[spoiler: Lucy Lawless]]'s character, on the other hand... was just a bit of a psychopath. |
| 173 | * StateTheSimpleSolution: |
| 174 | ** "Why don't you just shoot him?" is more or less Fiona's CatchPhrase. They usually give a HandWave at least as to why they can't do that, usually because they won't get back the stolen money that way. Or because it would throw away their only lead. |
| 175 | ** Jesse seems to be of this school of thought as well. |
| 176 | ** As is Larry, though his philosophy tends to run toward "why don't we just shoot him, and the guy standing next to him, and everyone either of them knows, and anyone else involved in the job." |
| 177 | * StealthHiBye: |
| 178 | ** Some kidnappers pull this on Michael while he's getting a massage. |
| 179 | ** Sam later pulls this on some FBI agents on a stakeout. To be fair, both were dozing off at the time. |
| 180 | ** Maddie manages this on Jesse and Michael. And it is hilarious. |
| 181 | * StealthPun: |
| 182 | ** In the first season, Michael takes a job working for Sam's Seal buddy Virgil. The name Mike takes for his persona is Creator/{{Homer}}. |
| 183 | ** Drug dealer "Sugar" returns in episode 3x12, where its revealed his real name is Raymond, which would make him "Music/SugarRay". |
| 184 | * StopOrIShootMyself: Michael in the season 1 finale does this to allow himself to finish a job before being taken in by the mysterious men after him. |
| 185 | * StormingTheCastle: |
| 186 | ** About every third episode, Michael (with or without the assistance of Fi, Sam, or both) have to invade a bad guy's lair by force. |
| 187 | ** And then in 4x02, they have to fake one. |
| 188 | * AStormIsComing: The opening to "Center of the Storm." Unusually, the main part of the episode takes place in the ''aftermath'' of the hurricane. |
| 189 | * StrangeMindsThinkAlike: Mike and Fiona are in the garage working on Mike's car when Maddie comes in and mentions that Barry's brother is there to see Mike for a job. Fiona looks startled at Mike; "There's ''two'' of them?". Later, when Fiona tells Sam about Barry's brother, he says the same thing. |
| 190 | %% ZeroContextExample: ** "Wait, Dead Larry?" "Yes, Dead Larry." |
| 191 | * StatusQuoIsGod: While it does advance the characters and the {{arc}} slightly, most fan frustrations are from the lack of definitive change in the individual episodes. |
| 192 | * StrappedToABomb: In his first appearance, Anson claims he is being forced to work with Larry because Larry has strapped a bomb to his wife. There is a woman with a bomb strapped to her, but exactly who she is becomes less clear as the episode goes on. |
| 193 | * StrictlyFormula: Someone comes to Michael who needs...extralegal assistance. Michael goes to Fiona and Sam to help him out. He'll usually have to go through plans A through C, with a little bit of IndyPloy, before saving the Client Of The Week, often while having to work around the client's [[UnwantedAssistance well-intentioned "assistance"]]. Plan C often culminates in serving up a heaping helping of the Westen family recipe for LaserGuidedKarma to the bad guy, followed by from the grateful client. The MythArc tends to be a lot more chaotic, usually merging with the usual plot in the season finales. |
| 194 | ** Season 4 seems to be playing with the formula so far. Both to keep things fun and interesting but also, subtly, to push Michael to prove or disprove Simon's words of them being just like one another. |
| 195 | ** Because of this formula, episodes that break away from the pattern tend to be among the more surprising and popular ones. The finales of the second and third season are good examples. |
| 196 | ** As of season 5, however, the formula has been broken completely. Any given episode's client story (if there is one) may or may not involve Michael (whether he gets involved or whether the client is one that has approached him) while any given burn notice story may or may not play significantly in the episode. The addition of Jesse as a regular also seems to have allowed the show to contain more of these non-formula stories by allowing Team Westen to break up into two teams of two rather than having one solo character trying to solve problems. |
| 197 | ** Season 6, the formula is broken completely with the myth arc given front stage and most minor stories told as longer multi-episode arcs. Client stories are few and far between, tending to be filler or the client being related to the big picture. The show now resembles more of a character-driven action/drama while retaining the many established elements of the show. |
| 198 | * StuffBlowingUp: Every explosion comes with a [[JustifiedTrope justification.]] With ExplodingBarrels it was filled with a flammable water sealant, and Michael used a shotgun with incendiary ammo. For EveryCarIsAPinto Mike points out that shooting a gas tank will just leave you with an empty gas tank with a hole in it and a lot of gas on the floor. Unless, of course, you tape a few bags of acetone peroxide to the tank. |
| 199 | ** The one occasion when Michael didn't intend to destroy the car, he had wanted Fiona to set up the spark plugs to be remotely disabled, in order to immobilize him. When triggered, the device ''blew up the car''. (In hindsight, Michael should have been much more specific when he told Fiona to disable it.) |
| 200 | ** And in a later episode, he was dealing with a South American drug dealer. When the dealers car didn't start, he immediately got out, since, as the narration pointed out, he knew that in his line of work, a car acting up may mean a bomb. There wasn't; [[CallBack Michael had removed the spark plugs.]] |
| 201 | * SubmarinePirates: One episode featured an AmoralAttorney who counted a drug cartel among his many evil clients. To rescue his daughter, Westen and crew request that the attorney get them a one-man submarine from the cartel. The submarine ends up being Team Westen's payment. |
| 202 | * SuicideMission: As [[spoiler:Tyler Gray]] informs Michael, the mission Card sends Michael and company on for the season 6 summer finale [[spoiler:was supposed to kill them, without implicating the CIA]]. Problem is, [[spoiler:[[WhyWontYouDie they just won't die]]]]. |
| 203 | * SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: |
| 204 | ** Common across the series. Michael is frequently referred to as one of the most talented operatives employed by the U.S. government, and his reputation is such that foreign agencies, including the Russians, have attributed his actions to a whole team of operatives instead of just one man. But from the beginning of the series, Michael makes clear that ''"as good as you are, sometimes they're better."'' |
| 205 | ** In the pilot, Michael's client's son starts to cry, admitting he is being bullied at school and wishing he was "tough" like Michael is. Michael just shows him the bruises on his chest and the evidence of his cracked rib, and says two black belts didn't stop him from getting beaten nearly to death, just because he was outnumbered. |
| 206 | * SurroundedByIdiots: A hilarious example in "Rough Seas": when Seymour attacks Michael inside his workroom, Michael grabs a can of gunpowder and flings it into the air, obscuring the bodyguard's vision. Then Michael narrates that since even muzzle flare from a handgun can ignite gunpowder dispersed in the air, ''"anyone with half a brain puts his gun away"''; the bodyguard has one hand over his eyes, but continues pointing his gun until a horrified Seymour screams for him not to shoot. Earlier Seymour had introduced his bodyguard simply as "Jackass", and the audience realizes he was not being unkind. |
| 207 | * SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: Inverted many times. When Michael is caught in a lie, he'll usually just keep playing his lie with specific made up details and sometimes hamming it up in the process. 4x06 has him walking quickly away from a crime scene carrying a lead in a metal basket, shouting very specifically about radiation and getting to a lab. Where he'll be. The lab. |
| 208 | * TheSvengali: [[spoiler: Tom Card. Dead Larry tried to turn Michael evil, Evil Card tried to turn Michael dead.]] |
| 209 | * SwissBankAccount: |
| 210 | ** In the episode "Friends and Enemies": |
| 211 | --->'''Michael Westen:''' Who do you work for?\ |
| 212 | '''Gregory Hart:''' I work for a 16-digit Swiss bank account number, and an anonymous email address. |
| 213 | ** Explained in detail about why the Cayman Islands is such a popular place for shady financial deals. |
| 214 | * SwitchToEnglish: When Michael pretended to be a Russian spy, he began talking to a contact in Russian, who suggested switching to Spanish, because his Russian was rusty. They settled on English instead. (Michael doesn't ''habla Español''.) |
| 215 | * SympatheticInspectorAntagonist: Det. Paxson's reasons for concern at Team Westen's apparent penchant for StuffBlowingUp is portrayed as entirely understandable. Agent Pierce is this until she eventually becomes Michael's CIA contact and gives the team missions. Finally, Agent Riley is this until [[spoiler:she hires a cartel to finish outside the law what she can't finish inside it.]] |
| 216 | [[/folder]] |
| 217 | |
| 218 | [[folder:T]] |
| 219 | * TakeThat: |
| 220 | ** Larry (yes, [[RunningGag dead Larry]]) makes a wry remark while pulling up security footage that there hasn't been anything that good on at 10pm in a long time. Burn Notice had just moved back to a 10pm timeslot when the episode aired. |
| 221 | ** An affectionate one, but Sam does a pitch-perfect [[Series/CSIMiami Horatio Caine]] impersonation in "Partners in Crime". |
| 222 | * TalkingInBed: In the Season 5 premiere, Fiona and Michael discuss the plot in bed after some exhausting DestructoNookie. |
| 223 | * TapOnTheHead: |
| 224 | ** Generally subverted. More often than not, a tap on the head has little effect, both on Mooks and heroes alike. Notably Fi attempts this with an empty liquor bottle and fails, only pissing the guy off, taking a fair bit of time to defeat him. |
| 225 | ** Sam also subverts this intentionally. In 4x05, he uses the fact that you can't do a tap on the head to disable an opponent by smashing a beer bottle across the guys shin. |
| 226 | * TattooAsCharacterType: Various thugs and gang leaders have the appropriately identifying markers, the show also carries a heavy military undertone as Sam and others have military tattoos. |
| 227 | * TeamPowerWalk: The team struts together after they steal the NOC list. |
| 228 | * TechnicalPacifist: |
| 229 | ** In place most of the time. Michael will avoid killing whenever possible, but does say that you should be willing to kill or allow someone to be killed when the situation requires it. The general impression the show gives is that the characters ''are'' willing to kill but they prefer manipulation because it avoids legal ramifications coming back on them. The final season reveals that, while Michael very much did kill for the CIA, he always went out of his way to avoid unnecessary deaths. |
| 230 | ** On the other hand, Michael is more than happy to set someone up for a KarmicDeath. He just doesn't want to get '''his''' hands dirty. |
| 231 | ** The fact that [[spoiler:Jesse]] has no problem causing a bomb to detonate early, killing the person who set it, shows he is a completely different kind of agent. |
| 232 | * TemptingFate: |
| 233 | ** You would think Michael and friends would eventually learn to stop telling each other how easy the latest job of the week is going to be, but no, they never do. You've got twenty minutes left, Michael, calm down. |
| 234 | ** Becomes a RunningGag later on, with some variation of "I thought this was going to be [an easy job/a half-hour gig/just a white collar crime/etc]!" coming up almost once every other episode. |
| 235 | * TermsOfEndangerment: |
| 236 | ** Michael, Victor, Brennen, Larry, and Gilroy do this whenever they meet each other. Presumably because HoYay can actually throw people off; [[NotThatTheresAnythingWrongWithThat even someone who has no problem with homosexuality itself]] can get antsy when ''their'' sexuality comes into question. Or maybe they just like to needle people. |
| 237 | ** Carla doesn't do it much, but that's because she seems to have one-sided interest in Mike. |
| 238 | ** Gilroy would hit on Mike and others even when he had no need for a psychological advantage. |
| 239 | *** Which only got [[YaoiFangirl some fans]] thinking very, very hard [[DepravedHomosexual about all their interactions.]] |
| 240 | ** O'Neill called Fiona "sweetheart" several times, too. |
| 241 | ** Kendra does this with both Mike ''and'' Jesse. |
| 242 | --> '''Fiona''': "I wish ''our'' phone conversations were that flirty..." |
| 243 | ** In Season 4 Simon starts calling Michael "brother" in the same way Sam does, but considering the context the meaning is a lot different. |
| 244 | * ThanatosGambit: [[spoiler: Ian, the client in "Acceptable Loss". He was SecretlyDying and wanted to bring the VillainOfTheWeek down by any means necessary.]] |
| 245 | * ThereAreNoTherapists: Madeline ropes Michael into attending a home therapy session, but they ''both'' end up throwing the therapist out. |
| 246 | * ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: |
| 247 | ** The CIA assassination team tasked with killing Dexter Gamble does this by spraying his safehouse with at least five heavy machine guns on full auto. They don't know exactly where in the room Gamble is, but the walls are just sheet metal, so they just rake the entire building horizontally. They go at length to explain where Michael's code-phrase basically meaning "get down and don't get up until it's over" comes from to make it work somewhat safely. |
| 248 | * TheyWereHoldingYouBack: Larry. Frequently to Michael. He believes that Michael keeping Fiona and his "wet towel " of a friend, Sam, around is keeping him from his true, more fun (read: murder-happy) self. |
| 249 | * ThisIsForEmphasisBitch: "Here's Marsden, you son of a bitch." Bonus points, it was Madeleine, clubbing down a bad guy. |
| 250 | * ThisIsGonnaSuck: |
| 251 | ** In the pilot episode, Michael is in a meeting with a Nigerian warlord, and calls his superior to arrange a wire transfer, when he's told about his burn notice. Realizing there's nothing he can do, he hangs up the phone and grits his teeth, knowing exactly what's coming. Sure enough, the scene GilliganCuts to him on the floor of the warlord's room, getting the crap kicked out of him by his mooks. |
| 252 | ** In the season 6 summer finale, the guys have to evacuate their building in a hurry, and Jesse points out that he's not wearing shoes and says the trope name word for word. |
| 253 | * ThoseTwoGuys: FBI agents Lane and Harris, recurring [[ButtMonkey Butt Monkeys]] and occasional [[ChekhovsGun Chekhov's Guns]]. |
| 254 | * TimeForPlanB: Is there an episode where Plan A ''didn't'' go wrong? |
| 255 | * TonightSomeoneDies: Previews for "Shock Wave", one of the members of Team Westen is not going to make it out alive. [[spoiler:It's Nate.]] |
| 256 | * TooDumbToLive: The ''vast'' majority of Michael's clients. There are several who are simply stuck between a rock and a hard place; take the client with a son who had just gotten out of jail and was "recruited" for a job. He turns the bad guy down, they kill him. He goes to the police, they put him in jail and he loses his son. Luckily, he had heard about this guy. In general, it's like Michael is SurroundedByIdiots, it seems whenever clients ignore Michael's advice or deviate from it bad things start happening to them. |
| 257 | ** Like the time four hitmen with body armor show up at Sugar's stash house. Those would be bad odds for anyone, even Michael. Michel tells Sugar to slip out the back. Sugar decides to "go '{{Film/Tombstone}}.'" The predictable happens. |
| 258 | -->'''Sugar:''' [[LampshadeHanging How many times do I have to get shot before I start listening to you?]] |
| 259 | ** Sophie from "Fight or Flight". Despite EVERYONE telling her she needs to lay low and having already escaped one hit squad, she still sneaks out of the safe house to go to her Spring Formal. Worse, she stands right in front of the building, in plain view of everyone, kissing a guy she barely knows. Even as a car comes up and guys chase them she is still whining about Michael being mean; it isn't until the guys hit the glass door with their guns out that it dawns on her that [[OhCrap she is seconds away from death]]. And even then her biggest concern is that she'll never see her new boyfriend ever again. Somewhat justified by Sophie being an immature teenager, not an adult who (should) know better. |
| 260 | ** Schmidt is the king of this in all three of his episodes. He goes to his warehouse when someone wants to kill him and knows it's his, grabs a drink when sneaking into a crime scene, does the opposite of what Mike tells him to in general, and tries to snitch on one of competitors who he just had a deal with. One wonders how he survived before meeting the team. |
| 261 | ** Jack Yablonski, in "Enemies Closer", is so annoyingly befuddled as to almost make Mike regret saving his life. WordOfGod mentions that this was intentional; they wanted to try out a situation where in order to save someone's life, one has to deceive and manipulate that person. |
| 262 | * TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth: |
| 263 | ** [[spoiler:Max]] appeared to be a genuinely, unambiguously good man working for the CIA. He helped Michael dismantle the company that burned him, and was willing to go out on a limb and risk politics (and his job?) to help out one of Michael's clients. |
| 264 | ** Likewise, [[spoiler: MauveShirt Brady Pressman]] who appears in one episode to help Team Weston find Tyler Gray. He gives up his life so that Team Weston can live, despite never knowing each other prior to this mission and have no real personal connection to the mission at hand. |
| 265 | * TookALevelInBadass: |
| 266 | ** Mama Westen might just be the poster child for the trope. She slowly becomes more accustomed to Michael's lifestyle At first she is occasionally asked to leave town or have Sam stay with her. Starting in the third season she starts taking care of herself and participating in missions by doing surveillance or some (fairly safe) infiltration. It builds to the point where a phone conversation between her and Sam went like this: |
| 267 | --->'''Sam''': I need your help to kidnap a congressman.\ |
| 268 | '''Madeline''': [[DeadpanSnarker I'll be there in a half hour]]. |
| 269 | *** In a later episode, she helps Fi, Jesse, and Sam search a house for information. She ends up finding the information needed before the other three. And then gets in a little gloating over the fact. In the same episode, Jesse and Sam have to pass a coded message to Michael over the radio. When Jesse later is about to explain the code to her, Maddie preempts the explanation by de-cyphering the code right back at him. In "Last Stand", when she [[spoiler: lies over the phone to Michael when Vaughn's goons have guns to her head, and then spits in his face for good measure]]. |
| 270 | *** Finally comes to the breaking point in the sixth season premiere, [[spoiler: she manages to hide from a psychopath sent after her by Anson and when Jesse is about to get killed by the guy she shoots him from the attic down into the main floor of her house with her shotgun... effectively shooting ''blind''. It should also be noticed that several episodes have shown her with that shotgun but so far she has never had to use it in a conventional way]]. |
| 271 | ** Jesse fits this trope as of "Eyes Open", where Jesse, Michael, Sam and Fiona attempt to track down a fanatic bomb-maker. At the end of the episode, [[spoiler: Jesse ''detonates the bomb the bomb-maker is carrying, killing him and destroying Fiona's house.'' Keep in mind, this is in a series where the protagonists rarely, if ever, actually kill anyone. And in the cases where they do kill someone, it's usually through KarmicDeath or someone related to the burn notice story. In this case, it was a client story and Jesse was directly responsible for the killing.]] |
| 272 | --->'''Jesse''': [[spoiler:Sometimes you gotta put the rabid dog down.]] |
| 273 | * ToplessnessFromTheBack: In "Broken Rules", we get a view of Fiona's bare back as she sits up in bed after having slept with Michael. |
| 274 | * TortureIsIneffective: |
| 275 | ** One of Michael's {{Internal Monologue}}s in "Comrades" provides the page quote. Mike narrates on the futility of torture or enhanced interrogation very frequently. He has even gone so far as to let himself be tortured as a means of feeding false information to his adversary. Other successful techniques have been a HighAltitudeInterrogation (dropping a guy out of a window with a cable to arrest his fall, in order to get the ''other'' prisoner to talk from the screams), and Madeline Westen very calmly and sweetly talking the information out of a prisoner over a cigarette after a beating from Fiona doesn't work. |
| 276 | ** Repeated in the same vein in "Friends Like These" when money-launderer Barry Burkowski suggests using ElectricTorture on one of the people who they think stole his records. |
| 277 | --->'''Barry:''' I heard you can attach them to a car battery, spark it up, and get--\ |
| 278 | '''Michael:''' Torture just gets you the fastest lie to make the pain stop. |
| 279 | * ToyotaTripwire: Michael does this is in "Question and Answer", driving alongside someone who is attempting to run away from him and then opening the door to knock him down when he refuses to stop. |
| 280 | * TrademarkFavoriteFood: Michael ''really'' likes yogurt. No... '''''Really'''''. |
| 281 | ** While breaking into a house, he raided the fridge of yogurt before he continued. He was left a gift basket of yogurt as "getting to know you" present by Strickler. In their emergency meeting point, Sam mentioned the only thing the didn't have stockpiled was some yogurt. The list goes on. |
| 282 | ** For Sam, it's mojitos and beer. |
| 283 | ** There was a Burn Notice marathon sponsored by Yoplait. Whether this was coincidence or clever marketing is up to you. |
| 284 | ** Lampshaded when Sam gives Michael his old notes for the FBI...which included a daily tally of the amount of yogurt consumed. |
| 285 | ** Further lampshaded in the S5 premier. Max asks Michael how he's still alive (during a firefight which occurred due to an IndyPloy). Michael can only suggest that it's because he eats a lot of yogurt. |
| 286 | ** And then later on in S5, a client offers Michael free yogurt as payment for a job. He readily accepts. |
| 287 | * TragicVillain: |
| 288 | ** Victor's backstory, which is part of what explains his evil choices. |
| 289 | ** FridgeLogic suggests this of ''[[PsychoForHire Larry]]'' of all people, particularly given his line to Michael: "They put us out there, they tell us the end justifies the means-- sooner or later, [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope you believe 'em]]!" |
| 290 | ** Another distinct possible candidate for this is Simon: for all we know, he may be Victor taken one step further... |
| 291 | ** Gabriel, who as a doctor did everything he could to save the people of his Argentinean village when a tech corporation started dumping chemical waste into the water. But when the sickness claimed his daughter, he was pushed to take more drastic action. |
| 292 | * TrappedInVillainy: [[spoiler:Rebecca]]. The only reason she was working for [[spoiler:Anson was because he had her brother captive]]. |
| 293 | * TrickedIntoAnotherJurisdiction: In "Truth and Reconciliation", the Client is a Haitian who came to Miami to try to force a fugitive official from the Duvalier dictatorship to return to Haiti to stand trial for human rights abuses. Team Westen plans to trick him there by presenting themselves as representatives of a US company who can fake him up a new identity so he can live openly, but they tell him they need him to come back to Haiti in person to do it. [[spoiler:After that plan falls apart, [[CuttingTheKnot they just kidnap him and ship him home in a crate]].]] |
| 294 | * TrickedIntoEscaping: In the episode "Comrades", Michael and Co. are trying to rescue a woman from TheMafiya, and in order to do so they kidnap and imprison their lead human trafficker, Ivan. They finally find the man's safehouse and rescue the girls after Michael, undercover as Ivan's cellmate, convinces him to break out and move the girls to another safehouse. |
| 295 | * TriggerHappy: |
| 296 | ** Fiona. Even the opening narration acknowledges it: |
| 297 | ---> ''"A trigger-happy ex-girlfriend..."'' |
| 298 | ** Larry is even more so. While Fiona proposes [[NoNonsenseNemesis they just shoot]] the BigBad and end the situation, Larry prefers to kill ''everyone'' because they're witnesses. |
| 299 | * TrojanPrisoner: Michael in "Comrades" and "Center of the Storm". |
| 300 | ** Invoked by Michael's narration in "Friendly Fire" |
| 301 | ---> '''Michael:''' The ultimate Trojan Horse is a shackled prisoner. |
| 302 | * TrueCompanions: Michael, Fiona, Sam, and Madeline, Nate and Jesse. |
| 303 | ** Later on, Jesse. The trio seems to treat him like a younger brother while Maddie seems to treat him as a son. Jesse for his part seems to return the feelings; he looks up to Sam, has brotherly arguments with Michael, is protective of Fi, and treats Maddie like a ParentalSubstitute for his dead mother. WordOfGod mentions this; Jesse, being a counter-intelligence agent and thus trained to be suspicious of everyone, is not use to being close to people and working in a team. Thus the whole emerging relationships with everyone is something he isn't really prepared for. Then of course, he found out who really got him burned. |
| 304 | ** In 4x14, Maddie basically says this trope aloud, referring obliquely to them all as "family" when giving two of her boys a verbal chewing out. |
| 305 | *** More subtle, but over the course of season 4, Jesse switches from calling Maddie Missus Westen to well... Maddie as he gets closer to Team Westen. |
| 306 | ** Lampshaded in "Best Laid Plans" of season six. The client of the week asks incredulously that Jesse and Fi (who aren't around) will participate in (what he thinks is) a suicidal task just because Michael and Sam asks them to. Michael and Sam give each other a look like they didn't even realize that Jesse and Fi declining was even a possibility. |
| 307 | --->''Sam'': Yup. That's how we roll. |
| 308 | ** Outright stated for the first time in "You Can Run" when [[spoiler: Jesse is captured by Riley and she tempts him with the file on his mother's murder in order to get him to turn on Team Westen.]] |
| 309 | -->''Jesse'': You're not my mother. You don't get to speak for her.\ |
| 310 | ''[[spoiler: Riley]]'':Why are you protecting them? They're not your family.\ |
| 311 | ''Jesse'': Yes. They are. |
| 312 | * TryAndFollow: Monologued. |
| 313 | -->"But in the end, sometimes making an escape is just about being willing to do what the guy chasing you won't. Like jumping off a building." |
| 314 | * {{Tsundere}}: Fiona truly cares for Michael and certain of their clients (particularly kids), but is otherwise a scary, violent individual. In 3x15, she threats a bomb maker by mentioning that he's working in her turf and she could get him killed by contacting the bikers he worked with and having them drag him from Florida to Jersey. It's impossible to tell what, if any, is the truth and what is a bluff. |
| 315 | * {{Tuckerization}}: Some characters are named after the production crew: Dan Siebels, Michael's former {{handler}} is named after producer Craig Siebels, Ukrainian hardass Piotr Chechik is named after director Jeremiah Chechik and one of Michael's cover [=IDs=] is named after composer John Dickson. Fiona's then-boyfriend Campbell may be a shout out to Creator/BruceCampbell, giving the scene where Fiona tells Sam "You're no Campbell", followed by his surprised reaction hints of a deliberate ShoutOut. |
| 316 | * TwistEnding: Every season and half-season finale ends in a {{cliffhanger}}, but season 3's takes the cake for twistiness. [[spoiler:Michael Westen has been snatched out of the FBI's custody, and the FBI agent guilt-trips Mama Westen about not being more helpful by saying "God only knows what kind of a hole he's in now." Intercut with this are scenes of Michael or Simon (you don't know but he is limping and Simon has a leg injury from a knife) being marched through dim corridors in chains with a bag over his head. Then, in the last scene, he opens his eyes--to find he's seated not in some secret prison, but a well-furnished, luxurious den. Probably a very classy blacksite prison for people they want to have less incentive to escape.]] |
| 317 | [[/folder]] |
| 318 | |
| 319 | [[folder:U]] |
| 320 | %%* UnderTheTruck |
| 321 | * UnderestimatingBadassery: Michael notes that the Coast Guard is generally seen as not very powerful. He then explains why this perception is incorrect. |
| 322 | -->Most people don't think the Coast Guard as being particularly well-armed. Most people are wrong. A Coast Guard patrol boat carries three .50-caliber M2 Browning machine guns and a 25-millimeter cannon, which means it can take out anything short of a battleship. |
| 323 | * UndersideRide: In "Besieged", Fiona attaches herself underneath a fuel tanker in an attempt to infiltrate a RightWingMilitiaFanatic compound. She has a harness specifically designed for this purpose. |
| 324 | * {{Understatement}}: Some characters are [[CasualDangerDialogue prone to this]], but Sonya in 7x10 takes the cake, as we find out that "We put pressure on [a cartel boss]" means "We rode a helicopter gunship to his compound and shot it up until he agreed to do what we wanted." |
| 325 | * TheUnfettered: Larry. He even has a little [[HannibalLecture speech]] about it in "Enemies Closer." |
| 326 | * UnflinchingWalk: |
| 327 | ** In the [=S1=] finale, Michael rigged the access ramp to a boat to explode because he was looking to rescue a kidnapped Sam. Once he freed Sam and they both crossed the ramp Fiona set off the explosive to distract the bad guys still on the boat. In glorious slow motion (while they are running) you see Sam freaking out while Michael is as calm and badass as ever. Makes sense as Michael knew that was going to happen and Sam did not. |
| 328 | ** In "Brotherly Love" |
| 329 | ---> '''Caleb''': "What the hell did you do in there?!?"\ |
| 330 | '''Michael:''' ''(as "Smooth-talkin’ Johnny")'': "What did we do?"\ |
| 331 | ''(The chop shop explodes behind them)''\ |
| 332 | '''Michael''': "That’s what we did." |
| 333 | %% ZeroContextExample: ** The Cleaner in TheTeaser of "Friends Like These" does the UF bit. |
| 334 | * UnusuallyUninterestingSight: The season 1 finale had a hilarious real life example of this. One of the {{mooks}} blows up a car with a rocket launcher, creating this huge ten-story fireball right near an overpass. And people on the overpass just keep driving. The director started to complain that the extras on the overpass missed their cue, then he realized those were ''actual Miami drivers'' completely ignoring the explosion. |
| 335 | * UnwantedAssistance: Because Michael's methods tend to make things worse before they get better, multiple clients have said "Stop Helping Me" around the middle of the episode. They are appropriately grateful when things work out in the end. |
| 336 | [[/folder]] |
| 337 | |
| 338 | [[folder:V]] |
| 339 | * VaporWear: Fiona wears outfits that make it obvious that she isn't wearing a bra on occasion. In many cases she does it so that the people she's snooping around near will assume that she's a BrainlessBeauty who likes to flaunt her figure rather than a very intelligent spy doing recon work. |
| 340 | * VerySpecialEpisode: Not used directly, but WordOfGod says this trope by name when talking about why they can't always have Nate appear even though they love the character and actor. In short, the act of bringing Nate into an episode would nudge the episode into something familial as Nate isn't a regular character and so there would need to be an explanation for his presence. WordOfGod notes he would love to bring Nate in for several episodes so that Nate can be there, do Nate things, but avoid having to justify it through a client story. They finally get around to it in Season 6, when [[spoiler:his wife leaves him. Then he's killed.]] |
| 341 | * VictoriasSecretCompartment: Ayn in Season 6 pulls one... in a prison outfit. That takes talent since they're little more than bare shirts and pants. |
| 342 | * VillainHasAPoint: Given the grey morality of the show, this happens a lot. James is the ultimate example of this. Unlike the CIA, his organization doesn't believe in working with monsters. Unlike the organization that burned Michael, all the members seem to join of their own free will. He's even [[spoiler: willing to sacrifice himself to save Michael ''after'' Michael reveals that he's part of a CIA mission to bring James down. It's very easy to understand why Mike briefly joined them.]] |
| 343 | * VillainousBreakdown: |
| 344 | ** Recurring baddie Brennen is a slick, smooth talking, ruthless arms dealer. However, when Michael gets under his skin he tends to lose his cool, particularly that time [[spoiler:when he found out about his daughter Annabelle]]. |
| 345 | ** A season three episode features Michael convincing a white-collar smuggler that the two of them were being targeted by "Chuck Finley". Michael recruits a pair of hitmen (Sam and Fiona) to track Finley down, but Michael, Sam, and Fiona are "gunned down". When the smuggler calls his mobster brother for help, Michael pretends to be a priest and expresses concern that the guy had been talking nonsense. The mobster's convinced his brother lost his marbles when the guy identifies a fruit seller (Sam), and a random woman walking down the street (Fi), as a pair of deceased hitmen. |
| 346 | ** [[Creator/MarkSheppard Prescott]] the bank robber has a fairly spectacular one when Michael and Jason Bly foil his plan and disable nearly all his mooks. |
| 347 | ** Done ''epically'' with Larry. [[spoiler:After god-knows-how-many {{Plans}} and [[ManipulativeBastard manipulations]], he gets caught in a firing sight by Sam and unable to do ''anything'' except wait for the cops or shoot Michael...and shooting Mike would mean he would die, something he could never do. [[TheKhan He takes this about as well as you would expect]].]] |
| 348 | * VitriolicBestBuds: Sam and Fiona have morphed into this. |
| 349 | [[/folder]] |
| 350 | |
| 351 | [[folder:W]] |
| 352 | * WarForFunAndProfit: |
| 353 | ** The organization that [[spoiler:hired Simon and which Jesse was investigating before he got burned]]. |
| 354 | ** Brennen finances private wars in his ''free time''. |
| 355 | * TheWatson: The client is typically an audience surrogate that lets Team Westen explain their plans, with their increasing convolutions, to the audience. |
| 356 | * WeHelpTheHelpless: |
| 357 | ** Michael's otherwise nameless business in Miami. One episode had a potential client asking Michael for help, and Michael repeatedly turned him down... right up until the guy mentions his [[FriendToAllChildren son]]. |
| 358 | ** Actually taken advantage of through this in several episodes, with one person exclusively mocking Michael for it. |
| 359 | --->"You know how easy it is to find someone in trouble?" |
| 360 | ** And played with [[spoiler: in the case of Simon. He tells Michael, complete with pity pout, to just think of him like one of his clients. Cue updated subtitle labeled "Simon - The Client."]] |
| 361 | * WellDoneSonGuy: Both Michael and Nate (and a number of clients and criminals) have father issues. A plot point in the first season has Michael and Nate arguing over the Charger and why their father left it to Michael. They're both hurt to learn he didn't leave it to either of them. |
| 362 | * WellIntentionedExtremist: |
| 363 | ** In the fourth season, Josh. He ran a charity for the widows and orphans of dead soldiers... and it got robbed. He was a client. Sam stayed for the orphans and widow. Michael stayed for Sam. |
| 364 | ** Gabriel in the third season episode "Good Intentions," who is a thinly-disguised UsefulNotes/CheGuevara: he's from Argentina, used to be a physician, and he joined a group of [[LaResistance guerilla fighters]] as part of a plan to get revenge on the CorruptCorporateExecutive[=s=] who [[spoiler: dumped toxic waste in his hometown, poisoning the locals and causing the death of his daughter.]] |
| 365 | ** James Kendrick in season 7 is starting to become this to Michael. He created the terrorist network that Michael has to take down because he [[ScrewtheRulesImDoingWhatsRight couldn't fight and bleed for men without principle]].And it's stated that he's willing to [[IDidWhatIHadtoDo go as far as he needs to go for his cause]] |
| 366 | * WesternTerrorists: Fiona used to be part of the Irish Republican Army. |
| 367 | * WhamEpisode: Every mid-season or season finale, but notably: |
| 368 | ** The second season finale. [[spoiler: Michael finally met with "Management" and cut off ties with them. They said they've been keeping him off the radar since he's been burned, so leaving their protection will bring out old enemies. "I'll take my chances."]] In this case, fans had to wait until the next season to see if the change of direction was going to really mean anything. |
| 369 | ** The third season finale, start to finish. To start with, [[spoiler:Michael is on the run from the FBI and DHS after [[NiceJobBreakingItHero helping Simon escape]].]] ''Then'' [[spoiler:he ends up getting blackmailed into helping Simon set up a meeting with Management. After a whole lot of [[IndyPloy Indy Ploying]] by everyone involved, Simon's on his way back to some secret prison... and Michael's been disappeared off to some unknown location, presumably to go to work for Management. [[BoxedCrook Whether he wants to or not.]]]] Oh yeah, did I mention that [[spoiler:none of his friends or family know where he is or if he's even alive?]] |
| 370 | ** The PRELUDE to the Fourth Season finale. [[spoiler: Hi Brennen]] |
| 371 | ** The first half of the Fourth Season finale. [[spoiler: Bye Brennen. You're irrelevant now.]] |
| 372 | ** The second half of the Fourth Season finale. Hey Michael, take this jacket. You're going to need it, as it is pretty cold in [[spoiler: Washington DC.]] |
| 373 | ** The Fifth Season summer finale, where Michael finally finds the man who burned him, [[spoiler:and is blackmailed into working for him]]. |
| 374 | *** [[spoiler:And now it turns out that Anson not only talked with Michael's father, he "arranged" his heart attack when Frank started asking questions]]. Anson is the bringer of wham. |
| 375 | --->'''Anson''': You're welcome, Michael. |
| 376 | ** In the Fifth Season finale, [[spoiler:in order to prevent Michael from basically selling his soul to Anson, Fiona turns herself in to the FBI for the British consulate bombing]]. |
| 377 | ** And now, in the sixth season episode "Shock Wave", [[spoiler:Nate has been killed, along with Anson. By the same shot, apparently.]]. |
| 378 | ** Seventh season, episode 11, [[spoiler: Michael kills CIA alpha team leader/psychopath Simon Escher and defects to James's cause.]]. |
| 379 | ** Seventh season, episode 12, [[spoiler: after a knock-down, drag-out fight between Michael and Sam]], [[spoiler: Fiona is [[DiscretionShot (apparently) killed by Sonya after confronting Michael about his defection.]]]] |
| 380 | * WhatDidIDoLastNight: Invoked, twice, on an alcoholic con-man. Sam takes him out partying, drugs his drinks, and then when he passes out they set him up to think he did something really stupid so that they can pretend to fix it for him. (Michael W, have you been talking to [[Film/TheGodfather Michael C?]]) |
| 381 | * WhatHappenedToTheMouse: |
| 382 | ** In the pilot episode, Mama Westen is portrayed as a long-suffering hypochondriac who has been treated for "every disease known to man" (with Michael footing the medical bills). This is treated as a defining trait for the character, ''i.e.'' on learning her prodigal son had returned after years away, she immediately demanded he drive her to the doctor. However, after the pilot episode, this hypochondria largely vanishes and is rarely alluded to again (save for one mention in a voiceover later in the series, and pill bottles seen in the background around the house). Chalk it up to EarlyInstallmentWeirdness or CharacterizationMarchesOn. Possibly it was just a method of getting Michael to pay attention to her -- when he starts doing that via more normal methods, she stops. |
| 383 | *** It's a BlinkAndYouMissIt, but at the end of the pilot she complains that the new pills from her doctor for her hypochondria aren't going to work. Michael insists that they try it just for a little bit anyway. |
| 384 | ** A second minor one is averted in 4x06. After saving someone from getting blown up, the trio are leaving when Michael comments, "Wait, we can't just leave a bomb in public!" |
| 385 | ** Oleg, the landlord of Michael's loft, appears in the pilot, then in the third episode to point him to the Client of the Week, then ''never again''. His club, located RIGHT BELOW Michael's loft, disappears too. |
| 386 | ** Who was Carla trying to assassinate? |
| 387 | ** The long-running plotline leading up to the second season mid-season finale involves Michael running errands for the people who burned him and Michael's quest to find out what that's leading to. He learns a ''lot'', and tracks down disparate elements of an [[spoiler:assassination]]. Cue the mid-season finale, when the entire plot [[spoiler:is burned to the ground by Victor, who sends Carla into a tizzy and sends the second season in an entirely different direction for the back half.]] |
| 388 | ** When [[spoiler: Michael works with the CIA to take down the organization that runs off burned spies, the head honcho that Michael has worked with several times in the past, "Management," is not confirmed as being caught or killed and only mentioned once by Anson with regards to the origin of the group]]. |
| 389 | ** Lucy from season one completely drops off the radar after Mike saves her from a would-be assassin. She is never even mentioned. |
| 390 | ** Sam is married. Or at least, he was when he was younger, and he and his unknown wife separated after a brief relationship and never got legally divorced. We know absolutely nothing about this woman apart from a single mention of her. |
| 391 | *** She comes up again as a reason why [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness Sam is unwilling to help one of his old buddies;]] Amanda apparently had an affair with the buddy sometime after she and Sam separated. |
| 392 | * WhatMeasureIsAMook: While perfectly willing to abuse and knock around mooks, Michael and his friends try to avoid killing them whenever possible. |
| 393 | ** In "Down Range", Sam is forced to shoot and kill a mook who is about to spot Michael. Sam is clearly shaken up about it, and when Agent Strong tries to tell him the mook probably wasn't a good guy anyways, Sam shouts him down. |
| 394 | * WhatTheHellHero: In 3x10, "A Dark Road", Mike gets his mother to trick a government employee, Tina, into giving her some records illegally. And then Maddie ends up making friends with the employee, which causes some friction when Mike is forced to ask his mum to blackmail Tina for an even larger amount of records that would doubtless get her fired. Her angry conversation with the stonefaced Mike--who had been beating himself up about it already--mirrors the stonefaced one she has with the tearful Tina in the next scene. |
| 395 | ** But he [[spoiler:did set things up later so that she wouldn't get fired.]] |
| 396 | ** In another episode, Michael needs to give FAA flight plans to Gilroy to earn his trust. However, Sam, who obtained the flight plans from a friend, refuses to let Michael take them, stating that he would be putting thousands of people at risk, as well as exposing his source. Fortunately, Michael decides that even though Gilroy might kill him for not providing ''all'' of the flight plans, he wouldn't want to live with himself if he put all those people in danger anyway. |
| 397 | ** 4x03 has his mother give him one about Jesse. Cue Michael looking about as shocked and depressed as he could be. |
| 398 | ** Fiona is also starting to give Michael grief about lying to Jesse and keeping him in the dark about the nature of his burning. Which is a little odd given Jesse has made no secret of the fact he wants to kill the person who burned him. Sure, be angry at Michael for getting the guy burned, but the lying? That is better than the alternative. |
| 399 | *** And now it seems that Michael was at least somewhat right on the subject, as Jesse found out for himself and began a RoaringRampageOfRevenge. It might have been softened if Michael and company told it to him outright, but probably not all that much since he's basically Guy-Fi. Or Michael and Fiona's kid. |
| 400 | ** A small one [[spoiler: from Jesse when Michael tells him he needs to lie about Marv's murder. "So I have to lie to the people who are just trying to find out the truth. Sounds like a Michael plan to me." ]] |
| 401 | ** Fiona constantly calls out Michael for his willingness to be blackmailed by Anson for her sake. |
| 402 | ** In Season 7, all of Michael's friends, particularly Sam, keep warning Michael that [[BecomingTheMask he's getting too close to James]]. |
| 403 | ** In fact, the main reason why Michael keeps Sam, Fi, Jesse, and his mother so close is exactly because they can point out when he's starting to cross the line. |
| 404 | * WhatWereYouThinking: Michael's mom wins an award for vigilantly calling the police about stolen cars; |
| 405 | --> '''Mom''': I won it for, you know, reporting three stolen cars in the last two weeks.\ |
| 406 | '''Michael''': You mean the cars ''I'' stole and ''asked you'' to report?\ |
| 407 | [...]\ |
| 408 | '''Mom''': Anyway, dress nice and wear a tie, the chief of police will be there.\ |
| 409 | '''Michael''': Mom, I can't show up to a ceremony surrounded by ''police officers'' while you get the reward for reporting crimes ''I committed!'' |
| 410 | * WhatYouAreInTheDark: The series runs with this a lot. It's usually a situation where Michael has to choose between getting his life back and helping his friends. |
| 411 | ** In probably the definitive example of the series, in Season 3, Michael is told that he's about to be unburned, he'll be accepted back by his government, he'll get everything he ever wanted. All he had to do was accept, and oh, by the way, Fiona's in trouble, but don't worry about that, she's his past, and he needs to look towards his future. |
| 412 | --->'''Michael''': Fiona is not my past! ''(fast-draws and shoots [[spoiler:Strickler]] dead)'' |
| 413 | ** Also one of their marks that they were using to get to their target has one. Despite him clearly wanting to move up in the Bad Guy's operation, when his boss tells him that the "new recruits" he has been working with will be sacrificed in their next score, the guy lies to his recruits that the boss wouldn't be using them so they wouldn't be killed. After Michael reveals what he intends to do, the guy helps Michael then goes legit. |
| 414 | ** One episode has this work ''against'' them with a ruthless mob boss being tricked into stealing a large shipment with Sam acting undercover as an enforcer from the higher-ups who wanted the boss dead but changed sides upon being promised a big cut. Earlier, in order to convince the boss to get involved with the heist personally, Sam reluctantly relates a real story from his SEAL days about how he did everything he could to get an injured comrade to safety. The heist goes off as planned, but the boss, who was supposed to drive away and be intercepted by authorities with the shipment while Sam pretended to be captured, has a moment of conscience and goes back to "save" him, abandoning the shipment and forcing Team Westen to come up with a new plan. |
| 415 | --->'''Michael''': A spy's job is to get into the head of his adversary, to know how he'll behave and use it against him. But human behavior is about as predictable as the weather. Sometimes the most hardened criminal can decide to be noble at the most inconvenient time. |
| 416 | * WhyWeAreBummedCommunismFell: Paul Anderson (Burt Reynolds) can't wrap his mind around ''not'' being allowed to shoot Russians. |
| 417 | * WhyWeCantHaveNiceThings: Jason Bly enjoys barging into Michael's loft and ripping everything apart in search of [[BlatantLies "evidence"]]. |
| 418 | * WigDressAccent: While the wig part is deliberately averted, the show focuses almost exclusively on how Michael alters his attire, posture and vocal mannerisms (accent, pitch, idiosyncrasies, etc) on how he takes on new personas. It takes it to the logical extreme, as if Michael (and one time Sam) needs to look beaten up they can't rely on make-up to achieve that affect. So his gets punched a few times to sell the story. |
| 419 | * WildCard: Fiona. The lady's on a short fuse. |
| 420 | ** One of the most hilarious examples was the episode when the client worked for a rap mogul and had been accused of stealing from him. Client had been given a time limit to 'find' the money, and about halfway through the time period, the mogul calls his entire staff into his office and starts talking about "loyalty" and "respect". While Michael and Fi listen in outside on their client's cell phone, she pulls a shotgun [[{{Hammerspace}} out of nowhere]], and starts loading and priming it while Michael tries to stop her ''and'' listen to the meeting. She had gotten out of the car and was halfway across the street, with the gun in a bag, before the situation stabilized. |
| 421 | ** Also, see StuffBlowingUp. |
| 422 | ** This also serves to drive home how serious the situation in the Season 3 opening is, when [[spoiler:Fi advises a ''prudent'' course of action over a more explodey one.]] |
| 423 | ** Michael's mother can be pretty high-strung as well, especially shown in the season 2 opener. |
| 424 | --->'''Michael''': "Mom, what are you doing? Put the shotgun down." |
| 425 | *** She texts or calls members of Team Westen at random times with urgent emergencies, demanding they come over right away. 50/50, it's either someone attacking her to coerce Michael, or a broken coffeepot, lacking a partner for a yoga class, or similar non-emergencies. |
| 426 | ** While Fiona seems to have mellowed, Jesse is far more prone to break off from their current mission. |
| 427 | *** Michael BatmanGambit's this tendency of Jesse's in 4x06 to help with interrogating Kendra. |
| 428 | ** Flip a coin. Michael's client is usually either an idiot or a wild card. |
| 429 | * WireDilemma: Averted. "On a well-made bomb, you can forget about cutting wires. Any decent bomb maker will make sure the important wires are impossible to reach. Freeze the detonator, though, and you can usually remove it safely. Of course, 'usually' is not a word you want to hear when you're working with explosives." |
| 430 | ** This is followed by a classic [[DelayedExplosion Gag Delayed Explosion]] as they chuck the detonator behind some water bottles and it goes off only ''after'' they visibly relax that it's not going to. |
| 431 | * WomenDrivers: Lampshaded by Fiona in "Rough Seas". |
| 432 | %% ZeroContextExample: * WoobieOfTheWeek |
| 433 | * WorkingWithTheEx: |
| 434 | ** One of Michael's ex-girlfriends once showed up on to ask for his help, and ended up working closely with the team throughout the episode. |
| 435 | ** Technically, Michael and Fiona [[spoiler: at least in the first few seasons]] count as well--they were once in a serious relationship, which ended when Michael had to walk out in the middle of the night. |
| 436 | * WorthyOpponent: The eventual relationship between Michael and Agent Bly. |
| 437 | * WouldntHitAGirl: |
| 438 | ** Subverted. Sam, in the S4 premiere, tries really hard not to hit the girlfriend of a biker gang leader, but she's kicking the crap out of him, and eventually, does lay her out with a roundhouse. |
| 439 | ** And Michael, if he has to, will hit a knife-wielding female assassin in the face with a steel-lined briefcase. |
| 440 | * WouldntHurtAChild: All of Team Westen seems to have a soft spot for abused kids. |
| 441 | ** Brennen calls Mike out on this when [[spoiler:Michael figures out the name and location of Brennen's daughter.]] |
| 442 | -->Brennen: [[spoiler:"This isn't you, Westen. You're capable of a lot, but you wouldn't hurt a child."]]\ |
| 443 | Michael: [[spoiler:"But you would, Brennen. [[IronicEcho This is your game, we're playing by your rules.]]"]] |
| 444 | ** Michael has to convince someone he is willing to do this in "Brothers In Arms". |
| 445 | * WouldNotShootAGoodGuy: In "Devil You Know", a police officer claims that Michael tried to kill him. Maddie follows up with the "[[IfIWantedYouDead if he wanted to kill you, you'd be dead]]" line. In fact, if you watch the actual scene where Michael is shooting at the person, you can see him instinctively take aim at the person before pausing and adjusting his aim to hit the person's car instead. |
| 446 | * WoundedGazelleGambit: |
| 447 | ** In a monologue, Michael mentions how people are [[{{Moe}} so much more inclined to be sympathetic]] when they see someone with injuries, right before using a locker to give himself a shiner. (Ouch!) |
| 448 | ** Also, taking a shard of window glass and slicing his own arm open to convince the security guards that he had accidentally (and drunkenly) broken a window he needed to get through. |
| 449 | ** After knocking out a would-be hijacker while pretending to be the hijacking crew's hacker, Michael smashes a glass table and slices his own forehead open to make it seem like they were attacked from behind by someone else. Later in the episode he fakes being mortally wounded. |
| 450 | ** Subverted in "Friends Like These". |
| 451 | ** This is how Michael meets Anson. Anson is pretending to be Larry's hostage, complete with a kidnapped wife with a bomb strapped to her. |
| 452 | * WriteWhatYouKnow: An InUniverse example in "Do No Harm". Fiona is uncomfortable being asked to babysit a little boy, but Madeline tells her to just go with what she knows, ''"there's no point pretending you're Film/MaryPoppins."'' When she sits down, the little boy opens a tub of green army men, and soon the two of them are having the time of their lives, to the point where, when Michael calls, she tells him to call back later, she's busy. |
| 453 | * WrongRestaurant: A memorable incident in the episode "[[Recap/BurnNoticeS1E11DeadDrop Dead Drop]]" involves Sam and Fiona BS-ing the guard at a defense contractor that they think the building is a restaurant and telling him they have a reservation, all so that Michael can get over the fence and disarm a bomb on their client's car. |
| 454 | %% ZeroContextExample: * WrongfulAccusationInsurance: Potentially. |
| 455 | %% ** Officially, until his policy was canceled. |
| 456 | [[/folder]] |
| 457 | |
| 458 | [[folder:X-Y]] |
| 459 | * XanatosSpeedChess: |
| 460 | ** The "reverse interrogation" scene from "Question and Answer", a rare three-way example. Michael and Sam are trying to find out from the kidnapper where he's hidden the boy, but they can't let him know that they don't already ''have'' the information. So Sam goes undercover as "Detective Chuck Finley", a corrupt drug-addicted cop, and Michael as his druggie snitch, and Sam has to interrogate Michael and feed him information he doesn't have as well as keeping the kidnapper from just killing Michael. On the other hand, Michael has to keep his cover, pretend he knows all the details of something he's trying to find out information about, and play it well enough to keep the kidnapper interested in his info instead of shooting him. |
| 461 | ** Practically called out in Michael's voiceover, stating that when you work with someone enough, you trust them enough to go with it when they change the plan. But that doesn't make it any less scarier to run with a play you know nothing about. |
| 462 | * YaoiFangirl: Fiona flirts with this in the first season episode "Loose Ends" when Sam interacts with the patrons of a gay bar in order to get information. |
| 463 | --> '''Fiona:''' You know, you were captivating over there. |
| 464 | * YouAreNotAlone: Nate does this for Michael in "Enemies Closer". |
| 465 | * YouExclamation: Between a Syrian agent and Pearce in "Last Rites": |
| 466 | -->'''Ahmad''': "You."\ |
| 467 | '''Agent Pearce''': "[[PunctuatedForEmphasis Yes. Me.]]" |
| 468 | * YouHaveFailedMe: ''Time after time after time.'' It rarely happens onscreen, but still. |
| 469 | * YouHaveGotToBeKiddingMe: In "Army of One", when bad guy Holcombe sees that not only is Michael working with the cops, but that he's [[ItMakesSenseInContext not dead.]] |
| 470 | * YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: |
| 471 | ** [[spoiler:Gilroy's]] fate in the penultimate episode of season 3. |
| 472 | ** In the season 4 finale, with [[spoiler: Brennan and [[AxCrazy "Dead" Larry]]]] working together, the only question is who will turn on the other first. [[spoiler: Larry suddenly just stabs Brennan in the chest in broad daylight while the latter was still trying to play the long game.]] |
| 473 | *** As for RedShirts...generally, if a character has a key to the overplot, the villain will pull this JUST in time for Michael to find the body. |
| 474 | * YouJustToldMe: The whole point of the "reverse interrogation". |
| 475 | * YouKilledMyFather: Quite a few clients have dead family members or close friends as incentive to bring the bad guy to justice. |
| 476 | ** In "Depth Perception" [[spoiler: Anson reveals that he had Michael on his radar for many years and had long chats with both Madeline and Michael's father Frank, and that once Frank started asking too many questions they "arranged" a heart attack. The thing is Michael did not have any fond memories of his dad, but the invasion against his family was still intensely personal]]. |
| 477 | * YouKnowImBlackRight: Humorously inverted, as the team had to decide which of them would be most convincing as a member of a black gang. Jesse hadn't really been paying attention to the conversation and when everyone started looking at him his response was "Really!?" |
| 478 | %% ZeroContextExample: * YouKnowWhatTheySay |
| 479 | * YourCostumeNeedsWork: A variant on this in "Long Way Back": Michael pretends to be Irish so Fiona's brother Sean will trust him. When he needs to pose as an American arms dealer, he drops the Irish accent, telling Sean he's pretended to be American before. Sean's response: "The accent's a bit dodgy." |
| 480 | * YouRemindMeOfX: Michael never quite says it, but his last interactions with Joey in ''Shot in the Dark'' are all about this, including when they both lean on Michael's car the exact same way and in the same pose. |
| 481 | ** Reinforced for humor--Michael says that the hypothetical guy who used to be a street punk got a better job doing a lot of the things he did when he was young. Joey's responds "So, I should eat a lot of yogurt?" There's a bit of a grin on Michael's face when he says "Couldn't hurt." |
| 482 | ** Paul says this to Mike word for word in "Past & Future". |
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