Recap / Burn Notice S 1 E 10 False Flag

Client of the Week

After Michael's attempt to get a fake ID goes sour, he turns to Lucy, the former associate who helped him in the pilot. She agrees to get him some papers in return for helping her with a job.

The job is helping Evelyn find her son who's been taken by her abusive, estranged husband. They're still married and he's the father, so the police can't do anything. Michael agrees to help.

Michael and Sam take a quick tour of Doug's house (Evelyn's husband), noting the bars on the window (unique for the neighborhood) and the incredibly expensive lock on the front door. After just a minute or two, men with guns come to the front door, and Sam and Michael escape by kicking out a wall-mounted AC unit. Whatever is going on is more serious than Evelyn led them to believe. A quick meeting with her shows her with a black eye, from Doug, and Michael gets more serious about the case, believing that the boy is in serious danger.

Sam, taking a hint from magazines seen at Doug's home, realizes he's a serious outdoorsman and uses his connections to track Doug down at a fishing cabin he keeps out in the Keys. Michael tells Evelyn they've found Doug, and he and she head down to the Keys to confront him. On arriving, Michael gets out of the car with his gun and confronts Doug. Doug then tells Michael that "You people killed my wife; isn't that enough?" and Michael realizes that he's been the victim of a false flag operation. Doug is now the client and Michael has to get him away from the assassin pretending to be Evelyn.

Unfortunately, the assassin disabled Michael's gun by removing the trigger bar spring. Fortunately, Doug's fishing shack is well-supplied with odds and ends, and Michael still has Fiona's hairpin. While the assassin paces outside, taking potshots, Michael uses the hairpin to give himself a one-shot pistol, and tapes a can of bug spray to a propane tank. With the bug spray as a makeshift fuse, the propane makes a handy, throw-able bomb, which disables Michael's car and allows him to escape with Doug in Doug's jeep.

It turns out that Doug, a CPA for Greenway Cargos, had stumbled onto some very shady business practices. They were shipping weapons, ivory, people. The cops tried to get his help, but he wanted none of it. Unfortunately, Greenway didn't know that and they started snooping. Then Doug's wife caught a car-bomb meant for him; he sent his son to friends and ran. That's when Evelyn got Michael to look for him.

Evelyn was using Michael as a cipher so no one in Miami would be able to point to her after Doug's death. The only loose end is Lucy, so Michael goes to look for her when he gets a call from Evelyn. The two sit down and have a chat about their shared history. He nearly caught her after she assassinated some diplomats in Istanbul seven years ago and she's been following him ever since. After he got burned, she was able to look up his history and learned about his abusive childhood, and so was able to use that against him.

Evelyn offers to split the fee with Michael, but he refuses. She then tells him that she's put a cheap hit out on Lucy and makes her get-away while Michael rushes to save her from a hit and run. A short time later, patching up Lucy's skinned elbow and bruised ego, they receive a phone call from Evelyn threatening Michael's friends and family if he doesn't hand Doug over.

Team Westen makes the necessary connections to get Doug into witness protection. Sam calls the US Attorney to tell him they're bringing Doug in the following morning, and he goes to protect Michael's mother, just in case. Fiona goes to prep an armed escort. Doug's job is to stay away from the windows.

Michael and Fiona have a discussion about his job while prepping their guns for the next day's work. He gives her back her hairpin, now bent out of shape, and she mentions that Evelyn's helpless Damsel in Distress persona was attractive to Michael for a reason. He's not just his job. She offers to back him up in DC, but he shoots her down; it's a bad idea tactically and personally.

The next morning they get Doug dressed in a flak vest and head out to get him to the US Attorney. Evelyn is on a roof drawing a bead on Doug when Michael interrupts her. She puts her gun down, puts on the zip-tie he gives her, and throws herself off the roof. She had too many enemies to survive in prison. Doug is safe.

Burn Notice Arc

The episode opens with Michael and Fiona out shopping for shoes, during which Michael takes a quick detour into a rather sketchy "Check Cashing/Passport Photos/MoneyGram" shop to get a fake ID so he can get out of Miami and up to D.C. to visit with Cowan, the man who burned him. Unfortunately, the man who runs the place recognizes Michael from a circular that went around warning people like him to stay away. The man pulls a gun, puts Michael in cuffs, and calls his friend in law enforcement. Fortunately, Fiona shows up in time to get him out of trouble.

Michael still wants his false flag, so he goes to Lucy, his friend from the pilot. In return for doing a job, she agrees to get him his fake papers. The people she works with are well connected, including some fake ID artists.

Michael does a job for Lucy, and she gets him his papers. The episode ends with her handing them over. She walks away as Sam walks up. Turns out Michael doesn't need his papers. Phillip Cowan has left DC and is on his way to Miami to see Michael.

Tropes include:

• Actor Allusion: Fi says that Sam's bullet proof vest smells like "Old Spice and bourbon".
• Air-Vent Passageway: Probably not the kind you're thinking of. Michael and Sam kick the AC unit out of a wall and jump out the hole.
• Affably Evil:
  • Jumbo's calm demeanor and repeated apologies underscore that he'd really prefer not to hand Michael over to the feds, but if he hands the big fish over to the cops, they'll let him get away with giving fake IDs to kids wanting to get into titty bars.
  • Evelyn as well. She has a nice chat with Michael over lemonade while threatening Lucy. Then she has a flirty phone call with him while threatening his friends and family.
• The Alleged Car: Michael had to put some serious dents in the Charger to get away from Evelyn.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Michael finally corners the assassin using certain details that he still remembers from seven years back.
  Michael: Istanbal wasn't that long ago. You like rooftops over windows. You like angles with the target on your right-hand side because you're left-handed.
• Batman Gambit: Michael knows about Evelyn's source in the US Attorney's office and anticipates her sniper perch by remembering the shooting in Istanbul.
• Berserk Button: Michael loses his cool when the client of the week tells him that her abusive husband has taken her son; this is what allows her (secretly an assassin) to play him. Lampshaded.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: How "Evelyn" takes her exit, throwing herself off the building as she knows the kind of people she works for won't let her survive in prison and risk exposing their dark secrets.
• Blatant Lies: When Jumbo shows Michael the circular with his name and face on it, Michael is maybe five inches from it...
  Jumbo: This is you, isn't it.
  Michael: Uh... Kinda hard to tell from here.
  • Sam is prepping Maddie's house against the possibility of assassination, and he tells her that he and his ladyfriend had a falling out and asks if he can spend the night. With a shotgun on the counter. Maddie calls him on it.
• Boring, but Practical: Doug says he's just a CPA, and he can't understand why his employers hired an assassin to kill him over "irregularities" he found in their books. Sam points out that an accountant brought down Al Capone, and whatever Doug found, his employers have good reason to be afraid.
• The Call Knows Where You Live: Doug didn't want to get involved with a police investigation into his employers. Too bad his employers didn't know that.
• Chekhov's Gun: The hair pin Michael gets from Fiona to get out of his handcuffs shows up later as a makeshift trigger bar spring for his gun.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: This is Lucy's last appearance. The pilot implied she and Michael had a history, that he was her mentor. Her disappearance is never explained.
• Contractual Genre Blindness: Michael is in a fishing shack with a devoted fisherman who was holding a box of fishing tackle when Michael walked up. Michael needs to fix his gun and asks the man if he has a thin piece of metal, like a ... paper clip^note No. He doesn't.. They needed the Chekhov's Gun to fire, and it made for a sweet moment with Fi later on, but come on, couldn't they have made the guy a hunter?
• Cool Old Lady: Maddie's starting to take her level in Badass. She calls Sam on his bullshit, handles his shotgun with ease, then offers him a beer.
• Disguise Tropes: Michael runs through a few when discussing the basics of a good false identity.
• Domestic Abuse: How Evelyn gets under Mike's skin, claiming she and her child are suffering from it.
• Evil, Inc.: Doug worked for them. He found out and then he got visited by the cops. Now he's marked for death.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Evelyn wears her hair loose to her shoulders. The assassin keeps it pulled tightly back into a bun.
• Hairpin Lockpick: How Michael gets out of his handcuffs.
• Hammerspace: At the fishing shack, Evelyn is wearing tight jeans and a tank top. Where was she hiding the massive pistol such that Michael didn't notice it during the car ride to the Keys?
• Heroes Gone Fishing: The episode opens with Michael and Fiona out shoe shopping. And picking up a fake ID for Michael. This is probably underscored by the fact that Michael is oddly, for him, wearing jeans. Fi suggests they could do more of that kind of thing in D.C.
• Hollywood Silencer: Evelyn's gun at the fishing shack.
• I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: It's a shame that Autolycus and Xena have no scenes together.
• MacGyvering: Michael uses a hairpin to fix his gun and throws a low-grade propane bomb at Evelyn.
• Make an Example of Them: When Michael turns down Evelyn's offer by saying "there's nothing you can do" to change his mind, she casually mentions how she loves Miami's "cheap labor" in hiring a kid off the street to do a hit-and-run for $1000 "if [she] flirts with him a little" and pointing out how Lucy's walking down the street. Michael saves her from the car, but Evelyn gets away and he knows that she will gladly hunt down any of his friends or family to get him to give up Doug.
• Mars and Venus Gender Contrast: The opening Shopping Montage shows Fi enjoying shoe stores and Michael looking painfully bored.
• Master of Unlocking: The episode shows that Sam is the team's go-to guy for lockpicking; unfortunately, Doug (the target-cum-client) has a nine-pin dimple lock. It takes Sam some time, but he gets in.
• Mirror Character: A grand Burn Notice tradition, Michael and his antagonist are very similar. She throws on a false identity and whips up a few Indy Ploys to discomfit him.
• No Name Given: We don't learn the assassin's real name; she killed the real "Evelyn" to assume her identity.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Doug wanted to keep quiet and stay out of it until the company he worked for started harassing him and murdered his wife.
• Obfuscating Disability: Michael shouts "She's pregnant!" which throws Jumbo (the gun-wielding ID-maker) off his game long enough for Michael and Fi to get out of his shop.
• Oh, Crap!: As soon as Mike leaves his first meeting with Evelyn, Sam knows something is wrong. Michael's a little too intense.
  • A bigger moment when Michael realizes that "Evelyn" is in fact an assassin hired to track down and kill Doug.
• Once per Episode: Michael's makeshift bomb is held together with duct tape.
• Product Placement: The show briefly frames a number of clothing boutiques in its Shopping Montage opening.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: "Put... The rifle... Down."
• Running Gag: Sam ducks out of an uncomfortable conversation with Fi by claiming he needs to pick up some yogurt for Mike.
  • During the back half of the episode, Michael keeps telling Doug to stay away from windows.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Michael's goal through the episode was getting a fake ID so he could leave Miami and head to DC to confront Cowan. At the end, it turns out Cowan's coming to Miami.
• Shaking Her Hair Loose: Fi, on giving Michael her hair pin to get out of handcuffs.
• Shopping Montage: The show opens with a brief one; Fi loves her shoes.
• Talking Is a Free Action: And so is MacGyvering. Evelyn starts the Charger and Michael starts putting together his bomb. She's started her run-up to the shack and he's still putting together his bomb. She's in the middle of her run-up and he finishes the bomb. She's still dozens of feet away when he pops out of the shack and throws it. Of course, she was apparently traveling slowly enough to come to a complete stop and jump out of the car with no notice.
• Title Drop: One minute, thirty-four seconds. A false flag is a fake ID. Michael needs one.
• Too Dumb to Live: When Michael tells Doug that the woman outside is here to kill him, Doug immediately stands up to look at her through the window.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Michael tries, but "Evelyn" disabled his gun.
  • Despite having a gun, Evelyn wisely stays outside the shack firing potshots rather than risk trying to breach a room with two men twice her size armed only with a pistol.
  • As per usual, Fiona proposes just killing Evelyn. Michael shoots that idea down. Too risky.
• Worthy Opponent: How Michael and Evelyn seem to view each other. He came very close to catching her seven years previous in Istanbul. Evelyn even calls herself a fan.