Recap / Burn Notice S1E4 - "Old Friends"

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Michael's brother Nate (Seth Peterson) shows up with a job. An old classmate's daughter, Jenna (Susie Abromeit), has gone missing, and Nate took money to go find her. Michael, not realizing how serious the situation was, goes to give the money back, only to reluctantly take the job and track Jenna down. She and her father (Eric Lange) argued about her boyfriend Brandon Diggs (Tino Tsutras), a modeling scout.

It turns out that Brandon's not really a modeling scout, except insofar as the guys he works for do some modeling on the side. They're pimps, and it's his job to find fresh meat for their business. When they learn that Jenna's on the fast track to prostitution, they rush in to save her. When it turns out that she's going to be shipped overseas to be sold as a Sex Slave in Dubai, they go into overdrive.

Their first rescue attempt fails when Michael gets held up by the Czech assassin in town thanks to Nate and so they switch to plan B. They kidnap one of the two brothers heading the prostitution ring and use that as leverage. They force the ring to close down and the men running it to hand over all their assets, except those they made legitimately from modeling, to the girls. Also, to explain exactly what they were planning to do to Jenna.

Michael returns Jenna to her grateful father.

Michael and Sam are sitting in a bar, reviewing sports trivia so Michael can better blend with the locals, when Michael notices Czech assassin Jan Haseck (Ilia Volok) eyeballing him. Michael plays drunk and picks a fight so he can get close enough to disable the assassin and get out of the bar. Back at the loft, he sets up a booby trap. He keeps Sam in the dark about this so he doesn't have to lie to the feds.

Fiona tracks the Czech to a hotel, and Michael investigates. His first attempt is derailed when he runs into the assassin and gets into a fight against two knives, and retreats. He returns later and searches the assassin's room for information. He finds a book, a fast food bag, and not much else. Fiona's inquiries turn up little, except that the assassin has particular food requirements.

At the end of the episode, Michael reveals he's determined the assassin has a nut allergy by sprinkling crushed peanut on his hotdog. A brief interrogation ensues as Michael withholds the epinephrine that will save the assassin from anaphylaxis. Virtually no information is uncovered, just that Michael is out and he has a lot of enemies from "the old days". Michael calls Sam and tells him to give his FBI buddies a call; maybe this will make them back off.

Whoever burned Michael has sent him a bouquet of flowers and a balloon. Meanwhile, the assassin "killed himself" in his cell. Some guys with clearance above the FBI came by and took him away. Apparently, they left him with his shoelaces.

Tropes include:

• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Michael's relationship with his brother is fraught thanks to Nate's gambling problem but when push comes to shove, they have each other's backs. Michael takes the job to help Nate out with his debt and Nate doesn't hesitate to run into a firefight when he sees someone shooting at his brother and Michael going down with a ricochet in his back.
• Batman Gambit: After seeing Jan Haseck scoping him out, Michael narrates, "If it looks like you're about to get into a fight that could get you killed, try starting another one." He then gets up and starts loudly badmouthing Dwayne Wade in comparison with Kobe Bryant, on the reasonable assumption that somebody in Miami would take offense to him blasting the Miami Heat's star in favor of the L.A. Lakers. Conveniently, it turns out to be the jerk who was harassing the waitress earlier.
• Big Brother Instinct: Michael feels protective of Nate. From Nate's perspective, this is unfortunate as it means Michael is protecting Nate from himself.
• Blatant Lies:
  • Michael keeps Sam in the dark about the Czech so that Sam doesn't have to lie to the feds.
  • Jenna's boyfriend immediately claims not to know her until Michael shows him photos of them together.
  • And when Nate says he paid back the guys he owes. Michael sees through it immediately.
• Booby Trap: Michael sets up a trap after the Czech assassin shows up.
• Car Fu: Inverted: Sam deliberately gets himself painfully but non-fatally hit by the Wilhelm brothers' car at low speed in order to delay them from catching their flight to Dubai.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: While Michael and Jan are wrestling over Jan's knife, the latter casually says, "good to see you. Long time."
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The booby trap. It surprises Sam after the cold open, and forces Michael to drive across town to rescue Nate halfway through the episode.
  • Literally. Nate mentions that he has a friend who can get him a gun. In the next scene, he uses it to chase off the Czech assassin.
  • In one scene, we see Michael "working on Nate's truck", and all he does is remove the license plate. A few scenes later, he's driving it to kidnap the Wilhelm brother. He removed the license plate so people couldn't identify the truck.
• Combat Medic: After chasing off an assassin, Nate does a little surgery to dig a bullet out of Michael's back. Without anesthetic.
• Confession Deferred: Brandon, the guy who "recruited" Jenna for the Wilhelm Brothers, claims not to know any Jenna. Michael helpfully shows him a strip of photo-booth snapshots of Brandon and Jenna together, and smacks him on the head with it for emphasis. Brandon's memory improves.
• Consummate Liar: After Nate nearly botches an investigation by being too aggressive with a bartender, Michael steps in and makes up a lie about the guy they're looking for having purchased a Mercedes and Nate writing his info down wrong. He also implies Nate was hitting on the bartender (a guy). Nate doesn't even hesitate before picking up the lie and running with it, adding a great deal of excellent detail, without batting an eye over being called gay. It seems the whole Westen family is incredibly adept at extemporaneous fiction^note That's a fancy way of saying "lying"..
• Cutting the Knot: As usual, Fiona suggests a direct approach.
• Deadpan Snarker: While abducting Oscar, Michael takes a crowbar to the car window. The window actually holds up pretty well.
  Michael: Wow, this is really well-made.
• Didn't Think This Through: As a result of another encounter with the Czech assassin, Michael can't be with Fiona and Sam for the initial plan to extract Jenna. Fiona wants to charge in anyway, leading to Sam pointing out the inherent problem of only having two people on hand for a plan that requires three people to pull off. As Sam points out, he's supposed to hold off anyone in the back, while Fiona holds off those in the front.
  Sam: What's missing from this picture? The guy who takes Jenna.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Michael lies to Sam about the Czech assassin. Sam deliberately throws his car keys too short, then tells Michael to pick up a toothbrush, because Michael's is "a little rough".
• Distracted by the Sexy: When Michael's sneaking into the assassin's hotel room, he strips to his boxers and puts on a robe. Fiona can't help but cop a feel.
• Drinking Game: Michael and Sam are playing one at the beginning. If Michael gets a bit of sports trivia right, Sam drinks. If not, Michael drinks.
• Dysfunctional Family: To learn truly great martial arts, you need a terrible home life. Michael says this just before getting jumped by his brother. It was a friendly fight, honest.
• Embarrassing Cover-Up: When Nate gets a little too aggressive questioning a bartender, Michael claims Nate's gay and "hitting on anyone who looks like he can bench 200", oh, and that they're car salesmen looking for a customer whose number Nate got wrong. Nate rolls with the punches with ease.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: To save Jenna, the group kidnaps Carl's brother, Oscar, and refuses to let him go unless their demands are met. Carl relents.
• False Reassurance: When Carl asks the Westens how much money they want for Oscar's release, Michael says they don't want his money. Then he says that doesn't mean they want Carl to have it, either. He relents enough to say the Wilhelms can keep whatever they actually made legally through the modeling front of their enterprise, but the girls they were selling off get the rest of the illegal funds.
• Fire-Forged Friends
  • Fiona and Sam begin to segue from Headbutting Heroes to Vitriolic Best Buds when Sam salvages a broken operation by walking in front of a moving car.
  • Michael and Nate patch up some of their differences when Nate saves Michael from an assassin and digs a bullet out of his back.
  • Sam and Michael demonstrate they have a deeper history when Sam makes it clear how hurt he is that Michael's keeping him in the dark.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Nate's a gambling addict with a history of questionable dealings, and he makes it clear he wants his share of the money for the job now. Unsurprisingly, it turns out he needs the money to pay off some debts.
  • Fiona notes from scouting out the Czech assassin at his hotel that he always watches his meals being prepped by the cooks before accepting them. "Religious practices" are brought up, but Michael refutes that. Later on, we cut to the assassin enjoying a hotdog from a vendor before suddenly having a violent reaction and scrambling to pull out an EpiPen that Michael takes from him. As Michael notes, he talked to the hotel chef and learned the assassin has a peanut allergy, peanuts that he crushed and sprinkled onto the assassin's hot dog earlier without him noticing.
  • While interrogated, the Czech assassin says lots of old enemies know about Michael's burned status and want payback. However, while in custody, he is believed to have hanged himself after some mysterious agents paid a visit to the site. Whoever got Michael burned is also protecting him from his enemies and clearly has a lot of pull.
• Friendship Moment: Michael keeps Sam out of the loop on the Czech assassin not because he doesn't trust him, but because he wants to spare him getting grilled by the FBI.
• Fun with Subtitles: "Vitat do Miami, komrade." becomes "Welcome to Miami, ***hole."
• Functional Addict: Nate is quite clean and presentable for someone with enough of a gambling problem to be seriously in debt with seriously violent people.
• The Gambling Addict: Nate. Fully enabled by his mother, of course.
• Gretzky Has the Ball: In The Teaser, Michael and Sam are playing an American Football trivia Drinking Game. Michael gets distracted by seeing Czech assassin Jan Haseck eyeballing him and answers "Barry Bonds", a baseball player, to a question about the Miami Dolphins' all-time passing leader. The correct answer was Dan Marino.
  Sam: (laughing) "Barry Bonds"? That's not even the right sport! Drink!
• Heroic Vow: Michael promises to get Jenna away from the Wilhelm brothers.
  Nate: How exactly are you going to keep that promise?
  Michael: I have no idea.
• High-Class Call Girl: The Wilhelm brothers must charge a lot of money to drop tens of thousands of dollars on the charity circuit and keep armed guards on the girls around the clock.
• Hollywood Silencer: Thanks to Jan using a silenced handgun, Nate can't hear the gunshots until a ricochet happens to land close to him.
• Honey Trap: Fi interrupts the Westen Brothers' bickering and says she can get Brandon herself.
  Fi: Believe me, Michael, if there's one thing I know how to do, it's to get a guy to leave a bar.
• How They Treat the Help: In order to evade Jan in The Teaser, Michael picks a fight with a Fat Bastard who was sexually harassing a waitress. Michael wouldn't be nice to the waiter himself, at least not nice enough to be remembered.
• Indy Ploy: After Michael is a no-show to the first attempt to extract Jenna, Sam improvises by deliberately getting himself hit by the Wilhelm brothers' car and then mentioning calling the cops, which would delay them to the point of missing their flight to Dubai. Fiona quickly realizes what he's doing and plays along as his frantic wife.
• Insistent Terminology: Carl Wilhelm objects to being called a pimp.
  Michael: You say "tomato", I say "pimp".
• Irony: Between Nate refusing help for his gambling problem and Jenna thinking she's got a big modeling career ahead of her, Michael's narration notes that rescue missions are already hard enough when the person in need of help wants to be saved.
• It's Personal: Apparently, Michael isn't ready to forgive Nate for taking out 10 credit cards in Michael's name and hitting him in the head with a phone book. And losing Michael's car in a card came.
  Nate: Well, I needed the money and you weren't helping me out. Besides, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
  Michael: It was a rental car you ventured!
• Kidnapper's KFC: Exploited in this episode. Michael and Nate take one half of a pair of brothers running a Sex Slavery ring hostage, and tell the other brother they're feeding him the bare minimum convenience store food as incentive for him to turn over their childhood friend's daughter whom they were planning to sell in Dubai.
  Nate: Your brother's in the trunk of a car, Carl. He's eatin' on 10 bucks a day. That's a bag of chips, a sandwich and a Coke. Tomorrow he eats on five, and we'll be down to soup and sugar packets by Friday.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Lampshaded. During Jan and Michael's Knife Fight, Jan pulls a second knife and Michael runs for the elevator, narrating that "fighting is often about strategic retreats, like running away from two knives."
• Locked Out of the Loop: Because Sam's still stuck informing to the feds, Michael isn't telling him everything.
• Never My Fault: Nate once gambled Michael's car in a card game. Nate's excuse? "I needed money and you weren't helping out."
• Never Recycle Your Schemes: Averted. The attempt to extract Jenna fails because Michael was suddenly unavailable to do his part. Running out of time, Mike says they're going to try the plan again, just by changing the part about who gets grabbed (in this case, Oscar).
• No "Police" Option: Nate owes some dangerous people money. They break into Madeline's house at one point and beat him up, but Nate stops her from calling the police because there are active warrants for his arrest.
• Nosy Neighbor: Exploited by Maddie: she gets rid of the guys beating up Nate looking for their money by breaking some dishes so that the neighbor comes over, scaring off the thugs.
• Not So Above It All: In his narration, Michael says spies are supposed to remain emotionally detached for the sake of a planned mission. In practice, he's in the process of abducting Oscar, and it's clear he's both disgusted over what the Wilhelms planned for Jenna and delighting at the chance to rough the guy up.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: How Madeline gets Michael to come over and talk to his brother. She hints that she's going to put her hand in a garbage disposal to try and fix it.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • When Sam sees the mostly finished booby trap.
  • When Michael learns Nate's breaking into his place, looking for his share of the money, meaning he's about to walk into that trap and get himself killed.
  • When Michael shows up to save Nate from the booby trap and the Czech assassin is waiting for him.
  • When Nate hears the gunfire and sees the assassin shooting at Michael, and again when Michael gets hit by a ricochet.
• Pants-Positive Safety: Michael often keeps a gun in his waistband. This time it's holstered in his classy pajamas. Yeah, clothes designed to be incredibly loose are exactly where you want to shove a gun.
• Papa Wolf: The first of many, the client of the week, when he learns his daughter is in danger of being sold into sex slavery overseas, immediately grabs a baseball bat and prepares to go to war. Also, when Team Westen's first rescue attempt doesn't work, Bill goes after his daughter again and gets beaten up.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: In order to close in on the Czech assassin in the cold open, Michael pretends to be drunk and picks a fight with a Fat Bastard who was harassing a waitress and called her a bitch when she wouldn't kiss him. We don't mind that he gets hurt.
• Pet the Dog: Though Michael isn't in it for the money and makes sure the villains' money goes to their victims, he does make it a point to help his little brother with his debt.
• Pillow Pistol: Michael does have enemies. Hence he sleeps with a gun.
• Pink Means Feminine: Jenna's suitcase.
• Playing Drunk: How Michael gets close enough to the Czech assassin to disable him at the bar in the cold open.
• Plot Allergy: How Michael eventually deals with his assassin problem. Jan has a nut allergy and goes into anaphylactic shock when Michael breaks into a hot dog stand's kitchen and sprinkles crushed peanuts on his order.
• Pragmatic Hero: Michael's first ploy to rescue Jenna is just to buy her at the party, tell her what was happening, and take her home to her father.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • As part of his cover, Michael initially tries to simply pay for Jenna at the party so that he can get her back home quietly. Carl says they don't do that sort of thing... as in they don't do that in America, due to the stricter laws.
  • Without Mike around, they can't extract Jenna as planned, so Sam lets himself get hit by the car and says someone better call the police. As Michael's narration notes, the pimps would rather slightly adjust their travel plans than risk the police checking in and accidentally stumbling on to what they're doing.
• Race Against the Clock: Talking to Jenna at the party, Michael learns he only has a few days before she leaves for Dubai.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: The targets in this episode aren't just pimps, they're pimps who specialize in girls who are "new to the business". Then five seconds later, we learn they occasionally export them for clients who like "a girl with a little fight in her".
• Revolvers Are for Amateurs: Michael's screwup younger brother Nate has a guy he knows bring him a gun after he's beaten up by a Loan Shark he owes money to. He later turns up at Michael's loft with the gun, a Smith & Wesson Model 36 (.38 snubnose), and uses it to scare off Jan, though he's blatantly just spraying and praying. (Which, granted, it's hard to hit anything with a snubnose revolver unless you're practically fighting in a broom closet.) It works because Jan is a professional assassin using a gun with a silencer because he doesn't want to be noticed and Nate's antics are drawing unwanted attention.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!:
  • Michael goes to return the money Nate got from the client, first because Nate's not really qualified to handle the job, and second because Michael doesn't know how serious the job is.
    Nate: Who gives money back? Hey!
  • And when they dismantle the prostitution ring, they make sure the pimps' illegal money goes to the girls. Michael's merciful enough to let them keep what they made through the legal channels like the modelling front, but he knows enough about these sorts of operations that it's a small fraction.
    Carl: I want my brother back. How much?
    Michael: We don't want your money. Which isn't to say we want you to have it.
• Sex Slave: What would have happened to Jenna if Michael hadn't saved her. What, presumably, did happen to other girls. Because they're not stupid, the Wilhelms only offer that particular service overseas. Domestically, it's strictly high-price voluntary prostitution.
• Shared Family Quirks: While looking for Brandon at the bar where he met Jenna, Nate demonstrates that he's as skilled a liar as Michael, having no difficulty running with Michael's cover story about being car salesman (and Nate being gay) without any preparation.
• Show, Don't Tell: Nate's gambling problem is never really demonstrated. It makes his later reformation more believable, however. We do get one scene, however, that shows Nate's habits and not just their unfortunate consequences. At the charity auction, he compulsively re-raises the bid to help Michael draw the villain's attention.
• Sticky Fingers: Nate casually picks up a receipt book at the bar, looking to steal the tips. Michael just as casually snags it and drops it on a passing waitress's tray.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: Michael interrupts Nate's attempted rough interrogation of a bartender by claiming the latter is gay and coming on to him and that they're car salesmen looking for a guy who paid for a car and Nate wrote his number down wrong. Nate plays along flawlessly despite having no clue Michael was going to do that.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Michael's expression at the party, as Jenna talks about what she thinks is a modeling gig in Dubai. He's realizing her situation is even worse than he feared.
• Torture Is Ineffective: Michael poisons Jan with crushed peanuts on his dinner to exploit his allergy, then steals his epi-pen, holding it hostage to try to get information out of him. Unfortunately, Jan doesn't know anything: he only confirms that the CIA is no longer protecting Michael from the enemies he made in his spy career.
• Trapped by Gambling Debts: Why Nate was so eager to take on this job, and hide how much he was being paid from his brother.
• We Have to Get the Bullet Out!: Justified. Nate does field surgery on Michael, under Michael's instruction, to remove a 9mm from his shoulder. It only hit him on a ricochet and wasn't in deep, so the normal risks of this trope were minimal, and Michael specifically instructs Nate on how to sterilize his tools and bandage the wound.
• Weaponized Allergy: Mike takes out the Czech assassin by sprinkling crushed peanuts on his hot dog and stealing his Epi-pen, withholding it in an attempt to get information out of him.
• What the Hell Are You?: After Michael makes his final demand, Carl asks this of the guy he thought was just some sleazy, adulterous businessman.
  Carl: What are you? Some kind of crusading cop?
  Michael: No, unfortunately for you. I'm just some guy you managed to piss off.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Sam gets annoyed with Michael for picking a fight in his favorite bar (cheap drinks and a great sports package) and for doing it for reasons he won't share with Sam.