Looks like Fi's making good on her plans to leave Miami for Ireland. But when Michael stops by her house to drop off one of her guns, he runs into Fi's brother Sean, who still thinks Michael is his Irish cover ID Michael McBride. So Michael has to go back undercover with an ally and take on a very reluctant Fi as a client. After sacrificing Sam's girlfriend's Buick to save the Glenannes from an ill-advised ambush attempt, Michael goes undercover with Fi's would-be assassin (Paul Blackthorne) to entrap him. This doesn't go particularly smoothly, because while they're making final arrangements, the assassins invade the safe house, wound Sean, and make a show of leaving Michael alive. Michael quickly realizes that Strickler sold Fi out (to get him ready for prime time, Strickler claims), then goes and kills him dead like it's a regular errand. Then it's a frontal assault by Michael and Sam on where the bad guys have Fi, and they manage to not only rescue her, but finish arranging for Fi's would-be killer to go down for not only his past bombings, but also Strickler's death. Easy-peasy.
Michael also gets a scare when it looks like Madeline's going to sell her house, but she changes her mind because Michael still needs the place to stash his clients in and steal her hardware from. In less good news, Michael gets a panicked call from his intelligence contact, Diego Garza, but when he rushes to meet him it's too late; Garza has fatally splatted to the sidewalk in front of a high-rise apartment building. So with his "agent" and his government contact both dead, Michael's back to square one on getting Back In. Which should make Fi happy, at least.
After the usual "My name is Michael Westen. I used to be a spy" opening montage, we get a rare previouslies sequence that serves basically to reintroduce "Strickler -- Agent To The Spies" and "Diego [Garza] -- Michael's Agency Contact." And to remind us that Fi dumped Michael. I normally skip the previouslies, but I'm all for anything that lets us see Michael and Fi breaking up again.
Early in the morning, we drift in on Michael, sitting in the upper level of his loft looking at old (like, Ireland-era) photos of Fi and himself. What he's doing with them I have no idea, unless they were in his suit pockets when he first got burned and fled Nigeria. He VOs, "When you work as a covert operative, there's no line between who you are and what you do. You are who you need to be for the operation. It makes you effective, it keeps things simple. But when you spend so much time living as someone else, sometimes the people you care about most begin to wonder who you really are." What is this, True Lies? What Michael just described is the least of his problems. As for his biggest problem, she lets herself into the loft and calls for Michael. "I'm upstairs, Fi," he calls down quietly, not bothering to get up. He wonders what she's driving, since it didn't sound like her car rolling up. She informs him she sold the Saab. "Your car didn't exactly have a pink slip," Michael points out mildly. Fi says the buyer didn't mind, at the price she was selling it for. Or maybe the product-placement contract on it just expired. Speaking of which, don't be looking for blatant beer-label shots this week. Maybe someone figured out that if they were going to show Sam drinking low-cal beer all the time, he'd eventually have to drop some weight. Seems like a perfect opportunity for Bruce Campbell to have gotten the Miller Brewing Company to pay for his personal trainer, which would have made him my hero for yet another reason, but it looks like a missed opportunity all around. Sorry, was there a scene I was supposed to be talking about? Let's get back to that. Michael starts trying to talk Fi out of whatever point she's trying to make, but for once she means it. She says she's going back home to Ireland, and her mom is already expecting her. Michael protests that this is an overreaction to one fight, which is a pretty clueless comment to make. Fi correctly says, "If you didn't see this coming then you weren't paying attention. You're too worried about your own future for there to be one for us." Once again, Michael makes his old argument that the reason he's trying to get Back In is to help protect the people he cares about. What, do Fi and Madeline and Sam and Nate and Barry and the wait staff at Carlito's all get to move into NORAD when Michael gets his job back? Fi continues to not buy it, but reels herself back in when she starts getting angry about it. "It's just time I did what I need to do, too," she says. Then she asks Michael if he's seen one of her guns, which she needs so she can finish packing. She can't just pay her movers like everyone else? Placing his hand on that very weapon while it sits on his desk, high out of Fi's sight, Michael promises to find it and bring it to her. "You're not leaving today, are you?" he confirms. Fi says she isn't and heads out, leaving Michael holding one of her small arms.
Michael waits at a sidewalk table at the Carlito when Garza joins him, telling him about a call he got from the deputy director. "Your file just landed on his desk." Michael's quietly thrilled, and Garza's quietly disgusted, although less quietly so. He also looks like he's been recently popped in the eye, but like many other questions this hour, that's going to remain a mystery. Garza predicts that the "various regional experts" who will do Michael's review will end up blacklisting him for good. He's kind of openly hostile, in a way he wasn't even when he was pointing a gun at Michael. Unfortunately, Michael responds by being kind of smug, to the point where, when Diego gets up after saying he'll be in contact to set up the first meeting, Michael stands up right with him, getting up in his face and dangerously smiling, "Don't you want to wish me luck?" Is he expecting to be Diego's boss when he gets Back In? Garza passes up Michael's invitation. "But I'm supposed to tell you to stay out of trouble. You're tiptoeing through a minefield." Except the tiptoeing part.
From there, Michael apparently gets into his car and drives over to Fi's place to give her gun back. As he walks from the Charger to the door, tucking the gun in his back waistband, he VOs, "There's a reason spies try to stay detached. When you get emotional about something, even if it's just your ex-girlfriend's .45-caliber handgun, you get distracted." Michael uses his key to enter Fi's place, like, you just said ex-girlfriend, dude. This is poor form. Yes, I know Fi did it earlier, but that's expected. "And getting distracted can be very, very dangerous." Michael walks in and closes the door behind him, as Fi lowers another handgun she'd had leveled at the door. Before he says a word, Fi says, "You remember my brother Sean? You met back in Ireland?" Michael turns his attention over to the kitchen, where a craggy-looking blond guy is still pointing his own gun at him. That would be "Sean Glenanne -- Fiona's Brother," according to the subtitles. "Michael McBride," Sean says in a much better Irish brogue than his sister ever had, lowering his weapon. "Last I saw you, you were saving my sister from those English bastards had her pinned down in Belfast." Looking back at Fiona, who cocks her head meaningfully at him, Michael VOs, "Spies need to remember every cover ID they've ever worn. Because you never know when you might need to put one back on." Removing his shades and putting on a brogue of his own, Michael responds, "Heh, it was a geeud thing they were such lewzy shots, otherwoise Fiona and I'd have been sayin' our lahst Hail Marys togethair." Don't worry, I'm not going to be transliterating Oirish accents like that all hour. Trust me, I don't want that any more than you do. Sean's glad to see Michael in any case. Why? "Someone's coming to kill my sister." Michael looks down at Fi like, what took so long?
When we come back from the titles and the ads, Sean is bitching at Fi about the poor condition of her arsenal at present, while she defensively points out that she's moving and has already smuggled all her big stuff out. Sean accuses her of losing her edge and her accent in America. "O'Neill is looking for an Irish woman," Fi says, and suddenly sounds kind of funny as she yells, "I'm not going to hold up a neon sign that says, here I am, come and blow my head off!'" Why'd she say it so weird? Oh, right, I had forgotten just how terrible Gabrielle Anwar's Irish accent really was. Even worse, it has atrophied with disuse. Watching out the window, Michael asks to be brought into the loop on who's after Fi. Sean tells Michael that the O'Neill Fi just mentioned is a radical bomber from back home. "The kind of man I'd love to kiss with a chainsaw." Michael asks why he's after Fi, but that'll have to wait, because Sean and Fi go back to arguing about armaments, right up until a big black van pulls up outside. As Michael watches, Paul Blackthorne, a.k.a. Stephen Saunders from 24 Season Three and Mr. Brooke Shields from Lipstick Jungle, gets out of the vehicle wearing a bulletproof vest. "That's Thomas O'Neill," Sean says. "Bloodthirsty hooligan got here faster than I expected." The subtitles confirm that this is in fact "Thomas O'Neill -- Bloodthirsty Hooligan." They do not comment on his early arrival. Michael says they have to get out now, but Sean wants to stay and fight, even when Michael points out they're outnumbered by a "trained extraction team. We leave now or we die." We'll see in a minute how Sean will seek to find some middle ground between those two options.
The three of them cut through the backyard and peek around the back gate, to where O'Neill has posted an armed sentry on the corner. Fi remarks that the guy doesn't appear to have seen them. So of course Sean pops out and takes a couple of potshots at him, both of which miss. Nicely done. "Well, he's seen us now," Michael leprechauns, and the three of them make a run for it while the sentry runs to report back to O'Neill instead of giving chase. O'Neill orders his men to spread out instead of sending them all in the direction of where his quarry was last seen, which tells me he doesn't deserve to catch them anyway. Meanwhile, Michael and Fi hole up behind (actually, more like to) a tall hedge while Sean takes off to steal them a car. As soon as Michael's alone with Fi, he drops back into his normal voice to confront her for never having told Sean the truth about him. "Not even a Glenanne would forgive me for working with an American spy," Fi says. "Everyone at home still thinks you're from Kilkenny. Sean can never know." At least not until the end of the episode. Until then, every time Michael's in a scene with Sean, just assume he sounds like he's auditioning to read Angela's Ashes for books on tape unless I say otherwise. Michael dials his cell phone and cuts off Sam's jovial greeting, then says the three of them need a place to hole up in for a while. Sam says he'll make a call, but first Michael asks Sam what he told him about his time in Ireland. "Uh, not much, Mike," Sam admits. As Michael and Fi run to the white sedan Sean just rolled up in, Michael returns to his Irish voice to say, "Well, my name's Michael McBride, and you're just gonna have to roll with it." If only that were the only thing Sam's going to be expected to roll with.
Later, Sean drives them up to a typical Miami palace, complete with a "foreclosure" sign in front. Sam is waiting in the circular drive, and introduces himself to Sean, who ignores the extended hand and starts giving Sam the third degree about who he is, at least until Michael and Fi vouch for him. As they go inside the empty but still very large and very shiny house, Sam asks what Fi did to piss O'Neill off so bad in the first place. "I thought you bit the heads off all your old boyfriends?" Fi says she met O'Neill in the course of the search for her sister's killers. "You had a sister?" Sam asks. "You never mentioned that before." Michael says nothing, so it's not clear if he knew or not. Fi says she doesn't like to talk about it. Sean doesn't seem to have that problem, saying they were part of a relatively small family of seven kids, with Claire the youngest. "When she was taken, I was angry and I was loud," Fi says, using the past tense for some mysterious reason. O'Neill mistook her for a kindred spirit, letting her in on a prep-school bombing he was planning. "And you made sure those explosives never made it to the target," Michael guesses. Fi says that when he showed up again and came after her years later, it was one of the reasons she took off from Ireland in the first place. I assume that the main reason was that she got tired of being mocked for her shitty accent. Sean wraps up the little tale by saying that O'Neill dropped out of sight for a while, then showed up en route to Miami after hearing that Fi had been in touch with people back home. Nice going, Fi's mom. Now that everyone's up to speed, Michael starts explaining the plan: he and Sam will go look for O'Neill while Fi and Sean chill at the house. A perfectly sensible plan, because O'Neill and his men don't know Michael. Even that sentry Sean shot at didn't get a good look at him. Of course both Glenannes protest any suggestion of Michael dealing with O'Neill. Michael irately Irishes, "We'll discuss the dealin' when we do the findin', but Sam and I are doin' the findin'." Sean's not about to let it go, but Fi says Michael's not going to budge, so no point in arguing. Sean storms off, and before Fi follows him, she gets right in Michael's face and threatens him, "I am not one of your damn clients." Michael just watches her walk away, until the subtitles freeze her while she's turning around in mid-point, saying she is in fact "Fiona -- The Client." Before heading out, Michael allows himself an imperceptible smile, almost as though he could read the letters on the screen. He must have
watched a lot of The Electric Company when he was growing up.Michael walks into a loft condo, where Strickler greets him from the balcony, holding a mojito and congratulating himself on his new place. I bet it even has a foundation instead of an anchor. "I almost didn't go for it," Strickler says, "but then I thought, I'm worth it." "Well, you are Strickler," Michael agrees. Since whatever explanation there was going to be for why Michael's here in the first place seems to have gotten cut for time, he wants to take off again. But before he goes, Strickler wants to talk a minute about their move for getting Michael Back In. As Michael understands it, they'll be looking at his activities while he was at his old job. "But I get to set the record straight, right?" Strickler amends that to "straight-ish." "What does that mean?" Michael asks, as though there weren't a picture of him and Sam to the word "straight-ish" in the dictionary. He doesn't get it when Strickler talks about the delicate handling this will take. "The truth doesn't need handling," Michael says loftily. Strickler scoffs at the idea of Michael being "in the truth business," and comes downstairs. He talks about trust, and reminds Michael of his rep. "People fear you. We can use that." "To make you money," Michael says flatly. Strickler gives him a little speech: "Money greases palms, opens doors, buys documents, and it puts Michael Westen right back where he wants to be." He says he'll send Michael some paperwork. "Your side of the story. Study up." Michael leaves, grumpily. I guess he doesn't like studying.
Over at Madeline's house, Sam hands Michael a manila folder so slim it might as well contain complete documentation of Paris Hilton's redeeming qualities. "This is Thomas O'Neill's Interpol file?" Michael asks incredulously, flipping through the two or three pages. Sam agrees that's it. "I thought he was supposed to be this ultra-radical one man splinter group?" Michael protests. "This looks like he's not tied to anything." Drinking his new low-cal beer but not bothering to show us the label, Sam admits that O'Neill is suspected of twelve bombings in Europe, based on a chemical signature common to all the devices, but nobody's been able to prove anything. Sam whips out some paperwork for a condo in South Beach recently bought by one of O'Neill's "known associates." I do like how they're not even bothering to explain any more how Sam gets to be a one-man CTU. Just as they're starting to talk about surveilling the place, there's a knock on the front door, and they both whip out their guns. Going to answer the door, Madeline tells them to chill out and lets in a friendly brunette. "Hi, Tiffany Ward, Tiffany Ward Realty," she greets them. Michael quietly asks if Madeline is selling the house. She pleasantly chirps that she's thinking about it. Is Tiffany Ward, Tiffany Ward Realty aware that the house was recently blown up? Michael looks like someone just shot his dog with his favorite gun and then kept the gun. Madeline either doesn't notice his reaction or is beyond fine with it, and I know which of those two options I consider more likely. She cheerfully tells Michael, "With you about to get your old job back and Fi heading home, I just thought that it was about time I made a change myself." Michael watches Madeline lead the realtor back toward the bedrooms, and Sam tells him, "Not now, Mikey. We gotta go." It's almost as if he already knew.
Where they gotta go, apparently, is to the top level of a three-story parking garage, so they can watch a condo building across the street through matching his & his opera glasses. Sam says he wouldn't blame Michael for being disoriented: "First it's your girl, now it's your childhood home." Michael says, "I never liked that house." "Yeah, but you like Fiona, right?" Sam asks. Sometimes it's worth it to ask. As they watch, O'Neill pulls up to the building in a silver Lexus and gets out, and is soon joined by his posse, all of whom are loaded for bear. Or whatever the Irish equivalent of bear is. Lough monster? I don't know. "Why does it look like the Sons of the Lucky Charms Revolution are getting ready for battle?" Sam wonders. Looking to one side, Michael sees a car pulling up around the corner from where O'Neill and his men are and quickly assesses, "Because he knows Fiona's on his tail. That's her in the sedan." From where they're standing, they can see both the Glenannes and the O'Neill crew, but the two parties can't see each other. Sam says Fi probably thinks O'Neill is going to be alone, when in fact they'll be walking into an ambush. Sam quickly dials his cell phone.
Down in the car, Fi is ignoring her ringing phone (with the big "Sam" lighting up the screen) and telling Sean, "O'Neill is mine." Sean agrees, but not without saying something sexist. Up on the ramp, Sam tells Michael she's not picking up his call. Michael looks behind him. It's a slow day at this parking ramp, because Ms. Reynolds's pristine red Buick is the only car up there with them. And Michael wants the keys from Sam, right now. Sam, of course, hands them over. Michael gets in and backs up. Down below, Fi drives around the corner, into view of O'Neill and his men. "They knew we were comin'," Sean realizes, looking down the barrels of a half-dozen guns. Fortunately, before the bloodshed can begin, Ms. Reynolds's Buick crashes through the barrier at the top of the ramp and plummets three stories, in slow motion, all the way to the street, catastrophically fucking up the front end, the back end, the middle end, and ends that don't even show up on camera, while also taking out a fire hydrant. I'm kind of surprised it doesn't explode. Fi takes advantage of the distraction to peel out, while O'Neill orders his men back into the building to avoid the converging crowd of looky-loos. From above, Michael and Sam look down, wincing at the damage. It's actually kind of a serendipitously timed tribute to John Hughes, the way they're looking down in horror at the wreckage of a classic red GM convertible that belongs to someone else. If only they'd had time to loop in Sam saying, "You killed the car." Michael starts to apologize, but Sam doesn't want to hear it. He punches and kicks the air instead of Michael.
Michael and Sam return to the loft (having walked, probably) to find Fi and Sean waiting at the bottom of the stairs in the courtyard. Michael yells at them like Bono chewing out a couple of incompetent roadies, but they're there to apologize, and to thank them. Sam doesn't want to hear Fi's apologies any more than Michael's. "I've been dodging Ms. Reynolds's calls for an hour. I'm sure the cops ran the plates on the Buick, told them -- oh, wait, that's her! Again." Sam hits "Ignore." Poor Sam and his luck with women and cars. The only way this is going to end well for him is if we finally meet Ms. Reynolds and she looks like Walter Matthau. Fi asks what the move is, now that they know where O'Neill is. Michael says that O'Neill needs to find Fi, which gives Michael an in to get him and his crew all busted. Sean doesn't think Michael will be able to walk up to O'Neill with his Irish accent without tipping him off, but Michael assures him he'll approach him as an American. "Sure you can pull that off?" Sean asks doubtfully. The others exchange amused looks, and Michael uses his normal voice to tell Sean, "I've gone undercover as an American before. I'll be fine." Sean still isn't convinced. "Your accent's a bit dodgy." Fi smirks at Michael, and Sam gives him a "little bit" sign. Well, they all kind of have a point.
In a suit and sunglasses, Michael approaches O'Neill and two of his men at an outdoor bar. He does this by noisily dragging a metal-legged chair over to their table across the concrete, setting everyone's teeth on edge. You know, just to break the ice. O'Neill wants his men to get rid of him, but stops when Michael says, "This is the planning committee for the Glenanne wake, right?" O'Neill calls his boys off, and Michael pulls out
a little digital recorder. He plays back a conversation of Sean and Fi discussing leaving town. Michael says he's an arms dealer who employs (but clearly doesn't trust) Fi, and he's able to hand her over to O'Neill at any time. O'Neill chuckles that he'll buy Michael a "mighty fine drink" if he can do that now, but Michael says that if Fi vanishes, someone will need to fill in for her. Someone like O'Neill. O'Neill isn't interested in the deal. "I found her once. I'll find her again." Michael gets up, leaves a fake business card for "Paul Smith," sucks down a shot, and walks away with some kind of Celtic-sounding farewell. Nice touch. By the way, Paul Blackthorne's Irish accent isn't flawless either, but it's a lot better than that of his fellow Brit who is a regular on this show.Over at Madeline's, Michael is cleaning a gun on Madeline's table (it actually looks like the same weapon he brought back to Fi earlier) while Sam makes himself lunch and they try to think of a backup plan in case O'Neill doesn't bite. There's a knock on the door and Madeline goes to answer it, thinking it's the realtor again. "Butch, Sundance, cool it," she snarks at them, even though "Butch" isn't loading up anything but a sandwich. But when she answers, it's Strickler, carrying a zip-up folder. "Can Michael come out and play?" he smarms. Sam signals to Madeline to clear out of the room (oddly, she does without protest) as Strickler says he's delivering Michael's study guide. He hands over a few pages, and Michael looks at it for only a second before asking with quiet incredulity, "You want me to say I worked a job helping a Somali warlord?" "Somali businessman," Strickler says. He explains all the reasons the CIA will buy it, "plus it helps me set up a little side project I have here in Miami." Which of course he's not about to share with Michael. However, the "businessman" is prepared to vouch for Michael, "for a price, which I will pay." Michael's not down with this at all. "I'm not clearing my name by getting in bed with a murderer." Did Michael get to pick his jobs back when he was a real spy? He only got to do the ones he agreed with? No wonder he wants Back In. He goes back to cleaning the gun as Strickler tells him to grow up. "You're just replacing one lie with another, and this lie washes you clean." He says it's about getting Michael his job back, not telling the truth, and is kind of willfully if unwisely oblivious to the fact that while he's been talking, Michael has finished reassembling that gun he's been cleaning. On his way out, Strickler adds, "And please tell your mom sorry about the drapes. They look better in the catalog, honestly." Rather than following Strickler to the door so he can slam his head in it, Michael takes a cell phone call from O'Neill, wanting to meet. He's changed his mind, apparently.
Cut to the safe house, where Fi and Sean are sitting around in black clothes, ready for whatever errand Michael's about to pick them up for. They have a completely unlikely and irrelevant conversation about Fi's feelings about Michael, until we're all rescued by Michael himself walking in. Fi heads out to the car, but Sean hangs back so Michael can explain to Sean that he needs O'Neill to deliver something. "A little gift with a big prison sentence attached to it." Sean says he can't lose another sister, and puts a hand on Michael's shoulder to thank him for protecting Fiona. "You're an honest man. And I'm honored to be fightin' beside ya." Sean heads on out to the car, leaving Michael contemplating the weight of guilt in his belly that's almost like an anvil.
It's full nighttime when Michael, back in his Paul Smith suit, meets O'Neill and four of his guys at the marina. Michael explains the deal: he gives O'Neill Fiona, O'Neill delivers a shipment of assault rifles for Michael. "I got a better idea," O'Neill says, and draws a gun while two of his men grab Michael. "I'm gonna shoot little bits off you until you tell me where she is." Michael is extravagantly unintimidated. "Put the gun down, or I'll have you put down," he says calmly. "I'm not sure you're taking stock of the situation," O'Neill boasts, unaware of the three red laser dots that have just appeared on his chest until Michael looks down at them. And now we see that Sam, Fi, and Sean are all in position nearby, equipped with sniper rifles with laser scopes. "Well, there you go, eh?" O'Neill says, pretty good-naturedly given the circumstances. Michael gets him to call off his goons and lower his gun, and when O'Neill does, Michael has one more instruction for him: "Tell me we have a deal." "If you stop lighting me up like a little Christmas tree, maybe we will have a deal, yes," O'Neill says, amusing me by rocking from side to side and watching the little laser points slide across his chest. Michael gives a signal, and Sam and Fi shut off their laser scopes. Sean, however, doesn't, because he has again overestimated his own awesomeness. "I can take them all out," he whispers to Sam and Fi. O'Neill isn't happy to still have a red dot on his chest. "Simple miscommunication," Michael grins, and repeats the signal. "Sean, they're gonna kill McBride," Sam tells him. Sean still keeps aiming. O'Neill and his men all draw on Michael, who gives the signal one more time, this time with quite a bit more force. Sam and Fi don't make any move to physically intervene with Sean, but he finally turns his scope off anyway. "That wasn't so difficult, was it?" O'Neill smiles. Well, it was a little difficult. Or, I should say, Sean was difficult. Good move, bringing a literal loose cannon along. "We'll talk soon," Michael says agreeably. And the meeting ends without anybody getting shot, like most of the meetings I go to at work.
At the loft the day, Michael brings in a duffel bag full of supplies while Fi tapes up a diagram of O'Neil's signature bomb. "He's trotted that thing out twelve times and never been caught," she says, hoping for better luck with number 13. Never mind the fact that they'll be the ones trotting it out on O'Neill's behalf this time. Sean comes in off the balcony, having just got off the phone with some guy back home. Apparently he's heard that O'Neill's plans for Fiona aren't to kill her himself, but to take her home and put her up for sale to her enemies. "That could be a lot of people," Fi says quietly. What's O'Neill going to use, eBay? Or its Irish equivalent, o'Bay (come on, now, you have to give me credit for only making one joke like that in this whole recap)? Sean says O'Neill's trying to make himself a star, and regrets not shooting him when they had the chance. That triggers another argument between him and Michael, until Fi Irishes at them to "shoot oop!" In her "normal" voice, she adds, "We have work to do."
Over the strains of some poor man's Dropkick Murphys music on the soundtrack, they start making a bomb. Sean mixes the explosive material, some kind of blue stuff that will soon get poured into a mold to shape the charge and fit just right into the small wooden crate that'll be used as the case. "Bomb makers, like master chefs," Michael VOs, "tend to have a signature dish. If you can duplicate it, you can leave their fingerprints wherever you want." The delivery system seems to involve glass Mason jars and very large ball bearings. Nasty. "Some bombs are designed to remove an obstacle. Some bombs are designed to be loud and scary. While other bombs are just designed to kill and maim." With everything arranged into the crate, Michael and Fi put the finishing touch on the bomb, which is a hefty dose of rat poison into each of the six mason jars containing the ball bearings. "It contains an anticoagulant," Fi explains. "He likes his victims to hemorrhage and bleed out. He wants them to suffer." Wouldn't this be an awesome time for Detective Paxson to wander in? Instead of that happening, Michael gets a cell phone call from his mom, and Fi tells him to head on over there instead of answering. "Pick up some screws while you're there." Michael takes off, after exchanging snarky Irish-accented remarks with Sean. One of them is going to take a shillelagh to the other soon.
Madeline catches Michael in her garage, stealing a couple of boxes of screws. He pretends he's there to see if she needs anything, but as she puts down a big box of old crap, she isn't any more fooled by this master spy than she ever is: "Sure you did. That's why you're stealing all my screws. It's all right, I don't need to know. Let's just pretend that you're helping me clean my garage for my open house." Michael agrees, but not enough to actually start doing that. "Any other big life changes you want to tell your son about?" he snots instead. They have kind of a low-grade argument about her moving, but then she says she didn't want to throw out a box of Michael's old stuff without his getting a chance to go through it first. "My model airplanes," Michael says softly, and seems surprised she doesn't want them any more. "I was hoping that you would, Michael," she duhs. Michael makes a whatever face, so Madeline explains: "This isn't going to make any sense to you, but most people -- normal people -- go through their life collecting boxes like this." She's right: he doesn't understand. He just makes this face like, What the fuck is wrong with normal people? She offers to throw it away for him right now, and he stops her by quickly agreeing to take a look. She, in turn, agrees to go get the other box just like this one. Michael pulls out a toy pistol and smiles at it. Maybe he should try giving that one back to Fi and keeping her real one. This one is more her size anyway.
Michael pulls up at a park in a white van, where Sam meets him, getting out of the Charger with a rolled-up document that he says is a diagram of the basement at the State Department. Which Sam just had lying around, naturally. He sticks it in the back of the van with the giant crate-bomb already there. Michael sums up their move against O'Neill: "If we want to get him busted, we need to put him behind the wheel of this van. If he won't do it on his own, we'll have to just gently encourage him." Not to spoil anything, but gentle encouragement is going to be more like a sniper rifle than money-saving coupons.
Back at the safe house, Michael sets down Fi's last packed box from her place, talking in his Irish accent because Sean's lurking around somewhere. They talk a bit about the difficulty of leaving stuff behind, and Fi's impending return home. "I wonder what it'll be loike," she Irishes, looking out the window. Michael Irishes right back that she'll have her friends and family, but she says they don't know her any more. Lucky bastards. She says a lot of who she is is what she's done there in Miami with Michael. He lowers his voice to a whisper so he can drop the accent to show how very sincere he is about all this, but all he gets out is, "Fi, I--" before she stops him. "
We're so not good at this," she says. And yet we have to keep watching them try.When Sean joins them in the main room, Michael tells him to stop parking his car on the side streets. Sean denies having done so, but instead of having alarms go off in his head, Michael argues with him. So they're all completely taken by surprise when a tear gas canister is tossed through the window. Michael reaches for the gun in the back of his waistband, but a beanbag round hits him in the small of the back, fired by a gas-masked commando, and he goes down. More men come crashing in. Sean starts firing, but takes a couple of machine-gun rounds to the body and also crumples. All sorts of weird photography tricks are being used to demonstrate that the gas is rendering Michael helpless and disoriented, even as someone grabs Fi and starts dragging her out. Just as one of the guys is about to shoot Michael in the face, O'Neill stops him, saying Michael has to live. O'Neill removes his mask (just that much of a bad-ass, I guess) and says, "You got some good friends, Westen." He pistol-whips Michael into total unconsciousness and a commercial break.
When we come back, Michael sits up from the floor in the now-clear air, yelling Fiona's name with his first conscious breath. Across the room, Sam and Madeline are doing some emergency field surgery on Sean on the bare hardwood. As Michael struggles to his feet, asking where Fiona is, Sam apologizes for giving Michael the short end of the wound triage. "Broken ribs weren't a priority. You were breathing steady.... I got here, found Sean, called Maddie." Who doesn't seem as angry as you'd think that Sean's Irish blood has ruined her white slacks. They explain that Sean refused to go to the hospital because it would mean they'd never find Fi. As opposed to this course of action, which tied up the entire conscious and non-kidnapped half of the team (and that's if you count Madeline as part of the team, which I think we're supposed to start doing) with patching him up "How did O'Neill find the safe house?" Sam wonders out loud, but Michael's already out the door. I think he's got the same theory I do.
O'Neill's convoy, consisting of his Lexus and a black SUV, pulls into a fenced-in area surrounding what looks like an abandoned boat chartering business near the water. Well, of course it's near the water, where else would it be? O'Neill roughly hauls Fi (now with a bag over her head and her hands tied behind her back) out of the back of the SUV, jauntily calling her "sweetheart" and dragging her into the shack.
Michael, meanwhile, did indeed have the same thought I did, because he has gone straight to Strickler's place, only to find him on the phone. "Where's Fiona?" Michael demands. When Strickler puts him off with a gesture, Michael pushes over a row of fancy display cases and screams, "You tell me where Fiona is now!" Way to finesse him, Michael. Strickler finishes his call and says, "Now how would I know that?" Michael tells Strickler what just happened, particularly the part where O'Neill had clearly made a deal to leave him alive. "I thought of you." Strickler sarcastically congratulates him for following that trail of clues. "No point in denying it, you would have figured it out eventually." Michael says Strickler sent Fi to her death. "I sent her home, like she wanted," Strickler insists. "What happens after she gets there, well, she's a big girl." By what possible measure? He says he did this as clean as he could, and calls himself Michael's "goddamn white knight." Michael makes a move toward Strickler, and Strickler draws a gun on him, telling him to get back. "I'm getting a little sick of your ingratitude! I'm the one trying to help you out!" Moving to block the door, he says, "You wanted Back In? Well guess what? A gun-dealing, bomb-making girlfriend wasn't helping your case. She had to go. And it was clear you were too attached to do what needed to be done, so like a good partner I did it for you." Okay, that's just stupid. Leaving aside that fact that Strickler had to know Michael wouldn't take this well, why alienate him by turning Fi over to the bad guys when she was within days of leaving the country anyway? As if Michael weren't already harboring serious doubts about working with Strickler as a result of his greed and amorality, he now learns that his agent is a moron as well. Strickler locks the door, and tells Michael that he's not leaving for an hour, which will be enough time for the cargo company Strickler hired to have "Miss Glennanne and her fan club in international waters," out of Michael's reach. "I'll be the bad guy, you're welcome." Michael again asks where she is, and tells Strickler to get out of the way. "You don't get to have the girl and the job!" Strickler yells. "She doesn't fit into your future. Our future. So why don't you do yourself a favor and just forget the past?" And with that Strickler's transformation to the Yoko Ono of Burn Notice is complete. Michael has adopted a posture of frustration during this rant, turning partly to one side with his hands on his hips. But now he looks up at Strickler and hisses, "Fiona is not my past." And from where it must have been in his back waistband all along, he whips out a gun and shoots Strickler once in the gut and once in the heart. Strickler's dead before he hits the ground. Michael grabs the dead man's cell phone. Well, the bright side is that now Michael doesn't have to pay him his ten percent commissions any more, and can continue keeping all the nothing he earns on his jobs to himself.
Walking out of Strickler's place, Michael calls Sam and tells him Strickler arranged for passage back to Ireland for O'Neill, and has apparently been making calls to a charter fishing house on Key Biscayne. "Perfect place to load a prisoner onto our transport boat," Michael says. Sam reports that Sean will live, and Michael tosses his gun and phone into the Charger's open window before getting in and driving off.
After Michael has collected Sam, they roll up to an area of shoreline where they can use their opera glasses to scope out the hideout, the dock, and the waiting motorboat that's tied to it. They go to get the bomb out of the Charger's trunk and plant it on the boat. "Let's make sure the feds catch him with it this time," Sam says. Yeah, good plan, that.
Inside the shack, O'Neill pulls a strip of electrical tape off Fi's mouth (why, I'm not sure), and gloats over her. She says she's heard he's auctioning her off. "Not man enough to do it yourself?" "If this was just about you and me," he says, getting in her face, "I'd be holding a bloody hammer and you'd be choking on a mouthful of teeth." But he explains that now, thanks to the high-profile gig he's pulling off right now, he's going to be a star. A star! "There's no place in Ireland for a bastard like you," Fi spits. "There's always room for a patriot," he says. Fi vehemently disagrees with that characterization. "You're a monster who wraps himself in a cause to justify murdering children! Even your own country wants you dead!" He socks her one and tells her she's wrong. "You hit like a girl," she says, and then spits like a guy just to drive home the point.
O'Neill's men are clearly not watching that boat very closely at all, because Michael has no trouble swimming up to it, heaving the bag with the bomb in it on board, and slipping it into a cargo area. After returning safely to where Sam is waiting, he says, "If anything happens to me--" "Oh, I'm finishing this, brother," Sam promises. "I'm getting Fi out of there no matter what. Just don't ever tell her I said that." Time to lock and load.
The Charger crashes through the locked gate and comes to a stop. Sam fires a few rounds out the window at a propane tank, which explodes obligingly despite not having a heat source to detonate the gas, as Michael told us we'd need way back in Season One. Having announced their presence, Michael and Sam get out of the car and take up position with their guns, preparing to open fire on the shack. O'Neill gives the order for everyone to get to the boat, and the shooting begins. Nobody's hitting anyone, though, and the bad guys get all the way to the dock. O'Neill is dragging Fi along as a shield, which is reminiscent of that bit in True Lies (again with the True Lies) where Tom Arnold takes "cover" behind a light pole. But then she swings her head back and catches O'Neill in the teeth, dazing him. Sam wings him with his sniper rifle while Fi, her hands still tied behind her, climbs the rail of the dock and jumps into the water. One of O'Neill's men takes a wild shot at her as she falls, because it's not like he's got anything else to deal with right now. Sam scores a couple of leg hits on O'Neill's men (the big softie), and Michael directs him to start herding them into the boat. O'Neill wants to go in after Fi, but his men manage to get him into the boat instead, and it roars off down the river. While Michael looks for Fi, Sam calls the Coast Guard to tattle, using his best "concerned citizen" voice. Michael goes down to the shoreline to look for Fi, and eventually she floats to the surface, face-down in the water. He runs in and clumsily fishes her out (seriously, he actually drops her as he's wading ashore with her), just as she regains consciousness, moaning from a wound in her arm. She gazes up at him with eyes that are either overflowing with love or glassy with shock. It could go either way, really.
Madeline's house has been converted into a field hospital, with Sean laid out on a cot in the sunroom, and Fi on the living room couch, both Glenannes out cold. Madeline comes home to find Michael changing Fi's bandage and mentions that there was supposed to be an open house there that day. But when Michael apologizes, she says she's changed her mind about selling. "If that's what you think's best for you, Mom," Michael says, like this is about her. Madeline points out, "You hide your clients here. You let your friends stay here." He steals shit from the garage. "I don't think you're ready to say goodbye either." Michael concedes the point. Generous of him, really.
From across the room, Sean sits up and calls Michael over. "So it's Westen now, is it?" Sean growls. Not bothering with the leprechaun voice, Michael starts to explain. He looks a little nervous about the conversation that's about to happen, like he couldn't just stick his finger into one of Sean's new nipples if things get too awkward. Sean doesn't want to hear Michael's explanation, and cuts him off: "Back in Ireland, there were a lot of questions about whether or not you were one of us. I always thought you were. Now I know I was right." Aw, I'm puking shamrocks over here. Sean says the problem is that now Michael can't ever go back to Ireland, now that O'Neill has outed him as an American. As if he could leave Miami at all. "Neither can she," he adds, nodding over at Fi. Can't she even try? Let her give it a shot and see what happens. Michael asks if there's anyone in particular he should look out for, and Sean says he'll take care of that. "I'll owe you for that," Michel says. "The hell you will! That squares us," Sean insists. He offers Michael help fleeing after what he did to Strickler. Michael's way ahead of him on that score: "Strickler's body was found to a certain type of bomb," he says. "Our friend O'Neill will be charged with his murder and the twelve bombings in Europe." How did Michael arrange that, exactly? Did he have Strickler in the bag with the bomb? Whatever the case, it seems to satisfy Sean.
Now Fi's awake as well, so Michael goes back over to sit with her. Whatever it is she has to say to him, he lets her off the hook. "It's okay," he says. "We're no good at this." Does that mean they don't ever have to talk about the fact that the guy Michael insisted on working with, over Fi's strenuous objections, ended up nearly getting her killed? Awfully big of Michael to let it drop, if that's the case.
Just then, Michael gets a cell phone call from Garza, and it's not good news. Garza is freaking out, yelling in Michael's ear about Strickler. Calling from an apartment kitchen and slugging straight from a bottle of Jack Daniels, Garza says that Strickler's dead, and now someone is cleaning up his messes. Don't worry, Garza, they're going to be busy with those display cases for a little while. "I don't know who I can trust, even at the agency," Garza frets. He says someone's after both of them, and they need to meet right away. Garza gives Michael the address and apartment number where he is (he seems pretty sure that nobody's listening, as panicked as he is), and Michael promises to be right there.
When he pulls up, it already looks like a crime scene, complete with an ambulance and rubberneckers. Getting out of the Charger and walking up to the sidewalk in front of the high-rise apartment building, Michael VOs, "When you realize that an operation is compromised, that your enemies are on the move, you're on a clock. You have to move as fast as you can to try to contain the damage and harden your defenses before it's too late." Wait, is he talking about himself, or the people who now seem to be after him? He pushes past some gathered spectators and looks down. "Sometimes you make it in time..." Diego lies dead on the sidewalk, his head in a pool of blood. "...And sometimes you don't." Michael looks up at the high balconies above him, which suggest to him that Diego got down here without the aid of stairs or elevators. He continues, "When you work in intelligence, the worst feeling in the world is knowing nothing. Being caught up in something you don't begin to understand." Michael walks calmly back to the Charger, but pounds his fists on the roof in frustration when he reaches it. "Because it's not the enemy you see that gets you. It's the one you don't."
Not much of a cliffhanger, apart from the fact that Michael now knows less about his situation than he has for two seasons. The show will be back in January, so let's hope Michael has a great fall. Yes, I said great fall. What, too soon?
M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, follow him on Twitter, or just e-mail him at M.Giant[at]gmail.com.
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