By M. Giant
Using his spare access card, Michael follows the trail of Bill Johnson and quickly determines that that fourth-floor conference room is a sniper perch with a clear shot at the harbor ferry. An added bonus is that when Carla shows up, he and Sam are able to start tracking her, seemingly without her knowledge. Michael even manages to sneak into her hotel room to photograph a bunch of her documents, which appear to consist of a who's who of Season Two
Despite closing in on the big mystery, Michael's got other stuff to worry about as well. Fi's boyfriend Campbell delivers the Job Of The Week in the form of a kidnapping that needs to be stopped. Michael goes undercover as a drunk, down-on-his-luck security guard just ripe for the kidnappers to hire as an inside man. With help from Sam and Michael's brother Nate (who, by the way, is starting his own limo company with money from a mortgage on Madeline's house), Michael makes the security look airtight, but the kidnappers will not be dissuaded. Michael then tries to blow the job by faking a convincing jailhouse conversion, but all he does is get himself fired as the kidnappers hire a new inside man. So then Michael finally just foils the kidnapping sloppy-style, with a well-placed front bumper. Once again, he tries the easiest thing last.
While he's still celebrating his success, Carla brings the hammer down, having Nate arrested for money laundering. Michael, Sam, and Fi follow Carla to the marina, only to realize she's just distracting them while the sniper does his job. With the help of a stolen motorcycle and Fi's Saab commercial, Michael gets away and races home to get his access card while Sam heads to Bill Johnson's house to try and stop him there. But someone's way ahead of Sam, as Bill Johnson got blowed up by a bomb on his front door. That's something Sam probably should have shared with Michael a second or two earlier, as it might have prevented the explosion at Michael's loft. The last thing we see is an airborne Michael engulfed in flames, and the words "To Be Continued."
Michael and Sam are in Sam's Buick, staking out the office building they followed Bill Johnson to at the end of last week. Michael VOs about the two options you have when it comes to finding out about an enemy position. "You can watch from a distance; slow and safe. Or you can go inside and take a look; quick, but potentially fatal." Gee, which one is Michael going to pick? Sam is in the middle of trying to talk Michael out of his chosen course, on the grounds that they don't have enough intel to proceed. Michael disagrees: "The people who burned me got a specialized rifle to a sniper, got him an access card to this building, and sent him to a conference room on the fourth floor. That's a fair amount of intel." And a decent substitute for this show's stubborn lack of previouslies. He asks Sam what Bill Johnson has been up to, and fortunately Sam has a "Fed buddy," which I am assuming refers to a friend Sam has in the FBI rather than one with a full stomach. Either way, this pal of Sam's has been tracking Bill Johnson's credit card transactions from one Daytona strip club to another. I didn't even know you could stick those into g-strings. Michael holds up the access card prototype he stole from Nefzi's workshop and reminds Sam, "They killed someone for this badge, and I went to a lot of trouble to steal it. Shame not to use it."
With that, Michael gets out of the car and walks up to the front door and swipes the card. You know, the placement of the card reader on the outer door struck me as odd last week, too. Yes, most office buildings require security cards these days, but I've never been inside one where you need a pass just to get into the lobby. Of course, I'm just now realizing that that would be the point. Michael walks right in like he belongs there. He looks reputable enough in his standard, all-purpose suit-no-tie ensemble, but a decent shave would have completed the illusion. He's apparently got his razor set on "28 o'clock shadow" throughout this episode, probably because they shot it out of sequence and just decided it would be easier for continuity if he kept his whiskers at the ideal length for the cover ID he'll be adopting later. Or maybe Michael is just that good.
Noting the number of plainclothes guards standing around the lobby, he gets on an elevator and the pass takes him right to the fourth floor while he screws in a telephone earpiece so he can hear Sam spouting witticisms like, "What do you see up there, a mastermind petting a Persian cat?" But the floor seems to be vacant. Neither of them can seem to figure out right away why anybody would want to send a sniper to an empty floor. Uh, I've got a theory, but Michael isn't jumping to conclusions. Instead, he finds the conference room with no furniture save a massive table. An oval-shaped impression in the carpet tells him that the table was recently moved to its current position. Still not putting it together, it seems. He's usually quicker than this. He walks around it and opens a sliding door to a balcony, with a stunning view of what I assume is Biscayne Bay just outside. Still puzzled. Then he realizes that the table has been lined up so that it's basically pointed straight at the open door. At last it seems to fall into place for him as he finds three tiny holes drilled into the top of the table in a triangular configuration. Just right for, say, a tripod. He VOs, "Most people think snipes like to shoot from ledges." Well, no, I always assumed it was rooftops, mostly from watching this show. "The fact is, the best sniper position is inside a room, through an open window. It hides the shooter, masks the report of a supersonic round, and makes the muzzle flash impossible to see." Finally, Michael tells Sam that this is Bill Johnson's sniper perch. Sam wonders what the target could be, since the nearest buildings are barely visible through the heat haze on the far side of the bay. Just then the Fisher Island ferry chugs across Michael's line of sight, well within range. "I think I found his target," Michael murmurs. Well, okay, but how hard could it be to hit a boat?
Meanwhile, outside, Sam's attention is caught by a new arrival: a denim-clad chick on a motorcycle. Sam watches through the opera glasses as she removes her helmet and turns out to be none other than Carla. At least I think it's her; it's been a long time since we've seen her. The subtitles simply say "Carla," as though even their memory of her is hazy. But Sam more than fills in the blanks as he tells Michal to get out. "Your burn notice lady just showed up...your overseer, boss, manager, whatever. Get out of there!" Carla's looking suspicious -- or maybe just serious -- as she enters the building and steps into one lobby elevator just before Michael steps out of the other one. He keeps himself to a brisk walk as he exits the lobby, but even he can't resist breaking into a casual jog on the way back to Sam's car in the parking lot. Sam has been making good use of his time: "I just planted a tracker on Carla's bike," he brags. After some quibbling about whether "always be prepared" is the motto of Navy SEALs or the Boy Scouts, Michael finally says, "Sam, I could kiss you." "Get in line," Sam says as he starts the car and drives off into either the main titles or a really hot slashfic scene.
There's a bunch of bikini babes lounging around a hotel pool, and one of them is Carla. Apparently the show is making up for how little we've seen of Tricia Helfer this season by showing us a lot more of her. Up in one of the second- or third-floor rooms, Michael joins Sam, who's already happily settled in at the window with a mojito. Intently watching Carla through the patio door as she dives back into the pool she just got out of, Michael asks Sam for whatever he's learned about her during his surveillance, which aside from her allegedly impressive swimming technique is more or less bubkes. Even ferry lead is a dead end, because there's no passenger list and you can't buy tickets in advance. The good news is that Carla doesn't seem to have much security there at the hotel, probably to keep a low profile. That might also explain the tankini. Sam mentions the price of the room service drinks, and Michael tosses him a fat wad of cash as though he can't get the stuff out of his possession fast enough. Which, as we well know, he can't. Sam warns Michael not to let Carla catch him with his access card. This is apropos of very little, other than to set up something in the first act that's going to go off in the final act, in a big way (spoiler!).
So Michael tears himself way from the spectacle of Carla in the pool long enough to go home and rig up a hiding place for the stolen access card at his loft. As he opens his rear balcony door wide, he VOs that when you're hiding something, you need to strike a balance between hiding it well and being able to get your hands on it quickly. "Hiding something in the sewer main under your floor is secure, but good luck getting to it. Hide something in your sock drawer, and it's easy to get to but hard to secure." Never wash your socks, and you can split the difference. Although he doesn't say that part. Instead, Michael gouges out an access-card-sized slot in the door frame behind one of his hinge plates. Apparently spies call these DIY hiding spots "slicks." "Easy to slip something in, easy to slide it out." Is that a thinly-veiled plug for the KY product that's going to be advertised during an upcoming commercial break? Whatever; Michael will be able to get to his access card quickly, assuming he can also keep his cordless drill charged up with the screwdriver bit in place. And, you know, assuming that he didn't cut that slot clear through the doorframe and that the access card has not just plummeted to the ground floor inside the wall. Ah, well, I suppose we can worry about that later.
As he's finishing up, Fiona and Campbell walk in, screwing up Michael's screwing but bearing gifts: yogurt drinks for everyone. The subtitles remind us who the guy with Fiona is: "Campbell -- Fiona's Boyfriend." They could have saved their breath, because Fi lolls on Michael's bed and grossly makes an allusion to all the sex they've been having. With that vital task accomplished, she yields the floor to Campbell. Apparently he got a call the night before in his capacity as a paramedic, and when he got there in his ambulance, he found a victim of a severe beating. Most of the wounds were in the stomach area, so as to not put too much of a burden on the makeup budget (which has already got to be pretty strained in an episode that features Fi, Carla, Michael's mom, and his brother). Campbell assumed the guy was in some kind of trouble, and wondered if Michael and Fiona could maybe help the guy out. Wow, I know it's a challenge to come up with new ways to bring in the Job Of The Week every time, but did they really want to use Campbell up this early on? Michael tries to demur on the grounds that it's not a good time, but Fi double-guilts him -- first, by reminding him how they owe Campbell for how he risked getting fired helping Michael last week, and then by threatening to handle the job herself. Michael gives in, and Campbell puts a grateful hand on Michael's shoulder. Then he remembers to pull it back before he loses it. Campbell also needs to learn that just because Sam is one of the few people allowed to address our hero as "Mike," that doesn't mean some dude who goes by his portrayer's last name gets to as well.
Cut to the ever-popular sidewalk café, and "Henry -- The Client" doesn't look all that beat up as he tells his story to Michael and Fi. It seems he works for a private security company, and was recently approached by a "headhunter" named Lesher. Henry tried to cut the guy off when he started asking questions about confidential procedures, but then Henry's oldest and best friend died in a faux-suicide. That was followed by a threatening call from Lesher. "They're planning a kidnapping," Michael guesses, which is a pretty impressive deductive leap for someone who just had trouble solving the equation "sniper + vacant conference room = ________." Henry says the target is the Arroyos, a family of Venezuelan oil tycoons who hires bodyguards for every member of the family whenever they come to Miami. Lesher was asking after the daughter, Isabella, and when Henry refused to give over any details, that's when Lesher curbstomped him. Henry says that Lesher wants personnel files on all the company's guards tomorrow. Michael, it seems, already has a plan fully formed in his head, not that he's going to share it just now. He simply asks Henry to give the files to him instead, as well as anything he has on the Arroyos.
Back at the loft, Michael and Fi sit on his bed going through said files while complaining about how even kidnapping has gone corporate these days. Seeing that Isabella needs a new bodyguard, Michael says he'll need a fake company personnel file on himself. Fi volunteers to handle that. "Give you a drinking problem, some money issues, ex-wife, a couple of kids. You'll be the easiest target to get leverage on." Michael remarks on Fi's newfound enthusiasm for paperwork, and she says she just wants to do a good job for Campbell. She asks Michael what he thinks of him. Michael non-answers, "He's fine," which I assume is code for, "you're the one who can't resist waving your freshly-penetrated cooter in my face every time you two are around me." Then he excuses himself to his mom's for "this family thing" before she can decipher his true meaning.
When Michael gets to Madeline's house, she and Nate have just popped the cork on a bottle of champagne. They're all excited because Nate has decided to start his own limo company. "Do you even have a car?" Michael wonders skeptically. Madeline crows, "He does now! I took a loan out on the house." Obviously Nate didn't want Michael to know that right away. Michael doesn't really go out of his way to hide his doubts, and Nate walks out all hurt. "I deserved that. Enjoy the champagne," he whines. Don't ask me how he can slam the door and nail himself to a cross all at the same time. Madeline yells at Michael for not being more supportive of his brother, and throws her lit cigarette into his champagne glass before storming out herself. "Guess I'll let myself out," Michael tells the empty room. He does know how to shut down a party.
Michael meets with Henry in an empty park and gives him back the personnel files to give to Lesher. He explains that Lesher will then make Henry assign a guard to Isabella whom Lesher will think he can control. Of course the guard in question is Michael himself, who comes complete with his own personnel file. Henry wonders how they can count on Lesher picking Michael. "I've kinda done this thing before, Henry," Michael condescends. "A recently divorced alcoholic with money problems? He'll open my file and think it's Christmas morning." Then, when Lesher approaches Michael, Michael will "let slip some information that convinces him this kidnapping isn't worth the trouble." Well, I can't think of a reason why that wouldn't work, aside from the fact that we haven't reached the second commercial break yet and everything always waits to go wrong until well after the third one.
Later, Henry waits with the files on a bench at an outdoor market while Michael and Fi keep an eye on him from a nearby kiosk. They talk about motivations -- Henry's scared, Michael's protecting Fi, and Fi's trying to make Campbell happy. Fortunately this is when Lesher shows up. "Lesher -- Kidnapper," report the subtitles, as we get a good look at the guy who played Logan staffer Walt Cummings on 24 a few years ago. "And the muscle," Michael adds, noticing the guy accompanying Lesher. "The Muscle," confirm the subtitles. They're really quite terse this week. Lesher and his Muscle sit down flanking Henry as Fi says, "They better go for it. If I did all that paperwork for nothing I'm going to shoot someone." Or, knowing Fi, even if she didn't.
As the scene moves to a bar, Michael VOs, "When an operative recruits someone, he lets the target make the first move. He'll dress like him, drink like him, move like him, but he won't talk to him. He'll wait to be approached." Sure enough, Lesher sits at the bar, bitching to the bartender about his ex-wife. A couple of stools down, a visibly (but fakely) unsteady Michael slurs at him, "You want to hear a funny story about my divorce?" Lesher says he does. "Me too," Michael says. Ah, so he's decided to act the Funny Drunk. One of my favorite varieties of the species, right after the I'm Pretty Sure It's My Turn To Buy You A Round Drunk. Lesher steps right into the latter role, and Michael acts like he just made a new best friend.
A bit later, they've moved to a table and Michael is bitching amusingly about his own (fictional) ex-wife, and how all he's looking for is a wife who doesn't nag him about drinking and church all the time, a decent job, and a decent paycheck. Oh, and in case you've been keeping track, this is the scene where the bluish chin Michael's been sporting all episode comes into play. Seeing an opening, Lesher asks "Brad" what his job is. Michael rambles drunkenly about his Special Forces experience and moans, "Now I carry a tennis bag for a spoiled little rich girl." He bitterly says he's a bodyguard. Lesher claims that his company does security testing, and gives Michael a little pitch about signing on. "What kind of training do they do at your company?" Lesher probes. Michael closes down a bit as he VOs, "When selling yourself as a traitor, you can't be too eager. A good op will walk away from a recruitment that seems too good to be true." I would have thought that by the same token, someone who's selling himself as an alcoholic can't be too "Otis from Mayberry," but Michael's the professional. In response to Lesher's question, Michael says it's confidential, and acts like he's sort of blurrily suspicious of Lesher's curiosity. Lesher smoothly apologizes and says, "If I'm going to offer you a job I should just come out and say so." He gives Michael his card and tells him to call tomorrow if he's interested. You know, if Lesher makes it a habit of giving his business card to drunks in bars, he might want to consider a larger font. Or maybe a really wavy one, if he wants to fuck with their heads.
At the hotel room overlooking Carla's pool hangout, Michael VOs, "Surveillance is the leading cause of weight gain among operatives. In a job that's equal parts boredom and tension, eating is a way to pass time and calm nerves." Clearly Michael's not in any danger of busting out of his doll clothes, but Sam has quite a few room service plates scattered around. He even has his mouth full as he reports that Carla's been having lots of meetings down on the pool deck. "International types, nobody we know." She seems to be in one of those meetings now, so Sam suggests that it would be a good time for Michael to check out her room. Michael whines about not being able to teleport (some master spy he is), until Sam presents him with a master key he got from the housekeeping manager. "Mike, the stuff I had to do to get that, you don't even want to know." At least not on basic cable. The only other security Carla has on her room's door is a facial recognition computer, and Sam's got that covered as he hands Michael a life-size headshot of the room-service guy. On his way out, Michael offers to treat Sam to whatever he wants for dessert. "It doesn't have to be food, right?" Sam asks. Michael doesn't press the point, as Sam appears to have the food thing covered.
As Michael approaches room 652 while holding the photo up in front of his face, he VOs about the pros and cons of facial recognition systems. On the one hand, they're cheaper than human guards and they don't sleep. On the other hand, they're dumb enough to be fooled by a guy holding a photo in front of his face. And just like that, Michael's in Carla's suite. He tells us, "When you search a spy's room, you don't waste time checking he safe. You have to assume they're as creative as you are." So this could take a while. But soon enough, he finds Carla's own slick in a recessed fixture above the toilet, with a few documents rolled up inside a cardboard tube. Someone needs to explain to her the difference between light bathroom reading and bathroom light reading. No, don't get up; I'll fire myself. Michael photographs each page: a couple of floor plans (probably that office building he's already been to), followed by one-sheet photo dossiers of Jimmy, Nefzi, Bill Johnson, a large-headed Middle Eastern man we don't know, Michael himself, and Victor. Sam calls Michael on his Bluetooth to tell him that Carla's meeting is over and asks if he found anything. Rolling the goods back into the tube, Michael tells Sam, "We hit the jackpot." Yes, congratulations on securing all that information you already had. I'm pretty sure that the only thing Michael can prove now is that this is Carla's room. Well, hers or a very disturbed fan of the show.
Back at the loft (I so need a macro for that phrase), Sam and Michael go through the photos Michael took, and are disappointed that it doesn't seem to contain the name of the sniper's target. "Maybe the supreme overlords haven't given it to her yet," Sam speculates, and then makes a huge leap by guessing that if Michael finds out before Carla, it might get him off the blacklist. Easier said than done, as even the one unfamiliar face in the pile of photos doesn't tell them anything. Sam heads back to the hotel, and Michael advises him to go easy in the mojitos. "They always go easy on me," Sam replies. Michael grins, because trusting your life to a guy who's conducting surveillance on your killer handler through a mint-leaf haze is so damn cool.
Michael meets with Henry and learns two things: the Arroyo family arrived the day before, and Lesher instructed Henry to assign Michael to guard Isabella, just as planned. Henry tells Michael to drive the girl from the house to the country club, and gives him a key to a silver sedan that's parked outside. Michael tells a visibly fretting Henry to chill out: "Lesher's going to get a lot of information about Isabella's security tonight, and he's not going to like what he hears." He might wonder why he didn't hear it from Henry, but let's keep this moving.
While sharing a table with Lesher at the Boulevard Hotel Bar that night, Michael VOs about the trick to drinking without getting drunk: "Start with a lot of ice to dilute the alcohol. Order a new round before you're finished, so your half-full drink gets taken away. And of course, spill." What about bribing your server in advance to keep bringing you rounds of apple juice and 7Up? I guess then Michael couldn't breathe liquor-stink in Lesher's face, and also spill an actual drink on him. After demonstrating this technique, he slurs about wanting to talk business. Lesher hands him a thousand-dollar check just for his time and says he wants to see Michael in action before he can hire him. Michael tells Lesher to watch him tomorrow when he drives "Little Miss Sunshine" to a tennis match, but be careful not to be seen, since there's always extra security in the form of two other cars. Lesher doesn't understand the need for so many precautions, but Michael simply explains, "They got more money than sense" and suggests another round. Michael, by contrast, has more money than makes sense.
On the sidewalk outside, Michael asks Lesher to drop him off at the Hilton, where he claims to be staying since his wife kicked him out. Lesher agrees, and as Michael slumps into the shotgun seat of Lesher's car, he drops a dice-sized listening device under the seat and says that while drinking as part of a cover ID carries a price, the information you can get that way is worth the hangover.
Michael arrives home to find Fi...well, not waiting for him exactly, but just sitting there reading and eating his yogurt. Fi already knows that Michael told Lesher there will be two other cars, so apparently she was listening to transmissions from that bug all evening. How Michael resisted the temptation to fart in her ear the whole time he was riding in Lesher's car is beyond me. Fi wonders who the second driver will be besides Sam. Michael is considering Nate, mainly to make amends. Looking in his fridge, he asks her, "Is that my last yogurt?" Fi tells him there's tuna tahini in the oven (Michael has an oven? That's kind of fucked up), but his smile vanishes when she tells him that Campbell made it. Fi thanks Michael for helping Henry on his behalf. "You know me, anything for Campbell," Michael snarks, dodging further conversation on the pretext of making a midnight yogurt run.
Out on the landing, Michael's cell phone rings. It's Carla, who he remembers to greet as though he hasn't heard from her in a while. Lounging on the sofa in her suite, she tells him about a report she got that someone used a key card to get into an office building. Michael disavows any knowledge, and adds, "But if I hear anything, you're my first call. Let me get a pen. What's your number?" Nice touch, that, remembering to act like he's still trying to get any kind of lead on her when in fact he's spent a fair part of the last few days watching her as though all of her secrets are written on her thighs. Carla warns him about some big-time goings-on. "Stay out of them or there will be consequences," she says, like she isn't the one who dragged him into them in the first place. "You know me, good little soldier," Michael says unconvincingly.
morning, Michael's right back at the hotel, watching Carla swim some more while Sam tries to talk him into taking some little shampoo bottles. Sam also adds that he tried to use a shotgun microphone to capture some of Carla's conversations, but didn't get anything useful. Michael asks to borrow Sam to play backup bodyguard. Sam doesn't appear to have a problem with taking a break from the thing he's doing for Michael so he can do another thing for Michael.
Michael meets up with Nate, who's a bit surprised that Michael called him for his first limo job, given his unenthusiastic reaction to Nate's startup news. "As someone who's lent you money in the past, I'm a little concerned," Michael admits. Nate insists that he's a new man, and confirms Michael's orders for the morning: just drive up the street, watch Michael and his passenger, and don't smile. Michael hands Nate an envelope, from which Nate pulls out a single bill. He tells Michael he's going to frame it. Michael smiles proudly. "Or maybe I'm gonna break this up into smaller bills and frame one of them," Nate amends. Smile gone.
As the silver sedan Michael's using pulls out of the open gate of a mansion, he VOs about how operatives do a lot of bodyguard work. "Not glamorous, but part of the job." Oh, don't be so defensive, Michael. This isn't anywhere near the most embarrassing thing you've done. That would be Fiona. In the back seat, the teenaged girl in tennis whites says to Michael in subtitled Spanish, "You're cute. Do you speak Spanish?" Michael stammers that he doesn't, and she bravely says, "Thanks...for drive me." Which is better than I could do in Spanish. I'd probably come out with something like Gracias por la...ride-o." "No problemo," Michael manages.
At the country club driveway, Sam arrives first and gets out of his Buick, hand on the gun at his hip. Strikes me as a bit much, but it's all part of the show they're putting on for Lesher, who's watching with his Muscle from their car across the street. Michael pulls in behind Sam and assumes a similar posture as he opens the door for Isabella. Nate fills in the vehicular threesome and, since he doesn't have a gun, he simply glares around in his sunglasses. Oblivious to all this, Isabella says to Michael, "So serious," and plants a kiss on his cheek before they walk into the club together. At this rate, Michael's going to have to stop worrying about Lesher and start worrying about Papa Arroyo.
When Michael returns to the loft, Fi doesn't have good news for him. She's been monitoring the bug in Lesher's car, and plays back a clip for Michael that demonstrates this isn't a simple ransom job. "The people that paid for this job have a multinational oil concession riding on us getting that girl," Lesher argues at his Muscle. "We have to find a way." "Sounds like Lesher needs a little more convincing," Michael says mildly. Fi offers to let him off the hook, but Michael's staying hooked. Fi knows perfectly well that like most fictional private eyes, Michael always sees these things through, no matter how hairy they get. And besides, if Plan A ever worked, this would be a half-hour show.
Walking along with Lesher later on, Michael complains drunkenly about the overzealous security measures surrounding Isabella and asks when he can start with Lesher's company. As they reach an alley where the Muscle is waiting, Lesher throws Michael up against a chain link fence and breaks the "news" that the job he wants Michael for is actually the kidnapping of Isabella. Lesher pulls a gun on Michael and reminds him that since he cashed the check, Lesher now owns him. Don't ask me how Michael cashed a check made out to someone named Brad. Michael cowers pathetically against the fence, begging to be left alone. Lesher shrugs helplessly at his Muscle and clouts Michael on the top of the head with his gun butt before threatening "Brad's" family and walking away. As Michael watches Lesher's retreating back, his face goes from craven misery to that expression he makes every week when the bad guy passes up his one chance to play nice.
After the commercial, it's time for the weekly mid-episode scene in which the client freaks out about a setback while Michael and his friends try to talk him down. This version includes the variation of Campbell stitching up Michael's scalp, using a bottle of beer as anesthetic. I'm doing the same to get through this recap, I should mention. Good episodes are always the hardest. Fi tells Henry that they can still try to get Lesher to call it off, by having "Brad" threaten to screw things up or go to the cops. Campbell reminds Michael that Lesher threatened to kill him. "I know," Michael says. "I just have to make him believe that I don't care." Good plan. Otherwise Lesher might feel bad about it.
Later, Michael's having another meeting with Lesher, acting all nervous and stress-drunk. Lesher gives him his instructions: bring Isabella out of the club five minutes early, and they'll grab her before the backup team arrives. They'll even drug her so she can't run. "What if 'bout the other security detail showing up early?" Michael drunks. "Make sure they don't, Brad," Lesher threatens. "If anything happens, I mean anything, you're dead." Michael begins to slouch away as he VOs about Lesher's dilemma: "Anybody who runs a few assets knows that some crack under the pressure. You have to be tough enough to keep them in line, supportive enough to keep them stable." With that, Lesher catches up to Michael and helps him open the bottle of off-brand Pepto-Bismol that Michael's pretending to struggle with. Michael puts in some more time whining, and Lesher does his best to cut through it by telling him to go home, sober up, and get a good night's sleep before sending him on his way. "Here's your top," he says as he hands Michael the cap from his Pepto bottle. That's either a sweet little detail or a veiled reminder of just who the bottom is in this relationship.
Walking away, Michael gets a call from Sam, telling him that Bill Johnson's credit card transactions show him back in town, and Carla's been having a lot more meetings lately. Combine that with the fact that the episode is more than half over, and it adds up to something about to go down. "Mike, you better wrap up this kidnapper business, eh?" Sam suggests. Michael says he's trying.
It's late that night at Michael's loft as he VOs, "When someone turns you into an asset, your main weapon is fear." Fi's there too, for some reason, asking as Michael dials his cell phone, "Is Brad the security guard ready to change his life?" Michael's VO continues: "If you fear poverty or exposure or death, that's what they use against you. Their worst nightmare, then, is an asset with no fear." So that's what Michael is about to become. With that, Michael says clearly into the phone, "Lesher? It's Brad." He listens to Lesher clearing his sleep-clogged throat and bitching about it being three in the morning. Michael tells Lesher he's not going through with the job, and goes into a whole story about how he couldn't sleep, so he turned on the TV and found some show about the Bible. "It was like they were speaking to me, you know?" I guess that's why they put those shows on during the midnight of the soul. Michael even quotes scripture; Proverbs 27:17, to be exact: "As iron sharpens iron, so man sharpens another man." So clearly someone did swipe something from the hotel room, even if it wasn't shampoo bottles. "You showed me the way," Michael tells Lesher. Fiona is suddenly riveted by Michael's performance as he drones on: "No more drinking, no more hate. You, guys at work, my ex-wife...you're all angels sent to test me...I'm not afraid any more. I'm not afraid of death, I'm not afraid of anything. I'm free." Fi is staring back at Michael like she's falling in love with him all over again. And suddenly the loft is once again redolent of warm tuna tahini. Typical that the thing to pique her interest in Michael again would be a load of high-grade bullshit. Which raises the question: does Campbell not have an issue with Fiona being at her ex-boyfriend's house at three in the morning? That of course assumes that he knows Michael is Fi's ex-boyfriend, which I stipulate has not been clearly established. Anyway, after listening to Michael's monologue, Lesher says, "We should meet," and abruptly hangs up. Okay, see you then!
Apparently that was a coded click, because we see Michael at a sidewalk café table with Lesher, who's leaning on him to go through with it. Lesher says Michael's in too deep to back out now without getting in trouble himself. Michael not only says he's ready to accept his punishment, he presents Lesher with a typed confession. When he starts mumbling about the valley of the shadow of death, Lesher loses it and grabs him, yelling at him to shut up. Nobody listens to him except every other person at the restaurant. Michael tells Lesher to go ahead and kill him. "I deserve it. All these people will bear witness to my sacrifice. I am ready to be judged." Lesher finally gives up on Michael. He says they'll call it off, bitterly saying, "I'm an angel. I was testing you. And you passed." Michael gives him a beatific smile, and Lesher leaves. I'd say he got his revenge by sticking Michael with the check, but they don't appear to have ordered anything.
Walking back to his car, Michael VOs, "Blowing an operation is a delicate business. You have to convince your opponent to abandon his plans, make a case that the smart move is to just pack up and go home. Problem is, even when you do your job well, people don't always go with the smart move." Case in point: the parked car Michael just walked past has a guy waiting inside it. Fortunately Michael already spotted him, and thus is ready when the guy comes out at him with gun drawn. Michael smoothly disarms and overpowers the assailant and ends up pinning him to the pavement with the gun to his face. Correctly assuming that Lesher sent the man to kill Michael, he tells him to call Lesher to say he did the job, but got hurt and had to go to the hospital. "Then you're going to spend a little time in your trunk," Michael concludes. "How's that sound?" Before the hitman can answer, Michael's cell phone rings. For some reason, Michael takes the chance of answering it before the bad guy is fully secured, but we're coming up on an act-out here, and Henry needs to break the news that Lesher just called him. The job is still on, Isabella's getting a new guard, and Lesher wants Henry to help him kill the backup guard. Well, if it weren't for Plan C, Michael would never get anything done at all.
Henry meets Michael by the shore to tell him about Lesher's new plan: a mere half hour from now, Henry is supposed to meet Lesher at the country club, tell the new guard a cover story to get him away from Isabella, and then Lesher will drive up and grab Isabella while the Muscle shoots the guard. Michael isn't nearly as worried as Henry is, and tells him to do two things: continue looking like he's cooperating, and "When you see me, Henry, run." That's a good general rule in any third act of this show, really.
Outside the country club, Lesher sits in a car with the rather nervous Muscle, encouraging him to go through with it when the time comes. Meanwhile, Henry is waiting outside nervously. They all spot Isabella as she comes outside, walking along with her new guard. Lesher and the Muscle cock their weapons, but before they can make their move, a big black Ford SUV comes screaming into the driveway, making straight for their car to T-bone it at speed. Muscle's a little slow on the uptake, and the truck plows into it, pinning it against the car it's parked to with the two would-be kidnappers trapped and bleeding inside. Isabella screams. Michael climbs out and calls to Henry, "Get her inside, now!" No shit, Henry. One job, you had. Lesher and Muscle are barely conscious inside their car as Michael rants at them and puts a few rounds into their engine, as though they're going anywhere anyway. "You thought you could kill me? I gave you a chance to be redeemed! But you turned your back!" He goes into a full-on televangelist voice, brandishing a new piece of paper and softening his Rs while yelling, "These ah yoh sins, Leshah, right heah on this papah!" Okay, I'm exaggerating, but not by much. Hearing the approaching sirens, Michael slips the sheet under Lesher's wiper so he can read it while he waits. Oh, and it seems the Muscle's name was Matt Barnes, according to the large-font header Michael used. I feel a little bad for the writer who had to sit and come up with that. Michael's last words to Lesher are, "They will find everything you brought to kidnap that poor girl. And you will be judged!" Unless, you know, Lesher can come up with an innocuous explanation for why he's got guns, drugs, and whatever restraints he brought along. It is Miami, after all. With that parting shot, Michael walks off, having wrecked his second stolen car in as many weeks. He casts a glance that's either grateful or guilty to the heavens as he goes. Oh, Michael, don't be impish. It doesn't suit you.
Michael, Fi, Henry, and Campbell celebrate and wrap up the A-plot over lunch. I'm glad to see Michael's at least getting a meal out of this for once. Fi says she heard that Lesher "tripped and fell on a knife" in jail. Michael tells Henry he's safe, but he should probably keep quiet about this. Henry's happy to oblige, and apparently the Arroyos are too. Except for Isabella, who misses "Brad."
Walking out, Fi again asks Michael what he thinks of Campbell. My question, which I think is much more pertinent, is what Campbell thinks about his girlfriend leaving with Michael instead of him. Michael dodges the issue again until his mom calls, which fortunately doesn't take too long. Except it's a mixed blessing, because when he answers, she's got that grating angry-panic-voice that gets on my nerves so much as she demands to know what's going on. Michael has no idea anything was going on. Madeline tells him that there are cops at her house, arresting Nate on some kind of trumped-up charge that his new limo company is a money-laundering front. As Nate is frog-marched out Madeline's front door, Michael tells her to tell Nate not to say anything. Which she doesn't. Instead, she tells Michael that a woman called her to say that Nate is in big trouble and Madeline could lose her house. "And she said, Michael, to tell you that you should stay out of other people's business. Her name was...uh, Nicole." Okay, no, obviously it's Carla. Michael hangs up with his mom and calls Sam, who reports that Carla's on her bike and headed out of the hotel. "I need a ride," Michael tells Fi, hopping into her Saab as she drives off. Good thing he got this kidnapping deal resolved before this other shit started going down, no?
After the ads, the team has apparently tracked Carla to the marina, where she meets up with the large-headed Middle Eastern man from the file Michael found in her room. So at least now we know that guy wasn't the target. Watching from a distance, Sam, Michael, and Fi bemoan their lack of information about what she's up to. Fi has visited a vendor to score herself a waffle cone (hold the ice cream, naturally) as she offers to get a rifle from her trunk. "Tempting," Michael says, "but since she's the only one who knows what's going on, might want to keep her alive." As Michael peers at Carla through his opera glasses, he VOs, "There's a reason they call the spy trade the hall of mirrors. You can never know for sure whether you're in control or being played." And of course on this show, there's generally one fewer layer of deception than there could be. Michael continues, "But if you do it long enough, you learn to trust your instincts." He sees Carla cast a tense glance off to one side, and follows her gaze to a guy sitting in the driver's seat of a parked car. Continuing to look around, he sees another guy with shades at a drink stand, and comes to an unavoidable conclusion, which he shares with his friends: "It's a setup. She knows we're here." He takes it even further to extrapolate Carla's move: "She's going to have her sniper take his target out now. She wants me here watching when it happens." Sam asks Michael how he knows. Michael admits he can't be sure. "But it's how I would do it." After checking his watch and establishing that there's at least one other Carla-mobile nearby and, Michael says that the last ferry is in an hour, which will give him time to get home, get his access card, and intercept the sniper at his perch. Sam volunteers to intercept him at home, and heads out. I like how they just assume that anyone Carla wants to kill is someone they need to save. Maybe she's got her reasons, okay? Can't they just give her the benefit of the doubt? "Still leaves me free to shoot Carla," Fi says. Michael has another job for her: "As soon as I leave, they'll be on me. Can you...?" "Yes, I can," she says. I really do prefer her when the team is under pressure.
At the risk of interrupting some pretty tense action, I'm just going to take a moment to wonder why the sniper rifle was fitted with a night scope when the shooting is clearly set to take place during the day. Okay, back to the final minutes of the season, and the big, juicy payoff that no doubt lies at the end of them.
We switch to the perspective of Carla's watchers as Michael and Fi split up and go their separate ways: Fi to her car, and Michael to where the motorcycles are parked. He talks about how easy it is to defeat a cycle's antitheft measures and steal it, which he then does. I was hoping for a VO here about how motorcycle chases are easy to shoot -- just slap a helmet with a visor on your stuntman and he's good to go -- but there isn't one. Instead, Michael does a wheelie over the grass and out of the park while Carla's goons get it in gear and pursue. They quickly eat up Michael's substantial head start as he VOs, "When you're being tailed by multiple vehicles, you're at a disadvantage. They can flank you, use alternate routes, box you in. It helps to have a team of your own." Cue Fiona, cutting off Michael's pursuers in her Saab. Michael's VO continues, launching into one last, incredibly blatant ad for Fi's car: "The electronic stability program was originally developed to help keep cars from sliding on icy roads. But it's a great tool for the precision driver. When you need to slide, you can simply turn it off." Fi hits a button on her steering wheel. There's a corresponding light on her dash and skid of her tires, which forces another car to screech to a halt right before getting crashed into by the van. "And turn it on again when you need to maneuver," Michael continues. And Saab sales spike correspondingly as Fi heads off in pursuit of the red car that's still after Michael. She's too late to cut it off at the intersection, but she does manage to clip its tail and send it into a spin which apparently takes it out of the chase as well. Fi looks pretty smug for someone who just bashed in the front corner of her shiny Saab Commercial. But given Michael's previously demonstrated body work skills, why should she worry? Pursuit over!
Well, no, because somehow Carla found time to not only don her helmet and jacket, but also get herself into position to fall in behind Michael on her own bike, which, if you ask me, is the one Michael should have stolen in the first place. He leads her on a merry chase beneath an overpass and through some actual traffic before coming around a corner and finding a semi trailer conveniently parked in such a way as to block the entire street. "A semi," Michael VOs as the chase drops into slo-mo, "has about four feet of clearance under it. Sliding beneath it on a motorcycle is possible, but risky. Too low, and the pavement will grind you to a pulp. Too high, and any part of your body that hits the trailer will no longer be part of your body." Of course, Michael puts his stolen bike down and slides under flawlessly, sparks flying, until he finally lets go and the bike goes on without him. Carla stops, gets off her bike, and looks under the trailer at him. Michael just smiles back, hops on his bike, and is on his way while she glares impotently after him. Somehow she manages to resist screaming, "YOU ARE SO FIRED!"
Somehow, after all that, he still thinks it's safe to go home. And I have to admit that nobody appears to be waiting for him there, at least in the courtyard. As he unstraps his stolen helmet and shows off the frayed elbow on his suit -- the first one he bought once he landed in Miami, if I'm not mistaken -- Sam calls with some news: "The sniper's dead." We can even see part of Bill Johnson's house in the background behind a giant plume of black smoke that both indicates severe damage and camouflages the likely lack of same. Plus there's a body being wheeled out on a gurney, presumably the ex-sniper. Don't ask me what happened to Bill Johnson's landlady, but given the size of that dog of hers, I would expect it to come down in the Gulf some time week. Michael's climbing the steps to his front door as Sam tells him over the phone, "Something is very wrong. I don't get what's going on. They went to a lot of trouble to put this guy in place." No shit. Once again, I keep coming back to how bringing Michael in on...whatever this is...has become more trouble than it's worth. Putting his key in the lock, Michael tells Sam to slow down, which is going to turn out to be really bad advice. Sam explains how it was done: "Someone booby-trapped his front door, Mike. They blew him up." Michael snatches his hand from the door handle, but it's too late; it's already swinging open. He hurls himself over the railing, barely clearing it before the booby trap on his own door goes off and the fireball swallows him.
"To be continued." As if we don't already know what's going to happen; that suit is fucked.
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, or just e-mail him at M.Giant[at]gmail.com
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