When You’re A Spy: Tipping Point

After last week’s episode, this is week is much more what I’m expecting from the last few episodes of Burn Notice.  There is major plot movement, tons of action and the return of one of the best Burn Notice villains.

Michael finds out from Sonya that their latest mission is to meet James somewhere for an important meeting for their organization.  After creating fake passports,  Michael sleeps with Sonya again and, while she’s sleeping, downloads the data off of her phone and passes it to Strong, who learns that the meeting is in Veracruz, Mexico.  Strong takes Jesse and Sam with him as Bravo Team while a team of Mexican mercenaries act as Alpha team, setting up an ambush for James’ convoy that they manage to escape from.  Michael steals a phone when the group carjacks a passerby and Strong uses it to track the car from a helicopter.  James figures out they are being tracked and has the group split up, taking Sonya with him while Michael leads a team in another direction.  They plan on stealing separate boats and heading somewhere safe up the coast.

Michael and his team arrive at a boathouse and try to hotwire a trawler but Alpha Team arrives and takes out everyone but Michael and Owen, one of James’ men.  Michael is horrified to learn that the leader of Alpha Team is Simon Escher, played by Garret Dillahunt, who Michael helped put away back in Season 3 and whose horrific crimes were used to falsify Michael’s record and caused his burn notice.  With the end of his mission in sight, Michael reluctantly goes along with Simon as they try to lure James and Sonya to the boathouse but Simon’s sadistic nature finally gets to Michael and they have a brutal fight that ends with Michael stabbing Simon through the chest, finally killing him.  James and Sonya arrive to find a wounded Michael and they attempt to escape but Michael sees Strong, Jesse and Sam coming toward the exit and warns James and Sonya away.  The trio escape to James’ latest palatial safehouse and he believes Sonya is the one who betrayed them, as only she and James knew the location of the meeting.  With James about the execute Sonya, Michael confesses that he’s undercover for the CIA but Simon was the titular tipping point that caused him to lose complete faith in that organization, since if they are willing to work with a monster like Simon, even after assuring Michael he was put away forever, he can’t trust or believe anything they say.  James doesn’t kill Michael but it’s not clear if he’s going to try and completely turn Michael or just use him until he’s not useful anymore.

Back in Miami, it’s almost not worth mentioning but Fi almost has to take out the two guards that James’ has placed to protect Maddie but Jesse calls her off at the last second.

There was tons of great action this week, including the Michael/Simon fight which might be the most brutal fight of the entire series and it was great to have Simon back for at least one more episode.  With only two episodes left, even if Michael doesn’t believe in the CIA anymore, will he betray his friends as well in order to join James’ organization, which he has been slowly becoming more and more involved with?  We’ll have to find out in two weeks, as Burn Notice is taking a week off next week.

• Who Am I?: Michael and Sonya enter Mexico as a married couple but they don’t adopt any wacky accents or personalities, as we don’t even see them going through customs as their IDs.
• Spy Tip of the Week: The positives and negatives of using helicopters on missions.
• Sam Axeism of the Week: Sam was uncharacteristically quiet this week, with his major scene being yelling at Strong for using Simon.