Sunday, February 23, 2014

Burn Notice 7.9 - Bitter Pill

Plot: Michael, Fi, Jesse, and Sam find themselves abruptly brought at gunpoint to a warehouse patrolled by guys with assault rifles. Very subtle, James. He has a mission for them: to keep Omar Hamed, a leading voice for peace and reform in the Middle East from being killed by people not in favor of peace or reform. They are unfortunately saddled with a lead guy named Ben Snyder, who has never been on a field op. They don't do so well at their task, as Hamed eats a poisoned crab cake. And the waiter is killed in a drive-by before they can interrogate him. But his last call was to a known poison maker/biochemist, Dr. Khalid Mazik.

They track down and abduct Mazik, and when he isn't forthcoming with the antidote, Ben injects him with what they have left of the poison. Which encourages Mazik to help them sneak into his drug lab/fortress and get it, only for Ben to decide to kill Mazik once they have what they need. He does this in the not-at-all stealthy manner of shooting him repeatedly. Which makes it rather difficult to escape, what with all the armed guards coming to investigate. The guards leave when chemicals catch on fire, and Ben leaves Fi to die. Michael is naturally having none of that and rescues her.  All is well that ends well, right? Well, no. James arrives, again escorted by many gun-toting guys, and straight up shoots Ben. Because you do not leave anyone behind. Can't argue with that. This after James confirmed Maddy's suspicions she was being followed by showing up in her living room, and explaining he's only doing it to protect her for Michael.

The Players: Ben Snyder (Leading This Op), Omar Hamed (Potential Deadee), Dr. Khalid Mazik (Friendly Neighborhood Poison Maker)

Quote of the Episode: Madeline - 'You know Michael, sometimes people get used to the wrong things.'

Does Fiona blow anything up? No.

Sam Axe Dink Count: 0 (5 overall).

Sam Getting Hit Count: 0 (1 overall).

Michael's Fake Laugh Count: 0 (0 overall).

Other: Maddy, I've said this to Michael many times, and I'll say it to you when you found James in your home: Just shoot him. Michael isn't going to do it, not yet. He's still trying to fix everything, and capturing James is the key to that. So you do it Maddy. I don't know what Strong will say to that, but you need to keep James away from Plot Device, I mean Charlie.

Gabrielle Anwar's accent seemed to be all over the place in the scene in the combat support hospital. I heard the Irish once or twice, but not always.

Admittedly, I don't know much about poisons, but if you have a sample of the poison, how is it you can't reverse engineer it to make a cure? Can't you break it down to its constituent parts and figure out what the problem is? It wasn't presented as being a time constraint, simply that they could not do it at all.

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