Burn Notice Fight or Flight

Michael Westen sneaked into a “spy convention” to obtain a name of someone who could get him a copy of the “burn directive” against him so he could at least know why he had been burned.  He was chased by security and found that Fiona had abandoned him and he had to walk home only to find her having broken in to his loft and whining that she needed a key. When he told her he didn’t want anyone to have a key she set out to manipulate him into giving her one. She had arranged with his mother to get MW to take his dad’s old car. Oleg, Ms landlord, offered to give 4 month’s rent if he would help one of his waitresses with a problem which was preventing her from coming to work. Cara Stagner had reported someone to the police for nearly killing a pizza delivery boy and and then had been afraid to leave her house because a rat had been nailed to her door. People had also been looking for her daughter, Sophie, at school.

 

M cooked dinner for Fiona to ask her to help track Akhom Thabet a spy who owed M for saving his life. She wouldn’t do it unless M asked his mother, Madeline, for the car. M discovered that Alvaro Desantos was sending a hit squad for the Stagners and Fiona chased them off with molotov cocktails. Reluctantly M took the two to stay in his mother’s garage where he could set up controlled access. Madeline ranted about wanting to know everything until M finally broke down and told her.  Then, out of the clear blue, she tried to manipulate him into going to visit his father’s grave.  Sophie whined about living in a garage, not being allowed to call her friends on the phone and needing to miss her school dance. M asked Bruce Gellman, Desantos’ drug cartel lawyer, to have the cartel back Desantos off. Fiona tailed Akhom to find a time and place that M could talk to him; but tiresomely turned every conversation into a referendum on their relationship.

 

Gellman sent a hit man to blow up M but he failed and finally had to admit that the cartel had said to kill them all. So M and Fiona told the Stagner’s they had to become ghosts which sent Sophie wailing about her dance. Fiona went to mislead the mob who was watching the Stagner house about where they were going and deliberately worried M about her getting caught to manipulate him into giving her a key to the loft. Sophie sneaked out to go the the dance and M had to rescue her all the while she blubbered for some reason or another the whole time. Now that Desantos knew they hadn’t left, they had to set up an alternate plan. They decided to edit together some contrived video of a conversation that Sam (posing as Stagner’s lawyer) was having with Desantos where Sam was manipulating him into saying key phrases wich they could edit into a compromising conversation. They edited it into Desantos asking for witness protection then had Sam slip it to Harris and Lane where they knew Gellman would have a mole in the FBI. Then M went back to tell Gellman “thanks for getting Desantos to flip” in order to get him to check with his FBI mole. When he did, the Columbians “took care” of Desantos relieving the Stagner’s of the necessity of leaving. MW arranged to meet Akhom at his father’s grave and received a copy his burn memo.