TV Recap: Burn Notice, “Sea Change” (7.12)

09/05, 9:00 PM, USA Network

With his cover blown and the CIA closing in, Michael swears his allegiance to James and promises to lead his handlers to their doom in his name.  But Sam, Fiona and Madeline aren’t about to surrender him to his dark side that easily, leading to a wild chase that forces Michael to pick between the team and his newfound friends.

“Sea Change” tries very hard to be one in the grand scheme of Burn Notice’s plot, but it only succeeds in frustrating the audience with an obvious cliffhanger and ham-fisted attempts at pathos.  They try to thrill and extract every possible tear from their audience, succeeding about fifty percent of the time.  The best scene involves a waterlogged fistfight between a broken-hearted Sam Axe and Michael, though Sharon Gless does her damnedest to make us swallow what the script has Madeline do.

They try to thrill and extract every possible tear from their audience, succeeding about fifty percent of the time.

And most of the Madeline storyline consists of shameless emotional manipulation.  There’s absolutely no reason to have yet another unintentionally hilarious slow-motion shot of fire spreading through a room to parallel the folly of the loft fire in season 6.  But the show needs your tears, wants you to cry at the destruction of Madeline’s security even as it has her inform the audience that the only time she ever saw Michael and Nate happy was on the morning just before her husband nearly beat her to death.  This is supposed to be deep but only conjures up Bad Laughter.  Add into the mix the McGuffin nature of little Charlie’s existence and you have the most obvious attempt at jerking audience tears since Nate’s death.

After shaking off the wishes of his friends, Michael seems poised at the brink of clarity.  Jeffrey Donovan generally does a good job portraying the death of Michael’s surety, but the final scene – in which he stands wide eye as Sonya and Fiona’s voices battle for dominance in his mind – again ventures into Bad Laugh territory.  Much better is Gabrielle Anwar, who is gritty, heartbroken and flailing as Fiona – she counters bad laughs with grace and poise.   Bruce Campbell holds his own, but several wooden moments weaken what’s overall a good performance.

We witness Michael being given the keys to James’ operation, but we still have no idea what sort of work he does, other than playing tag with people in the drug trade.  The script drones on and on about the good James’ organization can do or has done, but the only evidence we have of how he treats people is the fact that he killed his military associates in cold blood, psychologically tortured Michael, and kept a man in a medically-induced coma because he had evidence on him.  James may have had a hand in preventing a drug smuggler from getting cozy with MI-6, but those deeds are piddly when compared to cold-blooded murder.  There is a reason I don’t care what happens to James, and a reason why I resent so much of the show’s conclusion being wasted on an ill-drawn character.

Things are ramping up, the tension growing more severe.  Does anyone actually believe that Michael shot Fiona?  Well, I suppose we do have next week to find out…

The Roundup

• * This isn’t the first time Madeline’s house has been endangered.  In the season 2 finale “Lesser Evil” Sam was forced to blow up Madeline’s back porch to help them escape management.  A minor side plot in season three featured Sam trying to fix the sunporch and repair Maddie’s belongings.
• * The curtains Fiona uses to start the blaze were given to Madeline by Strickler, Michael’s “agent” from season 3’s “Long Way Back”.
• * There’s a clear parallel between the goodbye letter Fiona writes to Michael in season four’s “ and the speech she gives him on the rooftop.
• * This isn’t the first time Michael and Sam have come to blows; Sam physically fought Michael to keep him from handing over files to Carla in season 2’s “Do No Harm”.
• * Next week in “Reckoning”, somebody dies.  And the show ends, too.

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Lisa Fernandes

Staff Television Critic: Lisa Fernandes, formerly of Firefox.org, has been watching television for all of her thirty-plus years, and critiquing it for the past seven. When she's not writing, she can be found in the wilds of the Northeastern United States.

Latest posts by Lisa Fernandes (see all)

• TV Recap: Burn Notice, “Sea Change” (7.12) - September 8, 2013
• TV Recap: Burn Notice, “Tipping Point” (7.11) - August 25, 2013
• TV Recap: Burn Notice, “Things Unseen” (7.10) - August 17, 2013