Extra Nate: Burn Notice Recap

It’s Extra Nate. The only blog companion piece to the hottest book-related podcast that had discussed a Burn Notice book on the entire internet!

What Even Is Burn Notice?

A lot of people who listened to this week’s episode are probably wondering “what is a Burn Notice and how can we make Ben watch it?” Well I’m here to answer your first question in great detail but the answer to your second question is: become a patreon member and demand it. The price of watching one Burn Notice episode together and discussing it live-on-tape is shockingly low I bet. Write your WAB Congressman and ask to vote for Burn Notice.

Burn Notice is the story of Michael Weston. He used to be a spy until the pilot episode. He’s in the middle of a deal in the Middle East and he’s about o wire money over to some very unsavory men only to learn that he’s no longer employed by the US Government. There’s a burn notice on him. He’s black listed. His life as he knew it is over.

What follows over the course of the series is Michael working to figure out who burned him, why, and ultimately realize that being a spy for the US Government is… you know… not good. So what I’m going to do here today is briefly catch you up on Burn Notice so you can enjoy the book and today’s episode (as you obviously read the books with the episode, right?) together. Then I’m going to continue to explain Burn Notice to you because I never get to talk about Burn Notice with ANYBODY.

The Characters of Burn Notice

Obviously Michael Weston is the main character. This is who Ben calls “generic white guy.” Michael was once a spy. Now he’s not. He would like to be a spy again and figure out why he is not a spy anymore. He grew up in an abusive household. His dad was a real piece of shit such that when Michael runs off to join the military at age 17 his mom forges his dad’s signature on some document to… look let’s not get into it. It’s probably, like, emancipation paperwork or some shit. Point is Michael’s upbringing sucks. In the pilot episode his mom mentions that he missed the funeral by like 17 years and Micheal is unfazed “well last time I saw him he said he’d see me in hell so I figured we had something on the books.” Great. Why doesn’t Ben like this series? Michael tends to avoid ever showing his true feelings on anything and when he gets down to work, he has been known to have a singular focus that prevents him from seeing the bigger picture. It’s also heavily implied that he had a pretty messed up moral compass prior to the series (say it ain’t so!) and was more likely to murder and torture like his former partner Dead Larry Sizemore. Battered women are also a major trigger from him because of how his mom was abused growing up and this tends to have him act more recklessly or lower his guard. Or both.

Sam Axe. Bruce fucking Campbell. He’s a retired ex-Navy Seal. He spends his retirement hanging out with friends, hot single older ladies with money, and day drinking mojitos. He’s awesome. His role is usually a guy who has a contact or a contact of a contact. You need some information about XYZ? Well he has a buddy who used to work at that prison who still has some contacts there and can get you that info. Or he’s got a buddy who can lend him a speedboat. Or he’s got a friend who knows the hotel manager who owes him a favor. He’s super charming and charismatic and he’s great and you’re wrong if you think otherwise.

Fiona… uh… shit what is her last name? Hold on… … … Glennanne. Okay, I vaugely remember that. She’s a gun runner. She’s hyperviolent and will always choose overkill when possible. For example in the second episode Michael wants her and Sam to disable a guy’s car because he’s going to do something that will make this guy flee. What he meant was “I want to push a button and it’ll shut down his car.” What Fiona heard was “stick this in a place that will ignite the fuel because an exploded car is shut down.” Hilariously she’s Michael’s moral compass at times because she often will advocate that Michael help out women or people with children. She’s also very protective of people and usually becomes very emotionally invested in cases that their team takes on. She and Michael have an on-again-off-again relationship. She wants to rekindle that and he pulls back. Then she starts dating other people and he’s more receptive and… look this isn’t high art or breaking new ground. You’ve seen this before. They get together a few times throughout the seasons and they end up together.

Madeline Weston is Michael’s mom. She’s a chain smoking hypochondriac until she isn’t a hypochondriac anymore because the writer wanted us to start to sympathize with her more. She’s normally getting Michael jobs that he didn’t ask for or acts as an obstacle that Michael has to solve in an empathetic way. As the series goes on she starts becoming more involved in jobs and realizing that maybe Michael has done some really bad shit that she would rather not know about. One example of that being that she helped Michael blackmail a local government clerk for documents… only she becomes actual friends with the clerk. Then when Michael needs more documents, an amount of which could not possibly go unnoticed, she does it but she hates it and can’t believe her son would ask her to destroy this poor woman’s life. Michael has to make amends (by breaking and entering into a government office and trashing the place to cover up the first crime). The two do get close throughout the series and her finale is about the only thing I remember from the final season (spoiler: she dies).

Nate Weston. What a great name. Nate isn’t a character that is in every episode. He’s a scam artist looking for the next score. He helps Michael out but also acts as an obstacle with his selfishness. He’s not a trained spy or anything and is often used as a hostage or a bargaining chip. He clearly wants to be like Michael and resents being a screw up (which he definitely is). He’s also got a really bad gambling addiction. Throughout the series we see him get his life together somewhat. He gives up gambling. He starts a legitimate business (with start-up money that their mom gave him against Michael’s protests), the business becomes bigger (until an enemy of Michael’s poses as an investor and threatens to murder Nate unless Michael does a job for him), he marries someone he met in Vegas (I think) on kind of a spur-of-the-moment. No one thinks it’ll work. It kinda does. They have a kid. Nate is ecstatic to be a father. Then it all kind of falls apart. His wife leaves him to… I think go on a bender? Nate relapses into his gambling vices. He kind of stops wanting to be around. In the end he tries to help Michael take down the series villain (we’ll get to that shit) and dies in the process. His wife goes into rehab and his kid ends up with Madeline and eventually Michael.

Jesse Porter shows up in season 4 if I’m not mistaken. He’s clearly here to be an extra body for jobs that require it. He doesn’t seem to care so much about killing if it’s the easiest way to get something done (Michael prefers to avoid it). Jesse is brought in as a counter-spy who Michael accidentally burns becuase Michael is investigating someone that Jesse has been investigating for years. It sets up a thing where Jesse is hunting the man who burns him the way Michael hunts the series villain. Jesse figures it out and there’s a brief resolution of the conflict… and then Jesse is just kind of another memer of the crew. I don’t dislike Jesse, I just wish he had more to do. I don’t know anything about this guy or how his skill set as a counter-spy differs from the other 3 members of the crew. There was going to be a spin-off of him and Sam and it is a tragedy we never got that.

Burn Notice Season Synopses

Season 1: Michael finds out about his Burn Notice. He gets local work while he tries to figure out who burned him. He can’t get through to his old handler so he sends him a fake bomb in the mail. It has ingredients of a bomb that would be picked up by security but there’s no actual explosive. That gets his handler’s attention who calls Michael and tells him its’ a bunch of BS but his hands are tied and there are still people in the agency on Michael’s side but nobody can be outwardly offering him aid. We get no answers there. Old assassins from Michael’s past show up. Michael sees his mom and brother for the first time in like 20+ years. He meets up with Sam and Fiona (his emergency contact). During this time the FBI are told to keep watch on him but don’t know why, that’s higher up the food chain. They force Sam to inform on Michael by threatening his pension. Michael has Sam give them just enough information to keep them off his back until he eventually gets a dossier he’s not supposed to have. The FBI tails are reassigned and Agent Jason Bly comes in to force Michael to quit yearning for the life he once had. He threatens Sam, Fiona, Michael’s mom and brother with various levels of jail time and buerecratic meddling after Michael goes out of his way to destroy Bly’s stuff in the pettiest way possible. Michael gets Bly to hand over some information and gets him off his back by having a lot of pictures taken with Bly that look suspicious in addition to having his money launderer transfer a bunch of money back and forth between two accounts set up in Bly and Michaels’ names. Making it look like Bly is entering some shady business with Michael. Michael gets a name: Phillip Cowan. Phillip is the man who burned Michael and if you read the above sentences (which you haven’t because nobody is still reading this) then you know that Michael does some petty shit to get Cowan’s attention. Cowan sends a bueracrat to review Michael’s file and see about getting him reinstated only to turn and try to choke Michael out. The assassin (as well as a previous former enemy of Michael who Michael puts in jail) turns up dead as a message to all. Cowan decides its time to meet in person… for some reason. See, Cowan has to know he wasn’t supposed to kill Michael. Him sending an assassin after Michael was no well-received. When he meets Mike, he tells him that while he was the man who burned him, the order came from above him and it’s bigger than either of them. Then he’s shot dead. Then Michael has to save Sam in a two-parter finale while this is going on and he threatens to kill himself unless they back off… which they do. Because they want Michael alive. Mike finishes the job and then he goes to a mystery location to meet these people who had him burned.

Season 2: It opens right where things left off. Michael is given a job by these mystery people with the promise of a proper meeting if he performs. He’s got a guy tied up in a trunk. He’s got to use this guy to get some sort of something or other… look I can’t remember the individual episodes. Starting now the seasons are split in half with a mid-season finale and a season finale. The first half of the season has Michael finally meet with Carla, the one seemingly pulling the strings here. She’s leading a cell of a black ops mercenary group illegally doing business on US Soil. She’s having Michael do jobs for her in anticipation of what Michael finds out is a hit attempt. Michael attempts to counter-surveil but his job-of-the-week jobs typically interfere and he can never quite get them. His meddling and his rebellions nature has Carla assign Victor to him. Victor’s job is ot break Michael in and bring him to heel. Michael feigns learning his lesson from Victor and gets them off his back while secretly learning the details of Carla’s hit job with plans to foil it and take Carla down in the process. The mid-season finale ends when, after finishing the job-of-the-week, Sam phones Michael to let him know that Carla’s hitman is dead. He was blown up. At that moment Michael surmises that, he too, will be blown up. He avoids that fate but takes a dive onto his ribs (or shoulder or arm) onto concrete. Mid-season 2 starts up with Carla apprehending Michael and blaming him… because she’s stupid. He points out that he didn’t blow himself up for their benefit and that he had nothing to do with this. He also yells that he wants his life back, Ben. Because he had a sweet life as a CIA agent. Anyway, Carla wants Michael to find the traitor in her midst because he would have more freedom of maneuverability and because she knows that Michael would jump at the chance to take down one of her operatives for free. The rest of this season is Michael gathering intel and only giving just enough information to Carla to keep her occupied and off his back. Michael plans to see if the enemy of his enemy could be an ally. Turns out the man who tried to blow up Michael… is Victor! Dun dun dun! Michael subdues and captures Victor. The finale has the group + Victor on the run from Carla. Victor has some dirt on Carla that her superiors in their black ops agency would find unsettling and Carla would be liquidated. Carla corners Michael and Victor. Management is on the way at this point. Victor caught some strays and he’s not going to make it. Carla tries to reason with Mike that she’ll let him live in exchange they’ll destroy the files and blame everything wrong on Victor. Fiona saves the day by shooting Carla with a rifle from behind. Michael then meets Management: a really old guy. The season ends with them on a helicopter and Management offering Michael Carla’s old job as an overseer. Michael tells him to fuck off. Management says that they’ve been protecting Michael from the bulk of his former enemies and if they drop that protection, everyone will start coming out of the wood work. Michael jumps out of a helicopter dramatically rather than accept a job from these guys.

Season 3 is both better and worse than previous seasons. It has a much more lax focus on the people who burned Michael. It starts early on with a multi-episode arch. Michael swims back to Miami which… you know looks bad. What if he’s an illegal immigrant trying to take all of our Florida real estate?!? I’d say, just give it to him. Florida is a swampy cesspit. But what do I know? A police detective (played by the actually-named Moon Bloodgood) interrogates Michael who isn’t cooperative because obviously you NEVER TALK TO POLICE WITHOUT A LAWYER PRESENT. Then she starts to put things together that maybe Michael is running around Miami causing mayhem and blowing shit up. Michael has to evade her (she is aware that Michael has a storage unit upstate – the Miami restriction having been lifted somewhat after the last season – and suspects there’s some illegal shit in there – in this case C4). He attempts to set her up to take a fall by making it look like he has some shady dealings with someone in the governor/mayor’s office. She doesn’t take the bait but her partner does SO NOW ITS PERSONAL. So instead Michael helps her solve a case without her knowledge and makes it clear that if his involvement were public it would unravel that case so like… stop investigating me. Dick. Then the rest of the first half of the season is a shady pencil pusher type with connections can get Michael… sorta maybe his job back kinda. They can work out the details. Maybe instead of a champion of justice and peace in the US government he’ll be like… a guy who frames innocent people and makes them disappear to a US-run prison in another country where our rule of law doesn’t count, you know? Michael isn’t about that, BEN, so the guy does agree to get him back in the CIA only he then turns over Fiona to some enemies of hers who are aware of her presence in Miami. The guy killed her sister or whatever and, look, anyway Michael shoots the slimey bueracrat and then also helps Fiona kill her guy. Only that bueracrat was… in bed with some weird assassin type… or something? He’s a super gay assassin, is what I remember. Very flamboyant too. He looks like he’ll be the main villain here because he’s using Michael to get flight logs and acquire a some sort of machine gun turret. This guy, whose name I do not even remember, is aware Michael might betray him so he keeps him in the dark on a lot of operational details. He makes Michael believe that they’re going to intercept a plane at one location but A-HAH! GOT ‘EM! IT WAS AT ANOTHER LOCATION! And then he dies. Yeah. Michael was burned because the things that this guy, Simon, did, was put on his record. He was accused of a bunch of stuff Simon did… I guess… and there’s enough corrupt people in the CIA (but the CIA is still a wholly good organization that only does good and just things for noble reasons, obviously) that they just waived away the fact that Michael obviously couldn’t have done some of these things because he would need to be at other places in the world. Look, don’t question the logic here. It’s spy stuff and he was never officially anywhere so he could be technically anywhere. I guess. Anyway Simon’s plan is to lure Management to Miami and then do a little murder. Michael stops him mostly because Simon is a deranged crazy person who is going to go on a rampage if he isn’t stopped. It ends with Management taking Simon and Michael. Simon is going to an unmarked hole of a prison forever and Michael is going… to season 4.

Season 4 is where Jesse comes in. Also the best villain of the show: Vaughn. He’s a top guy in the Organization That Burned Michael (OTBM) because I don’t know what else to call them) and honestly should’ve just been the final boss. Guy has charisma and an aura but also has menace when the time comes for it. He also totally outsmarts, outplays, and outmaneuvers Michael later in the season. So he has a face-to-face with Michael and convinces Michael that the OTBM is actually a force for good. Sometimes you need a shady black ops mercenary organization to go after bad guys that the US Government can’t reach. He gives Michael a bunch of information that lead Michael to the conclusion that someone is starting wars in 3rd world countries and making a great deal of profit off of it. Michael agrees to work with Vaughn who assures him he has the best of intentions. Michael goes to get more information from the government and accidentally burns Jesse Porter, whoopsie. Jessie teams up with Mike, Sam, and Fiona who have to do a series of things to track down… The T-1000. Yeah I don’t remember this guy’s name either and I’m not looking it up. But it’s played by the same guy who played the T-1000. He’s a big corporate businessman type thing. He starts wars and then sells aid and supplies to the people who are affected. Makes money on selling arms and makes money on selling aid. Win-win for him. Michael approaches him with a partnership… I can’t remember what his deal was honestly. He wants to stop the T-1000 but he also wants to use him as leverage against Vaughn… OH WAIT! Simon has a bible involved in all of this and its a NOC list of all of Vaughn’s agents. It also has a recording between he and Simon where Vaughn was the guy who selected Michael to replace Simon because Simon was too unhinged to be an operative anymore. Okay yeah so he’s approaching the T-1000 with this bible and he wants to both take down the T-1000 and also use his resources to destroy Vaughn because he cannot possibly do it alone. At this time Jessie learns that Michael was the guy who burned him, threatens to kill Michael, it’s all tense and dramatic and eventually Jessie agrees to team up with Mike (who does eventually apologize) because he wants a say in who gets the bible. Michael has his meeting with the T-1000 and he wants Vaughn to hold off on rushing in to capture the T-1000. However, earlier in the season Michael snubs Vaughn and so Vaughn is like “man fuck this guy, I don’t take orders from you.” So during Michael’s meeting with the T-1000, Vaughn sends his men in anyway. T-1000 escapes as Vaughn’s men storm the building. T-1000 and Michael are in the same car, T-1000 has him at gunpoint. Michael grabs the steering wheel and yeets them to death. That’s the mid-season finale. The briefcase containing the NOC list (oh yeah T-1000 has the half that can translate the bible that Michael has. That’s why T-1000 is a necessary key to this whole plan. No I’m not going back and re-typing all that, just know that the T-1000 wants to take down Vaughn and has a decoder to the bible that Michael has containing Vaughn’s organization. Michael wants to get both the key from the T-1000 AND keep the bible from Simon to then take down Vaughn. In the process he wants to take down the T-1000 who is NOW dead by car accident). But we can’t just have Michael with the list. One of the T-1000’s goons finds their car reck and retrieves a briefcase with the bible and the decoder. So part 2 of the season has Vaughn being like “yeah we got him! Also I’m gonna disappear for a while. Turns out storming a building of a billionaire CEO gets the wrong kind of attention.” So Michael goes after the case and has to find who has it. The guy who stole the case was murdered and the new guy is selling the case on auction in some other country and they have to figure out where the case is and retireve it. Then they try to unload the case to Jessie’s former handler who is murdered by one of Michael Weston’s most dangerous enemies that I haven’t mentioned before but who has been in a few episodes prior to this in other seasons. That guy also has Dead Larry Sizemore who also is a recurring villain-of-the-week. Together the two get the case AND a taped confession from Michael about the people who burned him. They use this as blackmail. Basically Michael is fucked. Every morning an email with all this evidence is going to Vaughn. The only thing stopping it, is Brendan (that’s his name). Michael has a long-term plan and tries to get Larry to help out but Larry just kills Brendan. Larry makes Mike take him to where Brendan stashed the bible and decoder and he doesn’t care if Mike stops that email from going out or not because he is gonna go on the run and he wants Mike as his partner and Mike will NEED him as his partner because Vaughn will rain hell on him. Anyway Sam with a sniper rifle turns the table on Larry, Mike gets the bible, and Larry goes to jail. But the email is out and Vaughn is coming with an attachment of men to get rid of Michael. Vaughn is actually great. He knows where Mike is at all times, he corners him in a construction project. He calls off the fire and police. He’s got them dead to rights. Michael has a plan and Vaughn derails that because he found where Madeline’s hiding hole was and has her as a hostage now. So Mike is going to surrender himself, his plan is to hide a grenade on his person and take Vaughn with him. Fiona is also onboard with death by explosion because she loves Mike. Jessie is given the NOC list and they’re going to try to draw all the fire to allow him to escape. Vaughn is literally only stopped at the last moment because another part of the plan from earlier is that Sam and Madeline went to a senator that showed up earlier in the season. He’s a real piece of shit… you know… he’s a senator. He’s convinced to send people he trusts to break up this operation and at the end of the season everyone is alive and the US Government (the good guys, remember) has the NOC list.

Season 5 has Michael joining up with the US Government in some sort of advisory capacity. Fiona is upset about this and for the next 3 seasons will not stop talking about how bad the CIA is. Like… okay let’s drop the pretext here. The CIA isn’t great. I can agree with that. Fi… you’re a gun runner. You supply weapons to people who then use those weapons to murder other people. You supplied weapons to people in Ireland fighting during The Troubles. I don’t think you can be casting stones in that glass house of yours. Anyway, this is the first step toward getting his old life back. Mike and the CIA systematically destroy OTBM. See? They’re not all bad, Fiona. Did you car bomb OTBM? No? Then shut up. You’re not Sam. Anyway, I’m going to be real I don’t remember much of this season. I bet if I looked at the episode list I could tell you what some of the fun episodes were but I just remember that the leader of the OTBM “dies” in the first episode but in a way that’s really obvious to the viewer that the body that we see isn’t actually the real leader. Michael is never going to get his answers on why he was burned! And like… dude yes you ddi. You had skills that this organization wanted. Your name was drawn out of a hat or something and they were like “let’s get ’em!” So they did. Anyway the mid-season finale is Dead Larry Sizemore showing up, totally unhinged. This is his finale appearance because Fiona lures him into a building and blows him up. Unfortunately the building wasn’t cleared out like it was supposed to be and so a bunch of civilians die. As she admits to Michael that she killed those people and she’s crying… in walks Anson… God. It sucks. He sucks. You went from Vaughn who has presence and real menace and was both charismatic and charming but also ruthless and devious to… a pencil neck geek I could beat up. Anson is the real leader of the OTBM. He started it with management to do off the books blah blah blah blah. He wants Michael to get him resources and shit to rebuild his organization. Michael starts helping him on the down-low while still assisting the CIA. Then he meets with Vaughn in his little prison and Vaughn tells Michael that all the shit he’s gathering is the tools necessary to rebuild OTBM. It’s money, it’s operatives, its information that can be used to slowly rebuild the group. So Michael… doesn’t do that. Yeah I think he has some elaborate plan to try and stop pencil pusher bitch Anson AND destroy the blackmail he has on Fiona but then Fiona just turns herself in so taht Michael doesn’t have to risk it. Then I stopped watching the show

Yes that was the end of my original watch through Burn Notice. I think I have the first 5 season (at the very least, the first 4) on DVD (remember those?) and so I didn’t watch seasons 6 or 7 live. I watched it after the series ended and was off TV for a year or so. Anyway, let’s continue with season 6.

Season 6 is bad. It’s like really bad. I don’t remember a single kind thing about it. The first half of the season Fiona is in jail for like… I dunno? Four episodes? Then she gets out because Michael makes a deal with his old mentor at the CIA. Who is his mentor? Dr. Cox from Scrubs in a suit. I don’t remember the guy’s name but he’s the same actor and I cannot see him as anything other than Dr. Cox. So Michael does work for Dr. Cox. They’re hunting down Anson. Somehow during all of this they do track him down. Nate tries to help his brother out and during the confrontation (I don’t remember much about it other than Michael was watching it) both Nate and Anson die. Turns out Dr. Cox was a bad guy! I don’t actually think the show said this, but it could have and I just forgot, but I read on the wiki while reading The Fix that Dr. Cox was actually Anson’s plant in the CIA. The highest plant he had. The guy who recommended Michael to Anson who passed his name along to Vaughn to get the ball rolling on the Burn Notice. I guess even OTBM has tons of bueracracy. So yeah, Dr. Cox is dead, killed by Michael’s hand, after he learns that he was the real traitor and that the CIA is secretly good and we should never question them. So let’s all stop a moment and thank Michael for fixing the CIA. Bravo, Michael, Bravo. Unfortunately, it’s frowned upon to murder your boss. It’s double frowned upon if that guy has top security clearance in the government. Tripley so if you can’t prove that the guy was a corrupt asshole and was about to pull a gun on you. So the second half of the season… is extra strength suck. The CIA brings in a blood hound of a woman detective to track down Michael and bring him in. They’re gonna have to use secure phones that they’ve never used before and destroy them after using them. They’re going to be unable to move out in the open. All their secret stashes and storage facilities? Those are forfiet. This woman is going to sniff them out… in theory. See, you still have to have a weekly job to complete. Something that is kind of stupid to be doing when you’re on the run from the law. Also I remember 2 or 3 times where they trap this Blood Hound and tear gas her or something to escape her. She’s actually super ineffective. In the end they do get the information they need to implicate Dr. Cox and then uh… the Blood Hound woman is like… bad? She’s corrupt? I have no goddamn idea how we’re supposed to come to that conclusion. I think maybe she started getting pissed at Michael constantly tear gassing her and she brought in people that weren’t in the CIA and she should not have been associating with? Seriously what the fuck. Hold on let me just look real quick… yup that’s what happens. She just… goes rogue. And sends a drug cartel hit squad after them. Maybe if you stopped fucking tear gassing her. I don’t know, I think that’s incredibly week that the bad guy of the season was someone working for the government that Michael pushes way too far and then goes to jail while Michael gets out. Yes the end of the season is all of them going to jail and Michael back in the CIA, for good this time. you know it because he’s wearing a suit at the end of the season. Fiona is like “but you promised you’d quit the CIA” which is something I forgot to mention because, seriously Fiona? Stop being so dense. Michael is like “yeah so uh… I had to cut a deal or we’d all be in prison. Forever. We did a lot of crimes. You know that you sell guns, right? You blew up a building for of children. I think technically you were on parole when I shot my boss.” Anyway Fiona is mad he’s part of the CIA and I’m mad that I had to watch this godawful shit season. Let’s move on.

Final season. Season 7. Is it better than season 6? Yes. Low bar, I know. Is it better than 5? Ehhhhh I mean I remember more of it? It well and truely is done with OTBM. Anson is dead. Dr. Cox is dead. Management and Vaughn are in prison. They’re over and done with. But there’s always more top secret black ops organization. We’re just crawling with these things. Yeah so there’s a time skip. Like 9 months? I don’t know. It wasn’t very long. Michael and Fiona are done! For real! Never again! I’m looking at the wiki and yes it was 9 months. Also holy shit I take it back I do NOT remember the first half of the season. Michael is in deep cover in the Dominican Republic. There’s a guy who the CIA thinks is the leader of a terrorist cell and the first half of the season is unmemorable because the finale is that this guy has a boss. That boss ends up being… James Finley… mmmkay. Yeah I remember that guy because he was… like super chill? For a villain? Anyway the Google AI says “he’s the leader of the organization that burned Michael” and the Google AI is dumb as fuck and so is the idiot who programed it. Dumbass. This is a separate organization entirely. It’s more like a family… I guess. Michael infiltrates this. He has an episode where he hallucaintes under torture and hallucinates his dad for the only time of the series. Anyway there’s also a chick named Sonya who is an operative in the family. That will be important in a moment. So Michael and the CIA are finally read to apprehend the Family’s leader… James. God was Anson not bad enough for you guys? Anyway he’s got the trap ready and who should be there to get them, but Simon? Yeah the CIA brought Simon out of that hole he was put in and made him a CIA operative… what? Did you relaly need a mentally unstable murder man? Well this is when Michael realizes that maybe the CIA really is bad. Simon executes a guy right in front of Michael and so Michael kills Simon in a fight that I remember being kind of underwhelming. Then he calls Sonya and James and tells them to avoid the area because it’s hot. Then after that he tearfully admits that he is part of the CIA and his entire life has been a lie becuase they hired fucking SIMON. Simon the crazy asshole worked for the CIA! The CIA maybe isn’t as good as Michael thought! He thought he was giving crack money for guns because, like, freedom and democracy or whatever. But to hire SIMON? Fuck you Obama! Hash tag not my president! Anyway James decides against killing Michael because he could have got them all locked up and so he believes that Michael really is willing to defect from the CIA. James has a plan that he’ll go to jail. Sonya will run The Family. Michael will be in cohoots with the Family but get high up in the CIA. Also the two of them will fuck. Like, a lot. I don’t blame Michael one bit, Sonya is pretty fine. Sonya could do better though, I mean, Sam Axe is RIGHT THERE. Anyway that’s the plan. Sam, Jesse (idk how to spell his name), and Fiona recognize that Michael has defected. Sam points out that this Family, which is doing exactly what OTBM did (it’s taking down bad guys without the law getting in the way… and you know sometimes they murder people who get in the way). Anyway Sam and Michael fight and unfortunately Michael wins. They all try to convince (or beat) Michael out of The Family in this, the penultimate episode, but to no avail. Until Fiona is like “go ahead and kill me, or whatever, melodramatic speech about love and shit” and Michael, who has Fiona at gunpoint and Sonya… is also there… I dunno. Look it’s the classic situation where he can shoot one of them and he shoots Sonya… bummer. James sees this, doesn’t go to jail, and swears vengeance on Michael. All I remember is that Michael’s mom gets killed. Fiona and Michael blow up in a building with James but Fiona and Michael somehow survive. The series ends with Sam and Jesse being like “we should do a spin-off” which would have been fucking AWESOME and we seriously didn’t get it? Then Michael and Fiona are in Ireland with Nate’s baby (Michael’s mom adopts it) and the end. Ehhh.

Where Does Burn Notice: The Fix fit into this timeline?

It’s right after the first season and maybe an episode or two into the second season. He never mentions Carla but he does mention Phillip Cowan. So yeah… just forget everything I said for season 2 onward. Now you know everything you need to in order to prep yourself for this week’s episode.