Burn Notice/Awesome

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Come on guys, it's Burn Notice. It has Bruce Campbell and Stuff Blowing Up! What's more awesome than that?

  • A couple from the first season finale:
    • The club scene with Carmello, the heroin dealer ("second biggest" in Miami). After planting explosives all over, threatening to blow up the place, and drinking Carmello's expensive champagne, Michael gets up to leave. Carmello asks, "Who are you?" Michael stops, glances back, and says very calmly: "I'm Michael Westen. I used to be a spy." Total HELL YEAH moment.
    • Later, Michael's trying to get his mom and brother out of the city, and Shadowy Bad Guys are tracking them with a bugged cell phone. Michael stops the car in the middle of the street, blocking traffic, gets out with a gun, points it at his own head (while simultaneously having a crapload of thugs also pointing guns at him), and says into the bugged phone that he knows the Shadowy Bad Guys want him for a specific purpose, and if they don't talk to him right the hell now he's going to kill himself. A couple seconds later, the phone rings, and he answers it with a casual, flippant "Yello?"
    • Fiona, too, is Made Of Awesome: there's her leap off the bridge at the end of the first half of the finale. Also the scene in the warehouse later, when Michael tosses her a gun, she makes a running catch, and starts shooting without missing a beat.
    • Sam's scenes under torture in the season one finale. Every time they hit him, he keeps giving them pointers on what they're doing wrong and mouthing off. His plan is to piss them off further, knowing that a quick death by shooting is better than a slow death by other methods. He even gets a coded message to Michael and Fiona in his proof-of-life picture . . . telling them NOT to rescue him.
      • Notable too, the whole reason he wants to get killed is not because he wants a quick death, but to prevent Michael and Fi from trying to rescue him (and getting killed in the process). He knows that his captors are very dangerous and willing to kill without hesitation, as well as being very well-prepared. The moment works on many levels since it was established previously that Sam had lost his squad in a similar situation and held a lot of guilt over it.
  • Early in season one, after finding out that the trigger spring has been removed from his gun, Michael promptly improvises a new one. Out of a hairpin.
  • In season one, Michael affects a "psycho" persona by destroying two mobsters with a baseball bat, and later by wedging a dumpster against the door of their car, boring through the roof with a power drill, pouring turpentine into the car, threatening to set them on fire, and then jumping up and down on top of the car, screaming, "This neighborhood is mine!" as the roof caves in on the terrified criminals. Incredibly, he tops this in season two while posing as a recovering alcoholic newly empowered by religion; crashing an SUV into his employer's car, he thunders a truly frightening speech at them about judgment for their sins (before leaving a "confession" of said sins on the windshield for the police to find).
  • "Rough Seas". Michael's transformation from his nerdy chemist cover to stoic death-dealer is unparalleled.
    • In the middle of the episode, there was also a great scene where Michael, still undercover as a nerd who's serving as a man-on-the-inside for a gang of pirates, sets up a boat heist for them, with team ally Virgil serving as the boat captain. When he finds out at the last minute that the gang plans to kill Virgil, he improvises a plan with just a few seconds of planning: He first demands a gun ("there might be people shooting, I wanna be able to shoot back!"), then gets to Virgil before they can, fake-panics and fires near (but not at) Virgil. Virgil, given no other warning except "Go with this," executes his part and fakes being shot without a hitch.
  • That time in season 2 that Fiona tasers a Russian mobster holding on to her leg - fully knowing that it means she will be shocked as well.
  • "Bad Breaks" is pretty much a whirlpool of awesome for everyone. The woman Sam's courting seems largely unfazed by his side job, Bly's return, Michael using the baddie's tools against them, Sam's bluff, Michael's quiet little speech, and Fi blowing up the truck and then sipping coffee.
  • "Lesser Evil", the S2 finale. Michael and Victor working together, Fi sniping Carla, Sam and Madeline blowing up Madeline's house by Mac Guyvering Christmas tree lights to make their escape, Madeline sending Sam back to save Michael, and Michael basically going "screw you" by jumping out of the chopper into the sea miles from Miami.

Management: You want out? There's the door! But you have no idea the kind of hell waiting if we stop protecting you!
[[[Beat]], as Michael leans forward as if to close the door.]
Michael: ...I'll take my chances. {{[spoiler| He jumps out of the helicopter.}}]

  • Sam and Michael's reverse-interrogation of a diamond smuggler who's kidnapped a little boy in 3x02, "Questions and Answers". Sam plays a corrupt cop who enlists the kidnapper to "help him interrogate" a druggie who supposedly has information about a plan to double-cross the kidnapper. Michael is the druggie. The actual interrogation is one big masterful game of Xanatos Speed Chess between Michael and Sam pretty much making the entire thing up on the spot, culminating in Michael "escaping" to save the boy and Sam tricking the kidnappers into shooting each other.
    • That episode also had a Crowning Moment for the client (the boy's father, whom the kidnappers were trying to leverage into giving them info to pull off a heist): The father has to set up a meeting with the kidnapper so that Sam and Mike can ID the guy. One glance in the wrong direction, and the kidnapper might realize he's being watched. The father--a civilian with NO training in withstanding forceful methods--takes a beating without slipping up; the only person he looks at is the kidnapper, and the determined look on his face as he looks in the kidnapper in the eye and tells him he's told no one is downright inspiring. Some Papa Wolf methods are subtler than others.
    • That episode also had an amazing moment at the finale, after Westen and co. had successfully framed the head kidnapper's underlings as backstabbers. The head guy confronted his henchmen and ended up in a Mexican Standoff with them. Sam, watching from nearby, drops a match into the powderkeg by firing his own gun into the ground, and is instantly greeted with the pleasant sound of nearby gunfire.
  • Madeline's "interrogation" of the pilot in "The Hunter". Guy withstands all of Sam's experience and Fiona's threats, but facing a very angry mom who never, ever raises her voice and offers him a cigarette? Madeline walks back with the information they need.
    • Indeed. Madeline Westen proved where her son's awesome-genes came from in that scene. As Michael said in a season 2 ep, "Violence perceived is violence achieved."
    • Then there's Michael managing to get the drop on a squad of 6 armed Ukrainian commandos in a swamp. Did we mention he's alone and he's working with only some fishing line, gunpowder, one block of C4, and a bunch of trees?
      • Even Michael's unwilling criminal partner gets one, trumping Chechik's KGB Colonel with his KGB General.
  • Third season episode, "Shot in the Dark". First, Michael manages to convince a car thief that one of the previous owners is trying to kill both of them. Next, he talks the thief into hiring a couple of mercenaries, helpfully played by Sam and Fiona. Then, they wear and set off a bunch of exploding blood packs to make the thief think the non-existent killers just offed all three of them - and he's next. Finally, when the thief and his gangster brother return to the scene of the "crime", Michael is there pretending to be a priest, worried sick about the now-hysterical thief's mental breakdown. Cue the thief bolting out of the mission accusing random people (Sam and Fi incognito, of course) of being the killers he hired.
    • "He winked at me!"
  • In "Long Way Back", the S3 half-finale, there's Michael's distraction of O'Neill by driving the Buick off a roof; Michael shooting Strickler twice in what seems like the blink of an eye; and Sam and Michael's Roaring Rampage of Revenge to get Fiona back.
  • Michael (or, should we say "Luis") snapping his fingers in "Friendly Fire". Guaranteed cue for something to blow up or fall down.
  • And in "Devil You Know", the S3 finale, we have Michael escaping from the city-wide manhunt; Fiona and Sam defusing a bomb together; Michael saving Management's ass; and Madeline bitchslapping an FBI agent.
  • In "Past and Future Tense", Team Westen is taking on a Russian wetwork team. Cue showdown:

Russian: He's Michael Westen! There are only four of us!

    • Michael was something of a legend pre-burning, so much so that foreign intel agencies figured he didn't exist, that he was either a code name used by a group, or something along the lines of the boogeyman. Whenever this is brought up (and subsequently shot down) is generally a CMOA.
  • In "Where There's Smoke", Michael and Jesse are too busy arguing to leave the scene of a bank they just tried to break into. Cue Madeline, their diversion, strolling up beside their car and knocking on the window, then lighting a cigarette and demonstrating the fake tears she used to get past the bank guards.
  • At the end of "Blind Spot", Sam casually tells the mark, Charles, that he's been drugging him and stringing him along to get his money. Then he tells him that he's told the mark's money manager-who the mark recently pissed off and threatened to blackmail-where Charles is. Then he kicks Charles out of the limo they're in, leaving him stranded in the middle of Miami with no money, no one to turn to, and someone gunning for him.
  • Jesse's Eleventh-Hour Ranger moment in "Guilty as Charged", shooting Michael through the shoulder to save his life.
    • And in the following episode, "Eyes Open", his Cutting the Knot moment when he blows up a Mad Bomber who was about to try and go out in a blaze of glory, to save the cops who he would've killed along with himself. Then he does an Unflinching Walk.

Jesse: Sometimes you got to put the rabid dog down.

  • The B-story scene in "Brotherly Love" where Team Westen gets to show off their skills and teamwork. Sam as the Obfuscating Idiot, Fi making things go boom, Michael with the hand work, and Jesse with the planning and support. Finishes off with a slow walk of all four of them looking badass. Oh yeah.
  • Michael's "circle of trust" from "Dead or Alive". Also a CMOF.
  • It's really hard to choose just one moment from the two-part season four finale, but mentions must go to:
    • Sam getting not one, but TWO Big Damn Heroes moments. First, when he has a sniper sight on Larry, allowing Michael to get away and daring Larry to make a move. Second, when he brings the cavalry (at least a battalion of armed forced guys) to the abandoned hotel where Fi and Michael are about to make a suicide attempt at an escape, Jesse is badly injured, and Maddie is being held hostage by Vaughn. He then punches out Vaughn, which someone has needed to do all season.
    • Maddie blackmailing Congressman Cowley again and then later, spitting in Vaughn's face.
      • Can't forget her attempt to sacrifice herself so her son won't come save her, lying about her condition
    • Fiona's suicide run to be with Michael when she thinks they're both going to be killed by Vaughn's men.
    • Jesse, on a leg that was impaled by a rebar, pulling a Last Stand with Michael and Fiona.
    • For this troper, the most awesome part of the episode is when the hotel's phone rings. There stands Michael, Jesse and Fi trapped with about three guns between them. Outside stands an army of special forces with millions of dollars of equipment backing them up. Jesse's slowly bleeding out, and Vaughn is calling to let them know exactly how screwed they are. Michael's answer? "Bay View Hotel, how may I direct your call?"
    • Michael and Fi thought they had to blow themselves up to take out Vaughn.

Fiona: When the time comes, we'll go together.

  • Maddie's entire bravura performance in "Bloodlines". Not only does she successfully convince the Yakuza hostage that she's a fellow victim and nurse, she does so while being smacked around by Michael in full Frank-Westen impression and successfully stages an "escape" to get the Yakuza to lead Team Westen to his hideout. Maddie is starting to put everyone else to shame with her dedication to the job.
  • In the second season episode "Do No Harm", Sam fights with Michael to keep him from going to Carla for money to save the little kid. By "fights", I mean that Sam blocks Michael's door and gets in a fist-fight with him to keep him from going to Carla.
  • Michael and Maddie pulling a con on a bank robber in "Army of One" - while Michael does his double agent thing convincing Holcomb, the leader, that he's their tech guy and there's a rogue Special Forces guy on the loose trying to kill them, Maddie starts out as a hostage but works with Michael to get all of the hostages to safety. Plus, she saves Michael's ass by bashing a guy's skull in who's about to shoot Michael.
  • Natalie the thief finally getting caught.

Fiona: Clean yourself up. You look like hell.

  • Fiona finally, finally (apparently) killing Larry at the end of "Dead to Rights" only giving him enough time to comprehend how screwed he was. And then, Anson making his grand debut by successfully blackmailing Michael.
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