Identity (Burn Notice)

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“Identity”
Burn Notice episode
Episode no. Season 1
Episode 2
Written by Matt Nix
Directed by Rod Hardy[1]
Production no. BN101
Original airdate July 6, 2007
Episode chronology
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"Pilot" "Fight or Flight"
List of Burn Notice episodes

Identity is the second episode of Burn Notice, an American television drama series created for the USA Network. Michael Westen agrees to help his mother, Madeline Westen recover the money of an elderly friend from a scammer in exchange for information about two mysterious men monitoring his mother's home.

Contents

[edit] Plot

The episode opens with Michael trying to track down where the photographs that he found on his apartment floor were taken. After talking to his mother, Madeline Westen, he found out two government agents were in her home, and after checking the wiring, he finds a bug. He tracks the bug down to an abandoned house only to see two guys taking off in a car and their equipment left in flames.

Madeline refuses to tell her son anything more about the two men that came to her house until Michael agrees to help one of her friends, Laura, who got scammed and beaten by a con artist. Laura is able to provide only a weak description, but the fake certificate she has leads Michael to a copy shop, where he's able to eventually trace it back to the master criminal.

Sam Axe finds that the con artist's name is Quinten (Mark Pellegrino) and provides Michael with a brief background of Quinten's run-ins with the law. Michael decides to use this information to attempt to trick Quinten into thinking that Westen is a fellow con artist. After their first encounter goes poorly, Michael pushes Quinten harder. Sam sets up some fake papers to make it look like Quinten's partners are about to betray him. However, everything falls apart when a device meant to disable Quinten's car is set incorrectly by Fiona Glenanne, and accidentally blows it up right before he steps inside.

Now that Quinten is scared, Michael is playing his cards carefully. He sends Sam & Fiona to play FBI agents and convinces Quinten's partners to leave town. Meanwhile, Michael takes advantage of Quinten's paranoia and convinces Quinten that he cannot go to the bank to withdraw his money because the police are watching him. Michael then cons Quinten into giving him full access to his bank accounts so he can withdraw the money in his place. Once he has the information, Michael proceeds to return all the money Quinten stole, along with providing his name to several "colorful" organizations.

After all of the money is returned, a thankful Madeline finally divulges all of the details about the two government agents. They came into the house and asked whether Michael had returned to Miami. She told them no because to her, "family comes first." She then gives Michael a number the agents had given her to contact them. Michael calls the number and speaks with an anonymous voice, who congratulates Michael for his hard work, but does not provide any helpful information.

"Best time I've had in Miami" ~ Michael

[edit] The Writer's Thoughts

These comments were left in writer, Matt Nix's blog. In reference to the entire episode [2]

“

"Identity" grew out of a couple of things. I have long been fascinated with con artists as well as spies. As Michael says in the episode, they do a lot of the same things and have a lot of the same skills. They just do what they do for different reasons. I liked the idea of putting Michael up against a con artist and seeing if he could beat the guy at his own game. I also wanted to do something that would really demonstrate the difference between Michael and the average P.I. or cop. Michael's not interested in getting the guy busted by the police. That would be easy. He wants his client's money back. That's a much, much harder (and more interesting) thing to do.

 ”

In reference to the "accidental" explosion of Quinten's car.

“ My other favorite moment in the episode was when Sam (Bruce Campbell) unwittingly blows up the car. Bruce was a little unclear how big the explosion was going to be, asking before we shot "Am I going to know when it blows?" The director called action, he dialed the phone, and BOOM – the explosion was HUGE. Bruce's performance in the scene was helped a lot, I think, by the fact that the explosion startled the hell out of him. ”

[edit] Ratings

According to Variety, Burn Notice pulled of a "rare feat" when this second episode matched the 4 million viewers that tuned in for the pilot. Helping the ratings was the fact that USA aired it after the hit movie National Treasure.[3]

[edit] Trivia

  • In this episode, Fiona Glenanne and Sam Axe pose as cops named "Detective Cagney" and "Detective Lacey". Sharon Gless, who plays Michael's mom Madeline Westen in "Burn Notice", played Det. Christine Cagney in the hit CBS television show Cagney & Lacey.
  • The driver's license number L252-784-65-554-0 on the fake ID Michael uses to pose as Quinten, can be decoded as "STATE DRIVERS LICENSE, female, born on February 14, 1965".

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.usanetwork.com/series/burnnotice/blogs/writers02.html} Writer Matt Nix's Blog
  2. ^ http://www.usanetwork.com/series/burnnotice/blogs/writers02.html Writer Matt Nix's Blog
  3. ^ USA viewers take 'Notice'. Retrieved on 2007-08-06.

[edit] External links

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