'Burn Notice,' Season 5, Episode 18, 'Fail Safe'

In "Burn Notice," Season 5, Episode 18, "Fail Safe" the situation with Anson and Michael's new career with the CIA collide in the final airing until next summer. It ends with the sum of all of Michael's fears and a horrible betrayal.

Spoilers surely follow.

While Michael is assigned by Pearce his own CIA team for a snatch and grab operation of a professional spy recruiter, Sam and Fi check out a warehouse in Tampa that has a load of explosives and ammunition owned by Anson. Unfortunately the place blows up before they can retrieve evidence that will bring down Anson and free Fi from being blamed for the explosion that killed the two innocent guards.

In the meantime Anson presents Michael with a terrible choice: Insert a computer virus that will falsely implicate Pearce and his team, thus getting them burned, or Fi goes to jail. At this point, Fi is more than willing to go to jail to prevent Michael from betraying his CIA friends. But here Michael proves to be irrational. He will do anything to prevent Fi from going to jail. His view is that even if he causes Pearce and his team to be burned, he can fix it later. It is a terrible thing for him to think.

In the meantime, the snatch and grab operation goes wrong. Pearce is about to pull the plug when Michael comes up with an alternate plan: Insert Jesse in as a new recruit and have him take the spy recruiter on the plane out of town.

This too goes horribly wrong, thanks to a betrayal from a member of his own team who has been suborned by none other than Anson. Lots of gunfire ensues and the spy recruiter is caught. Michael orders Jesse to smash Pearce's infected laptop. No one will be burned today.

Alas, though, Michael is too late to stop Fi from sacrificing herself to save his soul. Remarkably, even though she is giving herself up right willingly, it takes 20 FBI agents or so with assault rifles to make sure she tries no funny business.

Now Michael's mission will be to do some fast talk with Pearce, free Fi and to get Anson and end him. But we'll have to wait until next summer for that.

Source: Burn Notice, Fail Safe, TV.Rage