Episode two of Burn Notice‘s fourth season was an actual improvement over the premiere episode thanks to a welcome overlap between the overarching story and this week’s case. Plus, there’s trouble brewing for future episodes!

“Fast Friends” sees Michael deal with the aftermath of his actions at the end of the premiere when he burned an unsuspecting agent. That agent is Jesse Porter and in this episode, Michael decides that the best way to figure out what all Porter’s information means is to follow him and convince him that as a former burned spy, he knows how to get his back. Of course, helping Jesse also allows Michael to feel better about the terrible thing he did to him.

Moreover, Jesse obviously wants to find the guy who burned him and as the end of the episode presents, actually kill him. Through one crisis, Michael is able to keep Jesse under his thumb and keep him away from the truth, but someone as smart as Jesse supposedly is will find out the truth at some point. Then, Michael will have lots of explaining to do — and defending to do.

So until anything happens, there is going to be this awkward and menacing aura hanging over the relationship between Michael and Jesse and really Jesse and the whole team. He and Sam already don’t get along — although there was some odd sexual tension between Jesse and Fi, was there not? — and it’s only a matter of time before Jesse figures it out and everybody has to start covering their tracks.

On the larger front, Jesse mentions that he assumes the reason for his burning involved getting “too close” to a guy who has done a lot of bad things recently, which I can only imagine is the guy that freed Simon at the end of S3 who Vaughn wants Michael to find. Speaking of Vaughn, he is very open to letting Michael take the lead on the Jesse situation, which makes me wonder. Is it possible that this is just part of a larger set up to take Michael down or make him the fall guy for something dastardly that we haven’t seen yet? It’s not as if Michael can really trust him, right?

In any event, season four of Burn Notice is off to a very, very nice start. Thoughts?