Episode 212: Seek and Destroy

Seek and Destroy
Season 2, Episode 12
Air date	February 5, 2009
Written by	Rashad Raisani
Directed by	Scott Peters
Episode Guide
previous Hot Spot	next Bad Breaks

Seek and Destroy is the twelvth episode of the second season and the twenty-fourth episode overall.

Notes

• Clients: Scott Chandler, Melanie
• Bad Guys: Jacob Orr, Derek Poole

Synopsis

Michael, under the alias of Miles Parker, is hired by Scott Chandler to investigate strange activity - log-ins at odd hours, unusual computer activity and telephone bugging - at an art gallery. But after being attacked by the gallery's receptionist, Michael finds himself working against Chandler.

Meanwhile, Michael needs to find the person who planted the bomb at his loft, therefor he turns to arms dealer Seymour for help.

Spy Facts

• Getting information is all about fitting in. If you're hunting for intel in the Middle East, that means a beard and a djellaba. If you're doing it on South Beach, you're probably wearing a swimsuit and flip-flops.
• When it comes to intelligence gathering, you can't hold grudges. The guy who hit you with a baseball bat yesterday could be an information source today. 
• There are a lot of advantages… to taking on a new identity when you take a new job. You can tailor you resume to the position and it gives you a lot of flexibility. You just have to get used to the idea of lying to everyone you meet. 
• To protect someone without blowing your cover, you have to come up with a story, one that explains what they're doing, explains what you're doing and gets everyone out in one piece. Of course, not everyone is a born story teller. 
• A bug, in its simplest form is just a microphone attached to a radio. Effective, but easy to detect with a frequency scanner. A more subtle device is the wireless key logger circuit. Nearly undetectable and easy to install, it transmits every password you type into the keyboard. All surveillance devices, though, share a weakness: they're machines. When machines break, somebody has to fix them. More spies get caught changing batteries and fixing wires than any other single activity. 
• To make a magnet powerful enough to wipe a security camera tape, you need a strong power supply. A wall outlet will do nicely if there's one available. But if you need something more portable, a car battery works in a pinch. Of course, you have to be careful to use a heavy-gauge wire if you don't want a fiery explosion that covers you in battery acid. But do it right, and you've got a magnet powerful enough to wipe any magnetic media you can manage to get close to. 
• When you're playing the role of spy hunter and the person you're hunting is yourself, the trail of evidence, can lead anywhere you say it does. And no one can create more fear, more paranoia than the spy-hunter. 
• For a female operative, picking a guy up at a bar is harder than it might seem. Most men have a sense for when a pickup is going too well. If it's too easy, they get suspicious. If it's too hard, they move on. 
• Once an operative has a guy on the hook, she needs backup to make sure things don't go too far. The proper sedative for cocktail hour ensures an early evening. Chloral hydrate is a mild but effective choice. It'll do the trick, but only if the target's interested in drinking it. If he's not, you have to induce unconsciousness some other way. 
• When it comes to security, the difference between a spy and a regular thief is that a thief gets to take what he wants and run. A spy has to go back to the scene of the crime the next day and act like nothing happened. It makes the approach a little more delicate. 
• When you're a spy you spend a lot of time looking for people's hiding places. It's always good to start by searching where your target has the easiest access. Of course, smart targets don't always hide things where they have the easiest access. After that the search gets a little more subtle, you look for signs: moved furniture, marks on the carpet, scuffs on the walls, anything out of place. 
• When you're playing the spy hunter, the goal is to get the target to trust you completely, to think of you as his only ally. Convince him that he's on the brink of disaster and he'll tell you whatever you want him to. 
• One of the problems with running a criminal conspiracy is that there's no way to avoid trust issues with your employees. If you steal with a guy, he knows you're a thief. If you kill with him, he knows you're a killer… It's a serious management issue. 
• Favored by bomb squads, disrupter shells are a specially-designed shotgun round filled with water. The blast can blow an explosive device apart without igniting it. The shells are only lethal up to about six feet. At 10 feet, they just hurt a lot. 

Full Recap

Recap! This episode has no or an incomplete recap. Please help Burn Wiki by expanding it, adding pictures, and improving existing text.

Mike and Fi headed out to get some intel and, being in Miami, had to dress the part: in swimsuits. Fi was starting to feel like her sarong was too much -- "suddenly I'm feeling overdressed," she said. Mike needed to find out what his old friend, Seymour, knew about the guy who tried to kill him.

Mike asked Fi if she wanted to "talk about what happened the other night," referring to their kiss. She said there was nothing to talk about, that they were "just blowing of some steam, right?"

Seymour once hit Mike with a baseball bat, but Mike said you can't hold grudges when gathering intelligence. Fi went to handle the security guard while Mike went to talk to Seymour, who panicked and shouted, "Security!" when he saw Mike. Fi took care of the security guard, taking his gun and kneeing him in the stomach. Seymour pulled his own gun on Mike, who tricked him just long enough to take the gun and get Seymour into a chokehold. Seymour agreed to help Mike as long as Mike agreed to teach him some of his moves.

Mike told Fi he needed to get some cash. Seymour had offered to front some, but Mike said Seymour isn't the kind of guy he wants to owe money to long term. Fi told him to get a job, but Mike couldn't do it because the people who burned would question it. She'd just turned a job with an art dealer. Sam worked up a new cover ID for Mike so he could take the art dealer job.

Mike showed up to the art dealer as Scott Parker, a private investigator, for the art dealer job. The art dealer, Chandler, said he'd noticed "some unusual activity on the computers -- files moved, logins at odd times." He'd also found a bug in his office. He said his business and reputation depends on information remaining private. Mike agreed to take the job.

Seymour called Mike and had information on the bomber. He said the bomber did demo work for the city and moonlighted for the Russian mob. He said the bomber has a girlfriend, then veered off to talk about Mike and Fi being a "molten hot action couple." Mike said they weren't together. Mike got Seymour back on course, talking about the bomber's girlfriend. The bomber and the girlfriend can't go long without seeing each other, and she works at the place where the Russian mobsters hang out. Just then, she drove up. Her name was Bianca.

Seymour told Mike that his bodyguard was going to plant a tracking device on Bianca's car. Mike didn't think it was such a good idea to do that in front of the Russian mob. Mike told Seymour not to make any more moves on his own. He stopped the bodyguard before he tried to plant the device.

Sam was loving the corporate espionage job, saying that without the explosions of their normal stuff, it was like going on the kiddie rides at a carnival. They mapped out how someone might break into the art gallery, thinking it'd be late at night when the cleaning crew comes through. Fi was bored and wondered why Mike called her to the loft. She asked if it was about the other night and because she didn't stay for breakfast. Mike ignored this and left to see Chandler.

Mike told Chandler he thought his spy might have left something more than a bug in his office. He found a wireless keylogger circuit, which transmits all the passwords typed into a keyboard. Mike said all these devices are machines, though, and need to be fixed when broken. "More spies get caught changing batteries and fixing wires than any other single activity," Mike said. He called Chandler and told him he'd have to work late that night.

Mike stayed late that night and after the cleaning crew left, he caught Melanie, the receptionist of the art gallery, sneaking into Chandler's office. He asked what she was up to and she ask him not to tell Chandler, "he'll kill me." Then she told Mike that Chandler killed her father.

Melanie explained to Mike and Sam that her father was a painter, J.D. Blake (whose name Sam recognized because his old girlfriend was into pop art), and that Chandler was his dealer. While her dad's health was failing, Chandler was pressuring him to finish his final painting, "Lady in White." Blake grew tired of the pressure and said he was going to get a new dealer. Soon after, he was beaten up and his studio was burned down. "Lady in White" was reported stolen. Melanie got a job with Chandler when she heard the painting was being moved on the black market.

Her story checked out as Sam got a copy of Melanie's birth certificate. Mike had Sam tell Melanie not to spy anymore. He had to erase the footage of the security cameras in the back of the gallery, which he did using a homemade magnet using a car battery.

Then, Mike went to Chandler and told him the security cameras were wiped clean. Mike, who was now the spy and spy hunter, took this new role as a chance to make Chandler paranoid and told Chandler he needed access to his computer files in order to catch the spy.

Sam didn't find much in the files, but managed to track down Chandler's "wet-work guy," Orr, based on phone records from the week Melanie's father was killed. Sam then wanted to know why Mike didn't tell him about his "booty call" with Fi.

Sam and Fi were staking out Orr at a hotel bar. She needed to plant a bug in his cell phone and had to get him to take her to his room. Sam said she has a knack for making men make bad choices, and she knew Sam knew about her and Mike. "He started it," she said.

She got Orr up to his room and when he didn't drink the spiked cocktail she made, she had to knock him unconscious the old-fashioned way, with a couple of liquor bottles to the head. Sam heard all this commotion from outside the room and was trying to bust in to help, but Fi handled it just fine on her own and walked out calmly.

Melanie came to the loft, frantic about the fact that Chandler had the hard drives sent to a data company to have the footage reconstructed. Sam told Melanie they got some good stuff from Orr's cell phone, including a phone call to Chandler where they talk about a holding company that might be what they were going to use for the dirty money from the painting.

Mike went to Chandler's house, claiming the spies broke into his house. He told Chandler he needed to give him all of his computer files and security codes. Mike then broke into the gallery and tracked down Chandler's hiding place for the files he was still keeping secret. They were in an armored safe that would require a diamond-tipped drill with a cooling system. Sam said it would take a couple of days, but he could get it.

Melanie was getting worried because Chandler had been acting odd at work. Mike told her to just pretend nothing was going on. Melanie left and Fi said, "You know, pretending like nothing is going on is easier for some people than for others."

Mike said nothing and Seymour called. He, Mike and Fi were next seen staking out a cottage where Seymour said Mike's bomber was holed up. When the man, Derek Poole, stepped out to see his girlfriend off, they noticed the door and windows were booby trapped. Mike went out to look for a better entrance. Seymour asked Fi about her and Mike. "As a practitioner of Tai Chi," Seymour told Fi to go with the flow of the universe. He told her that she and Mike are destined for each other.

Melanie called Mike from the office on a weekend. She said she found files that Chandler's secretary was supposed to shred, but she didn't finish. Mike realized it was a trap because Chandler would know if an employee went into the office over the weekend. Sure enough, Chandler pulled up.

Mike told Melanie to tape a cell phone to the top of a box and run a wire behind it. Mike told Fi to get some explosives and told Sam to get in touch with Chandler's hit man.

Mike called Chandler and made him believe the spy was setting a trap. He showed him the taped up box he told Melanie to set up by the front door of the gallery and convinced Chandler it was a bomb.

Mike told Chandler it was his last chance and made him admit it was about a painting he was trying to move on the black market. He said a guy wanted the painting, which is worth $7 million.

Mike had Fi blow up Chandler's car to demonstrate to Chandler that his only ally was Mike. Meanwhile, Sam was over at the hotel bar telling Orr that Chandler was off-loading the painting and cutting him out of the action. He set it up so that Orr would arrive just minutes after this...

Mike and Chandler arrived at Chandler's house to get the painting. When the painting was finally in his hands, Mike revealed to Chandler that he was the spy, then he smacked him over the head with the butt of his gun. Mike took the painting and left.

Orr showed up a few minutes later and Chandler said the spy took the painting. Orr didn't believed this and pulled out his gun, aiming it at Chandler's chest. We pan out of the house as gunshots were heard inside.

Melanie gave Mike some cash that her father had left her. She also gave him a small painting of a butterfly that the father made the year she was born.

Mike asked Sam to drop off the painting. "I have to go kidnap an explosives expert," Mike said.

Seymour brought some specially modified shotguns for Mike and Fi. The shotguns were loaded with disruptor shells, which are filled with water so they can blow an explosive device apart without igniting it. They blasted the windows of Derek's cottage and hit him once with a round to knocked him down.

Poole confessed he was hired to bomb Mike's place for $100,000. He gave Mike the account number where the money came from. Mike asked Seymour if he hand any gun shipments going to Suriname. Then he put the hood back on Derek's head.

Seymour raced outside and gave Mike and Fi gifts in honor of their first operation. They were matching throwing daggers. He pointed out the engraving, which was a symbol meaning destiny. "It's a symbol of your bond," he said.

Mike didn't say anything, but just stared at Seymour. When Seymour left, Mike told Fi that the morning after they hooked up, he got her a Spanish omelet, egg whites only. She said that was her favorite, and that maybe next time she'd have to stay for breakfast.

Cast

Main

• Jeffrey Donovan as Michael Westen
• Bruce Campbell as Sam Axe
• Gabrielle Anwar as Fiona Glenanne

Recurring

• Silas Weir Mitchell as Seymour
• Brett Taylor as Hoffman (a.k.a. Jackass)
• Chris Marazzo as Derek Poole

Guest

• Joel Gretsch as Scott Chandler
• Marla Sokoloff as Melanie
• M.C. Gainey as Jacob Orr

Trivia

• Sharon Gless does not appear in this episode.

Continuity Errors

• The security code for Scott Chandler's office changes from an insecure three digit code (574) early on in the episode to a more secure seven digit code five minutes later in the episode.