Summer is a time for fun, sun, camping and BBQ with the friends.  Summer is also time for Michael Weston.  Summer is a time for Burn Notice.

Season 5 ended with Anson botching Michael first official mission, causing a couple explosions in an airport and Fiona turning herself in.  Then they made me wait.

I may have mentioned this before but I am not very good at waiting.

Season six starts like twenty three seconds after Five ended.  Pierce is livid, Fiona is being processed by the FBI and Michael has gone off the deep end.  He’s losing Fiona and he can’t handle it.

Agent Pierce wants Michael’s ass for blowing the operation and for getting her into trouble but more importantly she wants something that she rarely gets from Michael.  She wants the truth and she’s not buying Michael’s version.  So Michael, Sam and Jesse go searching, tearing down all of Miami to search for Anson.

Back in processing Fiona is interviewed by an familiar face and an old enemy of Michaels, Agent Jason Bly.  He’s trying to tear her down, break her spirit and convince her that Michael’s did and to turn against him.

Sam and Michael track Anson down to a chemical plant. As Michael is about to bring him in, Anson reveals a dead-man switch that will trigger a bomb in the plant, and Michael allows him to escape.   Jesse and Madeline deal with a paranoid Army Ranger patient of Anson’s sent to kill her.  With Anson on the loose Pearce put him on the top of every government.

Unlike previous season premiers this one knocked it out of the park.  This was the perfect example of a successful premier.  The premier is an episode that is to set up the entire season or at least the first half, and let us know what this year’s threat will be about. When you leave on a cliff hanger you have slightly different rules.  You have to be-part epilogue and part prologue (Prepilogue?).  This premier feels not like a start or end but like a bridge between Five and Six.  You see the aftermath of Fiona turning herself in, you see Anson taking a forefront as the shows main villain, and your see the world around Michael both crumble and improve at the same time.

This brings us to Michael.

Jeffrey Donovan is magnificent in portraying Michael’s decent.  It’s often been shown, especially in the later seasons, that Michael’s humanity is firmly rooted in his friends and (reluctantly) his family and none more so then Fiona.  So when Anson takes her away from him, he’s taking his soul with it.  Michael is mad, he’s angry and he’s ready to blow Anson head clean off Dirty Harry style.  He isn’t smiling, he isn’t planning.  This is the Michael Larry Sizemore talks about, the one that is feared by numerous nations.

It’s also nice to see the show start to illustrate just how evil Anson Fullerton is.  How he manipulated a mentally ill Army Ranger into believing Michael Weston was the enemy and that his innocent mother, Madeline, deserved to die because of it.  Anson had always been seen as calculating and almost idealistic, which made him a villain but not an evil one like Simon or Carla.  Now he’s evil.  Now we hate him instead of view him as a mere inconvenience.

Burn Notice is back already this season is looking good.