Episode 403: Made Man

Made Man
Season 4, Episode 3

Air date	June 17, 2010
Written by	Alfredo Barrios Jr.
Directed by	Jeffrey Donovan
Episode Guide
previous Fast Friends	next Breach of Faith

Made Man is the third episode of the fourth season and the forty-seventh episode overall.

Notes[]

Clients: Hank (The Client)
Bad Guys: Tony (Mr. Clean), Gio (The New York Guy)
Others: Jesse (Recently Burned Spy)

Synopsis[]

While investigating an underground artillery operation at the Port of Miami, Michael and Jesse come across a port worker being threatened by dangerous mobsters. To get the mob off the docks for good, Michael will need to call on the help of a familiar friend.

Spy Facts[]

Spies come from all walks of life, and no two are exactly alike. But whether they're a burned former operative, a beautiful bomber with a temper, or a hard-drinking ex-SEAL, they all share one trait: punctuality. Showing up on time means you're 15 minutes late.

Identifying an illicit weapons shipment from a specific country isn't as simple as checking manifests or spotting a flag on a ship. It's too easy for arms dealers to fake both. But phony paperwork and false flags won't stop crew members from telling you the straight story. Chat up the right deckhand, and you can learn where every shady piece of cargo came on board. There's no substitute for human intelligence.

Ideally, a bug should never be seen by anyone. But when there's a possibility it may be, it's best to make it look like something people won't want to touch. A wad of gum stuck to a balled-up piece of tissue and a sprinkling of whatever's in your lint trap will usually do the trick.

Organized crime bosses, like senior administrators in any business, have a lot of people who want to meet with them. Hang around long enough, asking for some face time, and you can get yourself on the schedule. But don't count on the receptionist offering you coffee while you wait.

Holding someone's arms behind their back is a good technique for a bully on the playground, but it leaves you very exposed. A well-placed kick right beneath the knee will cripple your opponent, and a crippled opponent can be a great weapon.

Grabbing someone who travels with protection, is about finding the moments when they're least protected. Fortunately, even the most paranoid gangster insists on doing some things alone. Executing a successful close-quarters assault is all about setting the stage. You'll want to dull any reflective surfaces, corral your target into a corner, and hit him when he's most vulnerable. And it never hurts to have a prearranged exit strategy.

Convincing a general that he can't trust his soldiers is an ancient and time-honored strategy. In ancient Rome, staging a botched assassination usually involved poisoning a few slaves. Today, the same effect can be achieved with a cheap cell phone and a brick of explosive.

One reason it's tough to pull off the perfect crime, is destroying evidence leaves it's own evidence. If a section of floor has been cleaned with a powerful surfactant, it sticks out like a drop of bleach on a shirt; begging the question: what did someone go to so much trouble to clean?

If you're cutting through a high-powered electric fence, you need more than rubber gloves and a pair of thick-soled shoes. Covering a fence with spray-on insulation and using a set of fiberglass-handled bolt cutters will keep you from lighting up like a Christmas tree.

A shape charge large enough to go through a wall is also large enough to let everyone for several miles know what you're doing. A smaller charge can be just as useful and a lot less noisy.

A hydraulic spreader puts out enough pressure to rip a door off a Humvee. Placed correctly, it will make short work of reinforced concrete.

A spy's job is to get into the head of his adversary, to know how he'll behave and use it against him. But human behavior is about as predictable as the weather. Sometimes the most hardened criminal can decide to be noble at the most inconvenient time.

Creating the illusion of force is one of the oldest tricks in warfare. The rise of the private security guard has made it a lot easier. Post a job opening on the Internet in the morning and by lunch, you can have a whole platoon of muscular guys in black blazers. Hire some heavy-duty S.U.V.s to put your security force in place and it'll look just like you've got troops ready for battle.

Military leaders since the city-states of early Greece have known that a tried-and-tested method for getting rid of an adversary, is to provoke him to attack a more powerful enemy. Provide an ambitious adversary with the backing of a seemingly invincible army, and he's bound to go hunting for even his toughest rival. Making sure your adversary is eliminated, then becomes about pulling that backing once he's declared war on his rival; when it's too late for him to take it all back.

Full Recap[]

We started the night with the gang waiting for Jesse, the spy Michael burned and the newest member of their merry gang. Jesse came with big information about working with the defense department on some bombings and such that seemed to contain a pattern. That's why he came to Miami, where weapons were coming through the port from Algeria. He said he wanted to find a guy who he nicknamed "Cobra" because of the hissing quality of his voice. He'd made contact with a guy who was part of the operation and told him he wanted to ship some guns. He'd only talked to the guy on the phone. They headed to the docks.

Jesse wasn't able to get a intel from the dock workers, but he did get himself involved in a little spat between some mob guys and a security guard who was getting shaken down and beaten up. The security guard, Hank, needed some help dealing with the mobsters. Jesse takes care of one of the mob guys and takes his gun. Michael and Fi watched this happen. Once again, Fi stated "I like this guy." (Does Michael realize he has competition now?) Michael agreed to see what they were up against.

Sam found the bar where the mobsters hung out. They saw Tony, the mob boss nicknamed "Mr. Clean" because he'd been accused of murder seven times and was never convicted. Michael thought they had to put some dirt on him.

Maddy got to know Jesse, and questioned him about what he did for a living. Michael told Jesse he needed to get ears on the mob guys to make them think the feds were aware of their dock operation. Jesse couldn't be involved because they'd already seen his face. Sam gave Michael an FBI persona named Ned.

Michael got a meeting with Tony, the boss, and asked how much some potential information he might have would be worth.

As they frisked him, a bug was dropped out of Michael's pocket and kicked under Tony's seat.

Tony agreed to meet him somewhere else later, and told him never to come back to the bar again.

Michael went to the meeting and a couple of Tony's guys showed up without Tony, saying they knew Michael wasn't the agent he said he was. They beat him up until he talked. Then he beat them both up and walked away.

Sam picked up on Tony's bug that Tony's contact in the FBI said Michael was a fake. But Sam found another route. A guy named Gio came down from New York to squeeze Tony for some money. Tony was $15,000 light on his income for the organization and Gio wasn't happy about it. Michael and Sam saw it as a chance to catch Tony in a desperate enough situation to make a mistake.

"Looks like he's going to have to meet Chuck Finley," Sam said.

Jesse met with Hank, who believed that Jesse, Michael, Sam and Fi were part of an undercover government security team, and got the manifests from every ship from Algeria in the last three months. Maddy got Jesse to open up about his mother, who died when he was 9. She was killed by a robber in a parking lot.

That night, Sam and Jesse pulled off a kidnapping of Tony in the men's room at a club, and Sam set off to scare Tony into doing something illegal. Sam pretended to have been sent by the family to kill Tony, but Tony begged for a chance to pay Sam off and told him about a big shipment coming into the docks where they could clear $5 million, easy. He told Sam he'd cut him in for $1 million, but Sam suggested to Tony that he couldn't get his crew involved because they work for Gio.

Jesse was able to track some of the weapons shipments from the docks to the airport, but still had to figure out what happened next. Meanwhile, Sam called and said Tony was working on getting his crew involved in the $5 million score at the docks. Michael and Sam realized they had to do something to convince Tony he couldn't trust his crew.

Fi planted an explosive under Tony's car, making it mostly obvious to him so he could hear it, and then see it. As he ran away from the device, she set it off. Tony went straight to Sam, confirming that he couldn't trust his own guys. He asked Sam to put together a crew to pull off the dock job.

As they agreed on a strategy, Sam told Tony, "I'm really glad I didn't cut you into a million pieces. Don't make me regret my decision, huh?"

Michael and Fi explained the plan to Hank, but he didn't seem comfortable. Jesse was going to serve as Sam's right-hand man. When Sam, Jesse and Tony got to the dock, Tony didn't want to do the dirty work and go inside the secured area. Jesse told Sam to share with Tony the story of how he saved his friend back when they were in the Navy Seals -- the moral of the story was "no man left behind." Sam told Tony the story and Tony agreed to go in, but Sam was upset with Jesse for pimping out his personal story to a bad guy.

Back at Maddy's, Jesse finally told her the story of how he'd been a spy and was fired and Michael saved him. He told her Michael was "a good man," as Maddie began to figure out her son's role in Jesse's misfortunes.

Michael and Jesse headed to a hangar to check out a plane that was used to transport some weapons. They found some blood in the landing gear and figured a body had been dumped somewhere over the place where the landing gear was last deployed.

At the dock, Sam, Fi and Jesse worked with Tony to break through the electric fence securing the cargo. They got in and Tony drove the truck with $5 million worth of microprocessors away as Sam pretended to have been apprehended by Hank, the security guard. Tony was supposed to head away from the docks where the cops were going to catch him, but he had second thoughts -- inspired by Sam's story of leaving no man behind. Tony came back and grabbed Sam, and they ran away.

Tony still wanted to team with Sam to "make a move." He wanted Sam's help to take out Gio. He told Sam that Gio and his crew go to the track every Friday. "All we need is muscle and guns," he said.

Jesse suggested they let Tony go through with his plan, but they had to put together "an army" first. They placed an online ad for private security guards and got a bunch of muscle heads in blazers to sign up. All they had to do was drive SUVs. The crew set up a face to face showdown in which Tony confronted Gio and told him he was going to take over Miami. And just as Tony called for his backup, Sam and everyone else drove away, leaving Tony to shoot for his life against Gio and his men.

In the end, Tony killed Gio and was in the hospital recovering from his injuries, awaiting murder charges.

There were 11 arrests on the docks right away and Hank asked Jesse what he should say about the "undercover security team" that cleaned up the place. Jesse told Hank not to say anything, noting, "some stories you don't tell."

Later, Sam brought some information on the cargo plane. It last landed in the Bahamas, where a John Doe washed up on shore the same day. They decided to go check it out, and Fi was going to get Jesse into the cargo bay of a cigarette boat.

That afternoon, Maddy was waiting for Michael at the loft. She figured out that Michael had something to do with Jesse losing his job. She said she knew he did "this kind of stuff, but seeing it up close and personal like this is just...."

She was upset with Michael for lying to Jesse.

"Take it from me, lies get out," she told him. "Thirty years with your father taught me that."

Cast[]

Main[]

Recurring[]

N/A

Guest[]

Nestor Serrano as Tony Caro
Max Perlich as Hank
Brian Scannell as Dean
Angelo Valderrama as Claudio
Tony McFarr as Stunt Billy
Joe Vita as Gio Russo

Trivia[]

This is the first episode directed by Jeffrey Donovan.

Continuity Errors[]

The security guard Hank gets his right hand bashed by a metal container door. When Jesse meets him again to receive the documents, Hank hands them over with his right hand. After suffering such a painful injury, a person would not lift anything heavy with that arm.