It’s good to see that the tried-and-true ‘Burn Notice’ formula isn’t going away any time soon, if at all. In last week’s epsidoe, Michael didn’t even have a CIA job to attend to. He, Sam and Fiona were back to helping regular folks solve irregular problems.

Michael’s brother Nathan comes for another visit in ‘Mind Games’. After the first episode that Nate appeared in, I thought he was annoying and wished he’d never show up again. However, he’s grown on me. Not his character – he’s still pretty annoying – but his interactions with and his affect on Michael.

Nate has a deceased friend whose wife is being shaken down by a loan shark. His friend was deep in debt from gambling problems, and now the loan shark’s muscle man, Carter (played by Wade Williams of ‘Prison Break’ fame), is threatening to destroy her frozen yogurt business and take her boat as payment. The only payment that the lady can offer Michael is free yogurt. For those of you who watch the show, you’ll know exactly why this is better than money for Michael any day.

I’ll never get tired of Michael’s narration during the show, which lets us in on the secrets of being a spy. It’s great fun. This is quite possibly the only series that will ever come close to telling you how to make homemade silencers and bombs. Michael’s personal life is becoming a little unraveled. He’s having nightmares, flashbacks, and bouts of paranoia caused by the stuff he went through when he was burned.

I’ll also never grow weary of the myriad of characters Michael comes up with. In order to infiltrate the loan shark’s gang, Michael poses as a fast-talking guy from Vegas named Trey. His characters are intricately thought-out, and Trey’s quirk is misquoting everyday idioms: “There’s more than one way to skin a cat’s hair off its body.”

Michael and the team play Carter against the loan shark, hoping to make Carter look like an undercover cop. That way, the bad guys take care of each other and none of the good people end up getting hurt. They’ve tried this sort of thing before with success. I thought it seemed like this had been done before on ‘Burn Notice’, until the twist comes where Carter actually is an undercover FBI agent. Now Michael is faced with the fact that he unintentionally ratted out a federal agent.

While this episode doesn’t have the personal kick that last week’s episode had, it shows us that ‘Burn Notice’ and its trusted formula are still fun and inventive. The real driving force behind ‘Burn Notice’ is its simple but loveable characters. It’s just a fun show to watch.