He counts on longtime friends like Sam Axe, who informed on him to the FBI until midway through the first season, and Fiona to help him perform such tasks while arguing with his mother, and trying to find out who burned him and why.

Michael lives in a decrepit loft situated over a nightclub, with a bed, workbench, some barbells, a punching bag, an oven, a few chairs, a mid-1990s-era computer, and a refrigerator filled with yogurt and beer.

He obtained the loft in the pilot episode when he assisted his Russian landlord and club owner by ridding a drug dealer (Raymond, nicknamed "Sugar") who also lived on the premises.

He refused to take the job and lost the security detail and personal restrictions he had been under to protect him from the countless enemies he made as a CIA operative, choosing to be free from the organization's hold.

With Tom dead, the incident sparked a chain of events that led Diego to be murdered by Mason Gilroy, a former MI6 spy and freelance black ops psychopath.

She does not like the truth about Michael's life, and her fears are brought to light when she is forced to defend him in an FBI interrogation, in the third-season finale; the bureau questions her concerning the activities that got him burned, along with many other actions in his spy career.

Knowing that they don't stand a chance against James' men, and are only armed with a single C-4 charge (without a remote detonator), Madeline decides to sacrifice her life for Charlie's safety as well as Michael's.

Jesse becomes fast friends with Fiona, with whom he shares a similar temperament and attitude toward their extra-legal activities; they are both firearm and explosives enthusiasts and have difficulty putting missions before people, being much more willing than Michael and Sam to drop everything and rush to a victim's aid.

Additionally, Porter initially clashes with Sam, who is much more team-oriented due to his SEAL training and experience, frequently putting the two at odds over the best way to accomplish a mission.

Despite his tendency to act as a 'lone wolf,' the team quickly comes to appreciate Jesse's support; like Michael, he is extremely well-rounded and competent in intelligence gathering, operating undercover, firearms, and explosives.

In the lead-up to the mid-season finale, Jesse finds proof of Michael's involvement in his burning and confronts Fiona, whom he leaves alive, amid an operation to take down John Barrett, a major player in the organization that he was hunting.

"Carla Baxter" (Tricia Helfer) is the nom de guerre of a mid-ranking member of a mysterious and seemingly all-powerful shadow government organization called only "Management" that is apparently behind Michael's burn notice.

Larry eventually saw their government superiors as restrictive and even traitorous towards their operatives, so he decided to enter "retirement" by walking into an oil refinery right before it exploded as witnessed by 15 others.

In the fourth season's "Out of the Fire", Larry once again returned to trouble Michael's life working in conjunction with Tyler Brennen, the "owner" of the Management organization's NOC list.

[7] In the season two episode "Sins of Omission", he kidnaps the young son of the professional thief (and Michael's former fiancée) Samantha Kees (Dina Meyer) to force her to steal the MacGuffin-of-the-week, which he expects will yield enough money to retire.

Realizing he was too small a cog in the machine to strike at, he enlisted the help of private-sector corporation Drake Technologies CEO John Barrett for assistance in taking his former employers out.

Once the plane's pilots were bribed to stop at Miami, Simon turned on Gilroy by shooting him in the abdomen and strapping him to an explosive device that blew him up inside of his car.

While on the surface Vaughn is a friendlier and more positive representative of Management than Carla, he is also extremely ruthless and makes it known he will commit atrocities himself to prevent even larger-scale acts of destruction.

John Barrett (Robert Patrick) was the powerful and wealthy CEO of international telecom company Drake Technologies that has numerous high-profile connections abroad and involved in the military–industrial complex with several US allies.

Agents Harris (Marc Macaulay) and Lane (Brandon Morris) are initially assigned to track Michael Westen through Sam Axe and, if possible, keep him in line.

A former U.S. Navy SEAL and veteran of the Vietnam War, Virgil (Chris Ellis) was Sam Axe's mentor, and is now retired and running his own business repossessing boats.

In the second-season episode "Rough Seas", however, he returns to recruit Michael to help the daughter of an old friend foil a band of modern-day pirates, who have stolen a shipment of pharmaceuticals earmarked for humanitarian aid.

At the same time, Victor Stecker-Epps vengefully began a string of elaborate assassinations of Management's employees that made it clear Carla had lost control of Miami.

Though it was alluded to be a large cartel with many members, the second season's finale "Lesser Evil" shows a humorless old man (John Mahoney) as the group's presumed leader called "Management" himself arriving in a chopper following a shoot-out at the docks.

An old associate of his, Paul Anderson (Burt Reynolds), had accidentally revealed sensitive information that reignited a hit contract on his life from Russian military operatives and proved his fake death false.

Michael then makes Cowley an offer: he can either have Paul placed in the Witness Protection Program and take the great press of having taken down a black ops team single-handedly, or explain to the authorities why he is associating with two burned spies.

In "Hot Property", Marv was again lured to Miami by Sam Axe, posing as a private investigator who would expose to his wife a love affair he had a decade earlier.

Jesse wanted $5 million in cash (that was to be destroyed by the Treasury anyway) to buy his way into an auction for the Holy Bible, which had been lost and then stolen by a surviving Drake Technologies bodyguard, Justin Walsh.

Gray even makes an apology to Madeline for accidentally killing her son, and forewarns Michael and Fiona that Card has ordered him to torch their loft to destroy evidence after removing anything related to Anson Fullerton.

Next, Schmidt gets Michael and the team involved in selling a black market alarm disarming device and aiding in a break-in in order to raise the significant fees for the passports.