Characterization
LA Weekly described Michael as "Jim Rockford and MacGyver filtered through Carl Hiaasen." Bruce Campbell comments on Michael Westen: "Well, the idea is being a CIA agent, Michael Westen can take his skills, you know, MacGyver-ish type skills and make a shotgun out of a twig."
Michael's romantic relationships are a significant source of subplots in Burn Notice. It is revealed in the episode "Sins of Omission" that ten years previous, Michael was engaged to a professional thief named Samantha, but they never married and eventually separated. Around that time, Michael met Fiona Glenanne, an IRA bomb maker and weapons expert, while under cover in Ireland. Their relationship also ended when Michael was extracted, though Fiona became aware of Michael's real name and position as a US intelligence operative. Fiona now helps Michael with his various cases and his investigations in Miami, and they still have a close, if strained, relationship. While Fiona plays coy during most of Season 1, during Season 2 it is apparent to many that they are moving toward a reconciliation. When Fiona investigates a bomb makers home and a fire erupts that consumes the entire building, Michael believes that she had been killed in the fire, and discovers her alive and well at his apartment, albeit without a cellphone that was destroyed. Realizing that Michael was on the verge of a breakdown over her possible death, the two make love.
Michael's family is also included in the show. In the pilot episode, Michael once remarked that his mother "would have been a great intelligence analyst. She could find you if you were buried in the middle of the Gobi Desert and ask you why you didn't come home for Thanksgiving dinner." She is also a provider for some of Michael's cases by suggesting friends who are in trouble. His mother in particular is at times demanding and a valuable asset, and has recently been used to conduct initial surveillance. She's also revealed to have a deep understanding of psychology and interrogation, after she manages to coerce information out of a smuggler within minutes of Fiona and Sam having given up. Despite being left in the dark for much of the series, she is now much more involved and aware of Michael's operations, though she seems to accept this as a matter of course.
While Michael begins working harder towards being recalled to active service and working for a mercenary, Fiona grows more and more distant. Michael strikes Fiona as part of maintaining a cover identity. Fiona claims that doing this work is changing Michael, and that she can't stay and watch it happen, and plans to move back to Ireland. These plans are curtailed when both Fiona's brother and an exiled Irish mercenary arrive. The exiled Irish mercenary kidnaps Fiona, and Michael's original Irish cover is blown. When Michael and Sam attempt a rescue, Fiona is shot in the arm when she jumps off the pier to escape the gunfire. Michael panics when he sees Fiona float to the surface unconscious and quickly pulls her out and is relieved when she comes to. Fiona's brother tells Michael that Fiona, now associated with a foreign intelligence operative, will almost certainly be killed if she returns to Ireland, though he tells Michael that he is proud to know his sister chose well. This incident strengthens their bond again, and soon thereafter they make love at a hotel. Michael and Fiona experiences tensions afterwards while he continues to focus on his burn notice with the CIA.
As a covert operative, Michael is incredibly resourceful and holds a shocking knowledge of topics ranging from combat survival, Posttraumatic stress disorder, escapology, chemistry, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, medicine, surgery, and criminal psychology, despite a remark by a client and former friend that he "vanished before high school graduation". During the second season finale in a car chase, Michael is able to fashion a quick explosive out of chemicals found in his glove compartment. As a covert operative, Michael is also a keen bluffer, once being able to bluff an arms dealer to believe that he transferred $200 000 into his account (a ruse that would have been found out by a bank manager in Zurich in a few minutes) or making a bank robber believe that he was a doctor. Known by his professional reputation, Michael is regarded with fear by people associated with the intelligence community. A Spetsnaz wet work operative remarked that "everyone in Russian Special Forces has heard of the name Michael Westen. He is a myth like the bogeyman." He was also personally offered a job by the Head of the Libyan Secret Police, who stated that their intelligence services were not known for being gentle. In one episode, Larry once quipped, "Where is the old Michael Westen I knew? The one who would have left behind a bloodbath with a smile on his face?" Despite being professionally regarded as a cold killer, Michael is hesitant to kill anyone unless he had to, once needing Victor to tell him that he had to do it in order to sell the story to Management. That is not to say that Michael would not kill, where during the third season finale he might have killed Simon and only stopped when Management asked him not to, and murders Strickler, a spy broker, in his home earlier in the season after learning he passed information about Fiona's whereabouts to her enemies.
As a character, Michael is seen to have several 'trademark' characteristics. He wears expensive suits (during one episode he reveals the label showing the suit to be Armani, and always wears the same pair of Oliver Peoples sunglasses, which he at one points states to have retrieved from an Algerian special ops soldier that he tangled with who "didn't need them anymore." At end of Season 2, Michael takes off his sunglasses for his meeting with Management before jumping out of the latter's helicopter, although he obtains another pair. Furthermore, Michael's food of choice appears to be yogurt, and his fridge always appears to be stocked with it.
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