Somehow, when dead people show up on your doorstep, and you're not working for M. Night Shyamalan, you know the day's going to hell.

In Michael Westen's (Jeffrey Donovan) case, the 'dead' man is an old co-worker in the spy business named Larry Sizemore (Tim Mathesen, who also directed the episode). Although 15 people saw Larry walk into an oil refinery just before it blew up, he seems very much alive, and wants to hire Michael for a little job: killing a cancer treatment nurse named Jeannie.

If Michael will do this, Larry says with a broad grin, he will be able to afford some of the luxuries in life. "Like furniture...and real protein," instead of Michael's trademark yogurt.

Michael, in his  usual informative, if sardonic, voiceover, mulls over his two choices:  either he can toss the job and let the murder go on, or he can take the gig and make sure the hit doesn't go down. Being the Boy Scout that Larry accuses him of, he takes the gig.

Cornering the frightened woman (Amy Pietz) in the ladies' room at a museum where she does charity work, first Michael scares her to death by announcing he's been hired to kill her, then reassures her he's not going to do it. They brainstorm who might be behind the hit, and she suggests her stepson Drew (an all-grown-up Zachery Ty Bryan), who's afraid that Jeannie will inherit his father's big bucks when he dies.

Michael is well on the way to busting up the hit on Jeannie by planting Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar) in her home as an old friend, when he discovers that Drew is really afraid that Jeannie's going to get his dad's money-- he's hired two other hit men through his cocaine dealer, just to make sure someone gets her.

Going out on a limb, then, Michael takes on Larry's persona to pay Drew a visit, trying to scare him into canceling the other two hits. Drew, terrified, agrees to do so.

 When Larry drops in to "check on" things, Michael lets him know that there were two others hired for the same killing, and Larry goes ballistic, the lightning-trigger anger bringing him to the conclusion that the only way to solve the problem is to kill everyone and get out of town. Michael persuades him he has matters in hand, when what he really has in his hand is a screwdriver, behind his back, ready to defend himself if the unpredictable Larry comes after him.

Drew is unable to stop one of the other hit men, who intends to kill Jeannie with a dump truck; Michael succeeds at the risk of his own life, and it seems all is well. That is, until Drew calls who he thinks is Larry (in actuality, it's Michael) and tells him the hit's back on-- thanks to an older guy who showed up insisting he'd do the job. The guy's name, Drew says, is Michael Westen.

The episode concludes in the usual Mission Impossible or A-Team fashion, and the show moves onto the two subplots that also run through this episode. In the first, Michael's mother Madeline (Sharon Gless), who actually had a couple of episodes where she wasn't whiny, clingy and flinging guilt around thicker than a fry cook, is back at it, insisting Michael go with her to counseling again to try to see why they can't communicate.

In the second, the Burn plot inches ahead with painful slowness as Michael and Sam (Bruce Campbell) locate the mysterious Bill Johnson, the man who received the sniper's rifle Sam helped acquire earlier this season. Turns out Carla has something on Bill, too, and he's jumping through hoops just like Michael. He also has the high-tech ID Michael was sent to have made. Michael notes that finding him with these objects is like getting a "corner piece" of the puzzle-- something to build on. Previews for next week's finale episode seem to indicate that to be true, but we'll have to wait and see.