Saturday, June 19, 2010

White Collar - Vital Signs, S01E10

I don't get the obsession with the Will they/won't they relationship. I mean, of course, that's a lot of tension and excitement, you want to watch because you want to know if the couple will get together, but if that's all a show has going for itself, well, it's not a very good show.

Sure, Neal (Matthew Bomer) and Kate (Alexandra Daddario) have an uncertain relationship - Neal is mad about Kate, while she may be betraying him - but I frankly don't care particularly about them. Their relationship is not one of the reasons I watch. Ellie (Tiffani Thiessen) and Peter (Tim DeKay), on the other hand, I absolutely adore.

As was evident in this episode, a happily married couple can generate as much interest as two characters, riddled with chemistry, who can never seal the deal. Peter's awkwardness as he tries to flirt with a woman as part of his cover is both hilarious and charming. And when Ellie found out about it, her response, rather than jealousy, was to laugh at the idea of her darling husband trying to flirt. He's not very good at it.

On the other hand, when she discovered that his magic hands had given this other woman a massage (something she discovered while trying to help Peter flirt with her on the phone), she was not unaffected. Frankly, I would rather watch more scenes with Peter and Ellie being adorable, as they were in the final scene of the episode, than watch Neal pine. Long lasting love can be just as compelling as tension, as long as it is done well.

Otherwise, this episode was also quite excellent - Neal confessed that Peter was the only person he trusted in his life. Sure it's possible he was just playing him, but he was also very very high after having been drugged by the bad guys. Also, the two heroes brought down a man who was scamming people out of their money in order to save their lives with kidney transplants. It's true that the tricks they used to catch him were quite mean, but he was quite a bastard, so I can't feel too badly about it.

And so we had a great episode, without having to resort to pulling on our heart strings, or asking the question Will they ever get together?

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