White Collar - Out of the Box, S01E14 - Season Finale

I, like many others, was never particularly interested in the Kate angle of the story. Certainly, Neal (Matthew Bomer) loved her very much, and, since we loved him, we could not disregard her existence entirely. She was his weakness and he would do whatever it took for her. But that's not why we watched. We love the bromance between Neal and Peter (Tim DeKay). That is friendship, that is trust, and that remains despite how much they both stick to their guns when it comes to what's important to them.

As Neal got closer to getting the music box, closer to Kate, Peter continued to threaten to arrest him if he did anything illegal. Good thing that Neal has Fowler (Noah Emmerich) on his side, ready to thwart Peter. And thwart he did. He has a knack for going after weaknesses, and as much as Kate is a weakness to Neal, Ellie (Tiffani Thiessen) is a weakness to Peter. How guilty did Neal feel when he found out that Ellie's livelihood was put at risk through his involvement! Good thing he has connections to help her earn back her reputation quickly.

I really loved watching Neal at work, carving the beautiful and perfect replica of that statue so that he could hide the tools he would later need to get it out. I also really liked that Alex (Gloria Votsis) betrayed him, though I was less convinced of her reasons for coming back. Still, it worked and it's nice to know that she has an opening to be a continued presence in her life. I like her a whole lot better than Kate.

Yet when the whole thing was finished and Fowler arrested with the help of Agent Lancing (Marsha Thomason) - which finally told us what had happened to her and where she had gone, Peter and Neal were left saying their good byes. How believable was that scene? Peter begging Neal not to go, telling him that his life was here, that he was helping too many people to give it all up, while Neal kept trying to justify it after all he went through to be with Kate. Meanwhile she just sat there on that plane, waiting for him, not fighting for him. And then the plane blew up. And Neal, hesitant a moment before, had to be tackled by Peter so that he would not run straight into the wreckage.

Whoever messed with Peter and Neal had better watch out; it's only just beginning.

White Collar - Front Man, S01E13

Penultimate episode of season 1 of White Collar, and of course we end up with a dilemma. But before we got there, we had a fantastic time watching Neal (Matthew Bomer) run all over the place pulling cons in the hopes of saving some innocent women's lives. Plus, we were reminded of just how great an agent Peter (Tim DeKay) is.

It started simply enough - another agent wanted to borrow Neal for a kidnapping case. She didn't start out looking good, ignored Neal's advice and help, and managed to allow him to get kidnapped too, without his anklet. Peter, naturally, showed her up every step of the way, but the thing that got me more than how quick on his feet Peter was was that his primary concern was for the health and safety of Neal and of the kidnapped young lady.

Neal, taken, was forced to charm a woman into giving him information. If he did not succeed, that woman was going to die. And, terrifyingly, for once, Neal's easy charm didn't get him the information he needed - she wasn't willing to get fired for a pretty face. Luckily, Neal can go from charming to distraught (while still charming) in an instant. He played on her maternal instincts and managed to save her life.

Next, still desperate to save the girl, he agreed to steal a briefcase from a very very dangerous man. Lucky for him, Mozzie (Willie Garson), whom he'd managed to contact earlier, showed up and together they pulled a slightly cheesy but very amusing con as FBI agents to get the man to simply hand over the briefcase, leaving with his freedom, if not the contents.

Finally, the girl was saved, and everyone lived happily ever after.

Except, maybe they didn't. Neal is still determined to go after the music box and get Kate back, but Peter's no dummy. He knows what his favourite con man is planning, and he's not going to let him do it.

What will happen in the season finale? How badly will it go for Neal, or is it Peter we should be worrying about?

White Collar - Bottlenecked, S01E12

See, now this episode focused on one of the things that makes me love White Collar the most - history. Sure, we had an exciting competition between Neal (Matthew Bomer) and a rival, but the emphasis value of history, of knowledge, that is what makes this show great.

A man named Keller (Ross McCall) challenges Neal to a competition - which can forge a better copy of a valuable and rare bottle of wine gifted to Benjamin Franklin by Marie Antoinette? Neal, naturally, can't resist the challenge, but he does it within his FBI constraints, making the forgery part of Peter (Tim DeKay) and his plan to capture the rival. Peter goes along with it, though normally he wouldn't, because of his intense dislike for Keller, who also is a murderer.

The beauty of the situation is how good a job Neal and Mozzie (Willie Garson) do at faking the wine bottle. They are able to replicate the bottle by finding a bottle, a cork, some wax, etc, dating from the period in question. The only way that anyone would be able to tell that their bottle (or that Keller's bottle) is a fake is by running an expensive test for caesium 137. The stuff only became wide spread after nuclear testing started, meaning that any bottle of wine older than that would be free of the chemical, while any recent wine would reveal its existence. How convenient for wine testing!

The charms of the episode continued as Keller's bottle was revealed to be the real deal. He had tricked Neal into faking his own bottle so that the price would increase after his own was proved not a fake. This guy is good, almost as good as Neal, or maybe just as good. Unfortunately, he had both the Russian mob and the FBI breathing down his neck. He picked the FBI. Maybe Neal got caught, but at least he was never stupid enough to try and cheat the Russian Mob!

With only two more episode of the season left, the search is on for the music box. How are things going to go down? I don't know, but I'm excited. Are you?

White Collar - Home Invasion, S01E11

What happens when Peter (Tim DeKay) has to room with Neal (Matthew Bomer) while his wife is out of town and his house is undergoing repairs? Well, let's just say that Ernie and Bert (minus any homosexual innuendos) had similar roommate experiences.

While pursuing a murderer/thief, Peter and Neal get in each other's way. Neal, trying to find the music box which is the desire of the man who has Kate, tries to enlist the help of a former college of his, Alexandra (Gloris Votsis). She came closest to getting a hold of the artifact back when others supposed that Neal had taken it. Unfortunately, Peter's arrival at Neal's apartment at a critical moment, as well as his refusal to play Neal's games (he fully admitted to her that he was FBI) put a wrench in those plans.

She got them both back when she got in the way of the operation both her pursuing - the recovering of Japanese jade elephants. Blowing Neal's cover, her anger not only caused him to lose the target, but allowed that suspect to later come and kidnap him. Luckily, he was able to warn Peter through the use of Morse code. He was going to Peter's home. Frankly, an invasion there only balanced their home invasions (this was such an aptly named episode). When Peter was in Neal's home, he not only insisted on watching TV while Neal was trying to read, he also usurped his chair and discovered that Neal was still searching for the music box.

But in the end, despite their bickering and the tension caused from spending too much time together (only last episode, Peter was praising breakfast time because it did not involve Neal), they both still helped each other out and solved the case.

But despite Neal's loyalty to Peter, his desire to save Kate (whether she needs it or not) remains strong. At the end of the episode, Alexandra offered him the chance to get the music box - but not while he still worked with the Feds.

How will it all work out? Only 3 more episode of season 1. I'm glad I'm not going to have to wait too long for season 2 to commence.

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?

White Collar - Bad Judgment, S01E09

It's never easy coming up with posts for a show like White Collar. The reasons I watch remain the same, the quality remains the same, and while, like in this episode, there are developments to comment or speculate on, for the most part the comments I have are about the same. And I'm fairly certain I've made this comment before.

The leads in this show all have terrific chemistry, and their timing is always spot on. The comments, pointed or absolutely absurd, are delivered with the exact right emphasis every time, and the methods used by both Peter (Tim DeKay) and Neal (Matthew Bomer) makes sense, are credible, and still give the impression that solving the cases they work on is difficult, and proving them is even more so. What more can you want from a procedural.

In this episode, while the quips reigned, the development of the tension between Peter and Neal, and Fowler (Noah Emmerich) moved steadily forward as it was interwoven with another case our heroes were working. Isn't it lovely when you can hurt your enemy while also saving the home of a 6 year old girl?

Through Neal's clever manipulations (as well as his careful and neat trick for forging a signature), and Peter's ability to bend those manipulations to the law, they were able to throw a major hitch in Fowler's plans by arresting the judge he had in his pocket, and forcing him to arrest her so that suspicion didn't land on him.

One of my favourite things about this show is the degree of trust all of the characters have for each other. Yes, there are things that they keep hidden, but most of the time this is out of a sense of shame or pride or fear, rather than of lack of trust. It actually gives me hope, while we are watching frauds and cheating going on, to be able to believe that there are people in the world who care about each other and trust each other so well.

Do you feel the same?

White Collar - Hard Sell, S01E08

With season 2 on White Collar only a month and a half away, I figured I'd catch up with season 1. It is such an excellent show, and Matthew Bomer and Tim DeKay have such great chemistry. I'd missed it, and I'm glad that I'm going to find out what happened next.

When I last watched, Peter (DeKay) met up with Neal (Bomer)'s missing girl, Kate (Alexandra Daddario). It looked like Peter had been playing Neal the entire time. Not that we wanted to believe that, but of course, that's the beauty of good television - camera angles and incomplete scenes can makes us think exactly what they want us to think.

So, coming back, we think Peter might have betrayed Neal, and Neal thinks so too. He's contemplating running again, but he's still doing his best to work for the FBI. The mark is a boiler room operation (you know, where suckers by stocks from brokers who take their money and run). Neal, of course, gets to shine as he easily convinces a whole lot of people to buy stocks, gaining the confidence of the big boss and therefore allowing the FBI to stop the operation.

Unfortunately, there are tensions during the operation, and Neal angrily tells Peter that he knows he's got Kate. Luckily, Neal still manages to trust Peter through the motions, and they don't completely blow their covers. Instead, they manage to use the tension to their advantage.

And then we got what had to be the most touching example of how much Neal trusts Peter. Not only did he tell Peter of his suspicions, he then sat down with him and Ellie (Tiffani Thiessen) to discuss his fears and what was going on.

Naturally, Peter withheld information about his meet with Kate, but obviously Peter isn't our bad guy. In fact, the scene between he and Kate, which we were shown, reinforces my negative opinion of her. Peter doesn't think she ever loved Neal, although Neal refuses to even admit that as a possibility.

And the best part of it all is that we learn that Kate and her captor are after a music box which Neal never actually stole. Oh he gave off the impression that he had taken it when it disappeared, but he was not the actual thief. And now he has to work his magic and get it so that he can figure out why it is so important.

Great show, great premise, glad to be watching it again.