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This week on White Collar
THIS SHOW. ♥ ♥ ♥ Still my happy place! (Though yeah ... did kinda spoil myself for the climax of the episode ... at least the action plot. Not the emotional plot, though! \o/ Still, gonna try to be good and avoid looking at pictures/previews for the next couple of episodes ... *tries to be strong*)
Remember that comment of Neal's a few weeks ago that you don't change until you hit rock bottom? I think this is the episode where he hit rock bottom.
The conversation between Peter and Neal at the end ... SO MUCH WIN. \o/ I love that Neal told Peter about Sara right away ... that Peter's definitely one of his emotional-comfort go-to people. And that conversation at the end, I DO NOT KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I'VE WATCHED IT. ♥ And one of the things that makes me love it, honestly, is that I do think Peter has ulterior motives too! It's the genuine offer of friendship/support that it appears to be, and also yet another attempt to sound Neal out about the U-boat thing (or maybe offer him another chance to come clean). One of the things I adore about this show is that Peter and Neal's conversations are always so layered. There's absolutely no doubt about the genuine emotion underlying their interactions, and yet, there are SO MANY of their conversations and interactions when you can't quite tell if one or both of them is trying to play the other one, while also being sincere at the same time.
And while I'm at it, all the conversations in this episode pertaining to the main emotional arc were TOTAL WIN - especially Neal's drunken sharing-of-feelings with Jones. \o/ (Random side thing #1: I love how, when Neal gets drunk on the show with someone else, he never actually gets drunk - I'm thinking of some of his conversations with Peter here, too. He's really good at keeping himself level-headed and in control, and making sure that the other person is getting just that little bit drunker than he is. Random thing #2: I am still convinced that Neal's upbringing was not very well-off. I don't necessarily think he lived in actual poverty as a kid, but I think his family was definitely close to the bottom of the socioeconomic spectrum, because, take it from someone who grew up poor, his instant, knee-jerk "I never want to worry about money again" is so perfectly spot-on for someone who grew up always having to worry about money (and also helps explain another part of the draw of the U-boat con for him)).
And now Neal is lying to Mozzie - not just his usual sort of oblique indirection, but outright lying, and I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THIS. *flails* For one thing, if he was going to lie about it, this is actually a REALLY DUMB LIE - now that he knows which manifest page Peter & Diana have, and Mozzie doesn't, this is going to put him in a very weird position in every future conversation with Mozzie about selling the treasure (however many of those conversations they have remaining to them; the writing is definitely on the wall at this point)! He's just going to have to either keep lying and lying, or simply wait to get caught. On the other hand, the sheer implausibility of it is a good indication of how off-balance he is at that moment - he doesn't have time to come up with a good lie, or figure out what to tell Mozzie in general, and he's just stuck with whatever his brain flings at him.
Everyone is so totally caught between a rock and a hard place right now. Neal, of course, is stuck in SO many ways, but Peter is too - I think he's trying to play both ends against the middle right now, chasing Neal while trying to protect him, in his own way, by both keeping the investigation on the down-low, and giving Neal every possible opportunity to come clean about it. And Mozzie is, I suspect, getting himself into WAY MORE TROUBLE than he realizes (for one thing because, though far more subtly and slowly than Neal, I really do think that he's getting sucked emotionally into the Burke household too; he did seem to have qualms about breaking in, or at least sympathize/empathize with Neal's guilt, and I can't imagine Mozzie being at all bothered by it even a year ago).
Talking to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dreamingoctober about this the other day, I said I couldn't think of a way out of this that wasn't going to hurt everyone, but actually, I can: if Neal and Mozzie repatriate the treasure, ASAP. They still technically committed a crime, but between the fact that Peter is almost certainly as close to fence-sitting as he can get away with on this one, and the fact that the show has a history of letting criminals off the hook for making amends, I am pretty sure that donating the art to a Russian museum or something along those lines really could get them out of it without too much damage. (I seriously doubt it's going to be that easy - for one thing, even though it looks like Neal has kinda-sorta figured out which side of the line he falls on, convincing Mozzie is going to be a whole other thing. But the possibility is there!)
I also think that having built the storyline over the course of a whole season is going a long way towards preventing the eventual revelation from torpedoing Neal's relationship with Peter. Really, I don't think it would have done it anyway, because Peter has never managed to stay mad at Neal in the past for any length of time (which is one thing that makes me go "... seriously?" at some fanfic; he just doesn't). And honestly, I am pretty sure at this point that any overt acknowledgment that Neal has the treasure is going to be met with more of a resigned "Yeah, I know, now what do we do about it?" reaction from Peter than anger, condemnation or anything like that. He's had time to think about it and come to terms with it. And, as usual, they both know what's going on with each other - Peter knows Neal has the treasure, even if he doesn't know the whole story and can't get him to admit it; Neal knows he knows and that he's investigating him ... actually, I'm pretty sure even MOZZIE, at the end, knows that Neal isn't giving him the whole truth. This show has a really unusual way of stringing out suspense, where it's not so much that the characters are keeping each other in the dark about stuff - it's more that they're trying to, but they're all so canny and sneaky that they're constantly figuring it out anyway, and then it's a matter of ferreting out the truth from each other while not admitting that they know what they know (and keeping their own secrets besides).
ETA: I'll manually crosspost this to LJ later, if they are EVER BACK UP AGAIN.
Remember that comment of Neal's a few weeks ago that you don't change until you hit rock bottom? I think this is the episode where he hit rock bottom.
The conversation between Peter and Neal at the end ... SO MUCH WIN. \o/ I love that Neal told Peter about Sara right away ... that Peter's definitely one of his emotional-comfort go-to people. And that conversation at the end, I DO NOT KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I'VE WATCHED IT. ♥ And one of the things that makes me love it, honestly, is that I do think Peter has ulterior motives too! It's the genuine offer of friendship/support that it appears to be, and also yet another attempt to sound Neal out about the U-boat thing (or maybe offer him another chance to come clean). One of the things I adore about this show is that Peter and Neal's conversations are always so layered. There's absolutely no doubt about the genuine emotion underlying their interactions, and yet, there are SO MANY of their conversations and interactions when you can't quite tell if one or both of them is trying to play the other one, while also being sincere at the same time.
And while I'm at it, all the conversations in this episode pertaining to the main emotional arc were TOTAL WIN - especially Neal's drunken sharing-of-feelings with Jones. \o/ (Random side thing #1: I love how, when Neal gets drunk on the show with someone else, he never actually gets drunk - I'm thinking of some of his conversations with Peter here, too. He's really good at keeping himself level-headed and in control, and making sure that the other person is getting just that little bit drunker than he is. Random thing #2: I am still convinced that Neal's upbringing was not very well-off. I don't necessarily think he lived in actual poverty as a kid, but I think his family was definitely close to the bottom of the socioeconomic spectrum, because, take it from someone who grew up poor, his instant, knee-jerk "I never want to worry about money again" is so perfectly spot-on for someone who grew up always having to worry about money (and also helps explain another part of the draw of the U-boat con for him)).
And now Neal is lying to Mozzie - not just his usual sort of oblique indirection, but outright lying, and I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THIS. *flails* For one thing, if he was going to lie about it, this is actually a REALLY DUMB LIE - now that he knows which manifest page Peter & Diana have, and Mozzie doesn't, this is going to put him in a very weird position in every future conversation with Mozzie about selling the treasure (however many of those conversations they have remaining to them; the writing is definitely on the wall at this point)! He's just going to have to either keep lying and lying, or simply wait to get caught. On the other hand, the sheer implausibility of it is a good indication of how off-balance he is at that moment - he doesn't have time to come up with a good lie, or figure out what to tell Mozzie in general, and he's just stuck with whatever his brain flings at him.
Everyone is so totally caught between a rock and a hard place right now. Neal, of course, is stuck in SO many ways, but Peter is too - I think he's trying to play both ends against the middle right now, chasing Neal while trying to protect him, in his own way, by both keeping the investigation on the down-low, and giving Neal every possible opportunity to come clean about it. And Mozzie is, I suspect, getting himself into WAY MORE TROUBLE than he realizes (for one thing because, though far more subtly and slowly than Neal, I really do think that he's getting sucked emotionally into the Burke household too; he did seem to have qualms about breaking in, or at least sympathize/empathize with Neal's guilt, and I can't imagine Mozzie being at all bothered by it even a year ago).
Talking to
dreamingoctober about this the other day, I said I couldn't think of a way out of this that wasn't going to hurt everyone, but actually, I can: if Neal and Mozzie repatriate the treasure, ASAP. They still technically committed a crime, but between the fact that Peter is almost certainly as close to fence-sitting as he can get away with on this one, and the fact that the show has a history of letting criminals off the hook for making amends, I am pretty sure that donating the art to a Russian museum or something along those lines really could get them out of it without too much damage. (I seriously doubt it's going to be that easy - for one thing, even though it looks like Neal has kinda-sorta figured out which side of the line he falls on, convincing Mozzie is going to be a whole other thing. But the possibility is there!)I also think that having built the storyline over the course of a whole season is going a long way towards preventing the eventual revelation from torpedoing Neal's relationship with Peter. Really, I don't think it would have done it anyway, because Peter has never managed to stay mad at Neal in the past for any length of time (which is one thing that makes me go "... seriously?" at some fanfic; he just doesn't). And honestly, I am pretty sure at this point that any overt acknowledgment that Neal has the treasure is going to be met with more of a resigned "Yeah, I know, now what do we do about it?" reaction from Peter than anger, condemnation or anything like that. He's had time to think about it and come to terms with it. And, as usual, they both know what's going on with each other - Peter knows Neal has the treasure, even if he doesn't know the whole story and can't get him to admit it; Neal knows he knows and that he's investigating him ... actually, I'm pretty sure even MOZZIE, at the end, knows that Neal isn't giving him the whole truth. This show has a really unusual way of stringing out suspense, where it's not so much that the characters are keeping each other in the dark about stuff - it's more that they're trying to, but they're all so canny and sneaky that they're constantly figuring it out anyway, and then it's a matter of ferreting out the truth from each other while not admitting that they know what they know (and keeping their own secrets besides).
ETA: I'll manually crosspost this to LJ later, if they are EVER BACK UP AGAIN.
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In general I'm happy for my DW!
Btw, I finally checked out White Collar. I like. It goes well with Leverage, too - con artist forced to work with law enforcment vs a group of con artists working on the other side of the law... In my mind both shows can coexist in the same universe and have many little crossovers.
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And I'm glad you're enjoying White Collar - I hope you continue to like it! :D I do think that it has a lot in common with Leverage in terms of emotion/tone; it doesn't surprise me that there is overlap between the fandoms, and yeah, the two shows are tailor-made for crossovers!
... actually, in general, after fanning primarily on sci-fi/fantasy stuff for the last few years, I'd forgotten just how easy it is to do crossovers with shows that don't contain sci-fi or fantasy elements. Shows on the SF spectrum are really hard to cross over with other things (not that it stops people, including me *g*) because each has its own internal mythology, and they don't mesh well. Shows like White Collar or Leverage, though (or NCIS, etc), all take place in the same reality by default ... ours! So, unless both shows are so radically different in tone that they probably couldn't be made to fit together easily, crossovers are a snap ...
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(For example, dress became very important at the beginning of the Industrial Age when people moved to cities where everyone didn't already know their class. Or, like immigrants tend to pay a lot more attention to cultural traditions than people who remained in the home country--because they have to, to prove that that's still their identity.)
Everything about Neal screams new money in a way that I think would be transparently obvious to old money. Most of his scams, though, involve him being an up-and-comer, so this doesn't really matter.
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Oh, that's really a great point about him! I hadn't really thought about it, but I think you're right.
The show basically all but came out and said that Neal grew up poor or working-class in the episode with the "young Neal" character (when he profiles the guy and is transparently talking about himself), but they did it in a low-key enough way that they actually could change it later (but I really hope they don't). For the most part, with the exception of that one flashback episode in season two, I like the subtlety of the way they've been handling Neal's backstory (and Peter's, for that matter), dropping small hints and giving us little bits of information here and there, all internally consistent, but never really feeling like they have to come out and say everything.
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But that was definitely a hard episode on Neal. First the arrows (damn it those were scary) and then breaking into Peter's house. How many episodes are left in this season?
I loved that Sara walked away when she realized she was in over her head. I wonder how she'll come back... Maybe something happens that makes Peter contact her?, to help Neal?
You're right, in the beginning Mozzie would have been baffled by the idea of feeling guilty about breaking into the Suits' house. Mozzie and Elizabeth are so sweet, awww. "I know a guy who blackmailed a guy," heh.
I don't think Mozzie realizes Neal lied to him outright, at least not yet. And if/when he does he certainly won't confront Neal about it outright. We'd have Neal and Mozzie working against each other without admitting it. Yay! I hope they don't involve June, that'd be cheating. So Neal more or less has to choose between Peter and Mozzie (&everything that entails), ouch. But it seems like maybe he already did?
I hope Mozzie's girlfriend comes back/is at least mentioned as still being around. Because otherwise I see him as pretty much alone except for Neal; Elizabeth doesn't really count, maybe June. And his old teacher from the Dentist episode.
Repatriating the art is a good idea! I love the image of Neal secretly breaking into museums and leaving priceless art lying around, maybe with a calling card like the Architect. Heh. I want to see Sara's reaction. And Peter's, but his I can almost imagine.
Wild guessing is fun xD
Jones! The scene with him and Neal drinking was great. Iirc, Neal didn't have ulterior motives, which makes it even better.
I'm still catching up on the episodes, but I think I like season 3 best. It has Diana > season 1, and a really interesting conflict in the middle. (I'm mostly managing to ignore the "Nazi loot" part.)
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Well ... yeah ... true. *facepalm* I guess what I mean by rock bottom in this case, though, is that breaking into the Burkes' house is basically where he crossed his own line -- where he hit the point that he realized "I am not doing this anymore". Though how this will pan out in the long term remains to be seen (oh, Neal, you poor confused, messed-up kid).
Mozzie and Elizabeth are so sweet, awww. "I know a guy who blackmailed a guy," heh.
Mozzie and Elizabeth's friendship is ADORABLE. I can't get over how sweet it is that they've actually become friends! And now that I've thought of it, I really want to see Neal and Mozzie repatriate the art in seeekrit (though I don't think the show is actually going in that direction ... but it might!).
Iirc, Neal didn't have ulterior motives, which makes it even better.
Actually, that's a really good point! Neal's usually got some kind of angle, but in this case, not at all -- aside from not wanting to be all alone in his apartment with all the reminders of Sara around. And I did really like the way the Sara thing was handled -- I was expecting it to be stretched out with angst and secrets all around, but, no, she severed her ties cleanly as soon as she figured out that Neal had crossed a moral line she couldn't respect, even though, in the absence of explanations, it makes her look like a bad guy to his friends. I think that's pretty admirable, actually. (Another thing I liked is that the guy-bonding-over-women-troubles scenes in this episode were handled without any misogyny or woman-blaming/shaming. Good on you, show!)
I didn't talk about the main Jones plot because I got completely sidetracked in the last few minutes onto the Neal/Peter/Mozzie arc, but I did really love that Jones got his own episode and that we got to find out more about him! \o/ Also, this episode had some neat symmetry with the earlier episode where Neal saved Jones' life (and blew his own escape plan to do it).
I'm still catching up on the episodes, but I think I like season 3 best. It has Diana > season 1, and a really interesting conflict in the middle. (I'm mostly managing to ignore the "Nazi loot" part.)
Yeah ... I'm just trying to ignore that part and enjoy the rest of it. Because I really do love the rest! Maybe it's just because this is the season I'm watching in realtime, with no idea where it's going, but I'm absolutely loving it; both the previous seasons had some really standout episodes that I loved, but there's so much at stake this season -- all Neal's relationships and, in some sense, Neal as a character. It's not so much a chase after a nebulous bad guy as a very basic conflict in Neal, between who he used to be and who he wants to be, and I think that's probably a big part of why I'm loving it so much.
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... also, I kinda want to write this now. *g*
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I actually got a little misty eyed when Sara left Neal. I didn't ship them hard core or anything but they were cute together and that was just sad. But I liked that it became the catalyst to get Neal to start really thinking about the life he has.
And is it wrong to say that I liked Neal lying to Mozzie? Yeah, not the greatest lie, but I like what it represents - Neal possibly turning away from the only life he knew in order to keep the life he has. Because the life he has is the life he's wanted and he's now coming to realize that.
Plus one of my guilty pleasures about the show is the way Neal always seems to be caught in the middle. First it was Kate vs. Peter, then Fowler vs Peter, then Adler vs Peter (although, technically, Neal was automatically on Peter's side with that on) and now it's Mozzie vs Peter. Basically, a life of crime playing tug-of-war with a life of no crime and Neal's the rope, and I love it.
Neal and Jones having a little heart to heart - *loves!* I love how laid back Jones is and how he lets Neal in without batting and eye (or getting suspicious).
And I would write more but I had gotten a little carsick on the way home from the library and the effects are lingering :S
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I actually got a little misty eyed when Sara left Neal. I didn't ship them hard core or anything but they were cute together and that was just sad. But I liked that it became the catalyst to get Neal to start really thinking about the life he has.
Yeah, I wasn't really pro-Sara/Neal or anti-Sara/Neal; I enjoyed the dynamic they had, but I also thought the breakup was handled well: very low-key and done in such a way that it really moved along Neal's character arc this season. I don't think he would've been in such a quandary at the end if he hadn't just lost Sara, so he's got a very tangible reminder of everything else he stands to lose if he goes ahead with his plans.
Plus one of my guilty pleasures about the show is the way Neal always seems to be caught in the middle. First it was Kate vs. Peter, then Fowler vs Peter, then Adler vs Peter (although, technically, Neal was automatically on Peter's side with that on) and now it's Mozzie vs Peter. Basically, a life of crime playing tug-of-war with a life of no crime and Neal's the rope, and I love it.
Oh, that's a good way to put it -- I hadn't really thought about it in those terms, but yeah, a lot of the big-arc plots do end up putting Neal in the middle and forcing him to choose which way he falls. Actually, that might be one reason why I'm loving this season's long arc the best, because it really is completely on Neal's shoulders -- I don't think we've had Neal this conflicted since he thought Peter was the bad guy back in season one. At least with Fowler or Adler, there was a definite bad guy, but in this case, there's not really; it's just a moral quandary that Neal himself is trapped in, with attractive options (and friends) on both sides. Poor Neal.
And is it wrong to say that I liked Neal lying to Mozzie? Yeah, not the greatest lie, but I like what it represents - Neal possibly turning away from the only life he knew in order to keep the life he has. Because the life he has is the life he's wanted and he's now coming to realize that.
Yes! I think one of the things that I love about this season is that he's being forced to really weigh his options, and to figure out what he has going for him here: people he cares about, a job he feels is worthwhile.
It hurts to have that wedge between them now, because he is very close to Mozzie and it's got to be really hard on him. But it was great to see him finally make a decision, particularly that decision ... now the question is how this is going to all play out next week! WANT NEXT EPISODE NOW!