Still completely unable to shut up about White Collar

[sholio]

This showwww~!

I don't think I've hit a bad episode yet. Even the ones that were kind of slow or didn't hold together that well had enough cute character moments to make them well worth watching.

And the characters ...! I've even fallen pretty hard for Mozzie now. I've now seen the episode in which Peter meets him for the first time and HEEEEE~! ("I thought you'd be taller." "Me too.") And getting drunk together ... OH SHOW. ♥

Actually, last Tuesday's episode (3x04) has made me take an interested second look at Peter and Mozzie's ... whatever it is, not friendship exactly, but not really animosity either. What really intrigues me about them is that, unlike Peter and Neal, they're always going to be on opposite sides and the complete antithesis of everything that either one of them would look for in a friend ... but underneath massive amounts of reciprocal irritation, they genuinely seem to like each other.

The whole show is full of these intriguing, complicated relationships -- I think right now I enjoy watching the characters in nearly every combination. Peter and Neal are made of awesome, naturally. But then there's Peter/Elizabeth, who I think have surpassed Wash/Zoe as my favorite TV married couple of all time, and pretty much all of Neal's friendships are fascinating (Neal and Elizabeth, Neal and Diana -- SO MUCH LOVE for the episode where they're in the hotel room together! -- Neal and June, Neal and Mozzie) and then there are oddball combinations like Mozzie and Elizabeth, or Mozzie and Peter. Or Peter and his FBI team.

SO MUCH LOVE FOR THEM.

And so many neat moments. Elizabeth helping her husband flirt, Neal using his anklet monitor to send a coded SOS, Peter's badass ninja moves ... I love how the characters are smart and capable and confident, how they use their wits and skills to stay one step ahead of not only the bad guys, but also each other. I love how so many of the characters (not just Neal and Peter, but nearly everybody in the cast) will be conspiring against each other one minute, and, five minutes later, colluding together on a scheme. I love how Neal so rarely actually lies, how he cleverly misdirects so that he's technically telling the truth while not answering the question that was asked. I love the way that Peter gives Neal a stable center for his life, and Neal brings out Peter's playful little-kid side.

And to think I'd given up on this show after the first couple of episodes. Where was my head at?

ETA: Am now watching 2x05 and aslkdfjdslka;fdlska;ds NEAL IN LEATHER JACKET. *falls over*

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Comments

[pat-t.livejournal.com]

Isn't it great! I agree with everything you said. Of all the shows I love, relationships are the central theme. Without them the plots fall apart and are pretty much meaningless. Well done shows have relationships that are complicated. People and relationships are complex and changing, not stagnant and predictable. Highlander was one of these shows. So was Buffy and Angel. It's one of the reasons I loved Brothers and Sisters. Even in SPN there is a complex network of relationships between the brothers themselves, Dean's relationship with his dad which is so different with Sam's. Their relationship with Bobby, etc. You get the idea.

In any case, WC quickly became one of my favorite shows.

[sholio]

It's wonderful! I do think White Collar appeals to me for many of the same reasons as Highlander, because it's got a similar vibe, with these sprawling, complicated casts of basically good people coming into perpetual conflict with each other. Characters who care about each other despite being very different people and often end up on the opposite sides of conflicts. (And I have similar problems with the fic in this fandom that I do in Highlander -- probably for the same reasons as well! Fandom doesn't seem to deal with those sorts of issues very well; it's really easy for it to be condensed down to "one character is right and one is wrong", but that's not what the show is about at all ....)

So, yeah. Really enjoying it. :)

[aqwt101.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to say how much I love your squee posts. You really remind me why I fell so hard into White Collar in the first place. Thank you and looking forward to more! :)

[sholio]

Thank you! :) I'm having a blast.

[swanpride.livejournal.com]

You know, the relationships are even greater when you watch the episodes in the right order - otherwise you miss out a lot of character development. (It's btw one of the main reason some fans (*cough* me *cough*) dislike Sara, because everyone else had a very steady development, while hers was very rushed and uneven in comparisem.

At the moment, Peter and Mozzie are in a silent fight for Neal. They are not exactly friends, but they can bond over their interest in Neal's wellbeing - they just have very different opinion what's the best for him.

[sholio]

It's actually been really interesting for me watching it this way, because with most shows, I like to start out at the beginning and watch through to the end. I'm a hardcore spoilerphobe.

With White Collar though, I watched the first couple of episodes and disliked it, so I had written off the show as something I probably wouldn't enjoy, and figured it didn't matter if I got spoiled for it. I'd downloaded a few vids and read various pieces of meta whenever I hit something that my flist was flailing about, so I already knew a lot of the major plot twists. And it's actually been really fascinating jumping around between seasons one, two and three in my viewing, because the characters do have a different vibe from season to season (Peter and Neal are so much more relaxed with each other in season two than in season one -- right now I'm jumping back and forth between episodes from both seasons). They really do get a lot of character growth. And now it's hard for me to remember what I didn't like about the first couple of episodes, because I love the characters so much now.

Show is made of squee and awesome. :)

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

*Squees with you* this show is so awesome about mixing the relationships. There's one ep - can't remember the name of it as I'm terrible with episode names - where Neal and Mozzie get Jones to help them out in conning this one guy and I just about died with glee. And Mozzie and Diana - hee! :D And Neal and Diana comes right after Neal and Peter for me.

I'm curious to know what you thought of Cruz (the woman who replaced Diana in season one). For me she was the only character I didn't like but she was pretty well liked by the rest of fandom (and what I found odd at that time was how people would write her as so supportive of Neal while in the show she was so condescending toward him. I never could understand that).

[sholio]

Yeah, they are really good about mixing it up and putting the characters together in interesting combinations, and usually they're pretty good about doing it without sidelining the Neal and Peter relationship (a lot of shows are good at one, but not the other -- they'll showcase one relationship at the expense of all others, or they'll mix up the characters a lot but never settle down with anything).

Neal and Mozzie get Jones to help them out in conning this one guy and I just about died with glee

I saw that one! That's the one with Mozzie's girlfriend, right? That whole episode was totally made of AWESOME; it was so much fun to see Jones get to participate in the con that time, and that was also the one with the whole end sequence with Neal and Mozzie's "perfect exchange" plan -- and again, this is what I love so much about these characters, because they're really smart and competent, and really good at passing each other coded messages and picking up on those coded messages in order to run circles around the bad guys. (Badder guys?)

Cruz I have mixed feelings about. I really miss Diana in season one; I love the relaxed, comfortable vibe that she has with both Peter and Neal. I've had to warm up to Cruz. I like her now, and I really wouldn't mind having both her and Diana around, but I'll be happy to have Diana back in the main-FBI-agent-besides-Peter role.

[sholio]

Oh, and also, I do agree with your comments in your last episode review about Neal needing to get more screen time - or at least get out in the field more! Watching the season one and early season two episodes, I'm really grooving on seeing Neal at the forefront of their cases. He really comes alive under pressure: thinking around corners, always staying two steps ahead of the bad guys (and one step ahead of Peter). I think the first couple episodes of this season had a good balance of the FBI stuff versus Neal getting to be clever and sharp-witted and brave (and I loved him being willing to throw away his escape in 3x01 in order to save Jones' life *squee*). I like the character-focused episodes, but I don't want to see Neal get sidelined in order for the FBI to do everything.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

I was going to quote part of your response but, well, it's pretty much one big yes to everything you said. In addition, we also got a much better idea of what Neal was going through mentally and emotionally when it came to the larger story arc. Which, maybe it's just me, but I feel like we're not getting as much of that with this season.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

And to think I'd given up on this show after the first couple of episodes. Where was my head at?

There is something...weird about the first few eps. I watched the first 2-3 eps, thought they were cute and whatever but had no real interest in the show; it wasn't until months later, after gnine kept pushing me to watch it, that I watched more & finally got into it. And I'm not the only one - my parents were the same way, and my bro; for some reason the show/chars take a bit to click? It's around eps 5-6, it seems...

What's weird is that going back after knowing the chars, I rather love them in the pilot and such, and don't see a particular difference between those eps and later ones, but yeah, you're not the only one who took a bit to warm up to it.

[sholio]

What's weird is that going back after knowing the chars, I rather love them in the pilot and such, and don't see a particular difference between those eps and later ones

Yeah, this, exactly! The second episode is a bit meh (the one with all the supermodels) but rewatching the pilot, I was all "squee!" here and "squee!" there, and I couldn't figure out why I hadn't liked the characters the first time -- they just seem like themselves to me now. At the time, it seemed very paint-by-numbers and forced.

... I don't know! It's good to know it's not just me, though! And it's a good lesson for me in giving shows a second chance (I rejected SGA on the basis of the pilot, too, and look how that turned out eventually ...).

[swanpride.livejournal.com]

I loved the pilot, but I felt similiar about the followeing three episodes. "Threads" because of the numerous plot holes in the ep. I appreciate the episode more by now, because it basically established Elizabeth as a character, but the case is still a little bit meh to me. "Book of hours", while it had many good scenes (I liked the ending), was a little bit overdramatic, with the dog who wasn't simply sick but a war surviver to boot. Flip of the coin is special because of the meeting between Peter and Mozzie, but the case itself is somewhat meh, and they spend too much time recapping it during the ep.

The portrait was the episode which convinced me - still one of my favourite episodes, along with the Pilot, Free Fall, Hard Sell, Front Man, Out of the Box, Need to know, Point Blank and Countermeasures.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

I think that for me it was the ads that turned me off for a while. They advertised it as this potentially sex-heavy cliche and I'd wanted nothing to do with it. But my mom kept watching the show and by the time season two rolled around I finally realized that what was advertised wasn't what was being shown.