sholio | A bit more nattering about White Collar

I watched White Collar 2x07 and 1x07 a little earlier (yes, in that order, as it happened) -- very interesting to watch them back to back, since one is Peter on the run and Neal helping him, and the other episode is the other way around.

BEST SCENE EVER from 2x07 and probably one of the best in the whole show: stealing the Lamborghinis. "Is this a CI-off?" NEAL'S *FACE* WHEN HE SAID THAT. He looked so delighted! That whole scene had me dying. Peter's CI is the best! But we knew that already. XD

My crush on Peter (and Tim DeKay) is really getting out of hand. His little sideways grins completely undo me, and his intelligence and competence and badassitude and the shoulder holster and ... pretty much everything. Yet another thing I loved about 2x07 was getting so much of Peter in civvies! (Okay, the suit technically is civvies ... but you know what I mean.)

... though I did wish at the end of 2x07 that Peter had gone ahead and given Neal enough "leash" that he could go to the exhibit in reciprocation for Neal helping him out. It was what I was expecting him to do. Peter, you do pick the damnedest times to follow the rules. *whaps him*

And the ending of 1x07 - hahahaha, I can't wait to see the explanation for this! Peter, in the library, with the candlestick ... the ending of that episode was actually one of the handful of things that I picked up about the show back when I figured I wasn't ever going to watch it and used to skim meta posts that looked interesting: I knew that people back in season one thought Peter was a bad guy for a while. Except I'd gotten the general idea that whatever happened had happened at the end of season one -- and I hadn't been able to figure out exactly how, since I've already seen 2x01 and also the way end of 1x14, and nothing made Peter look particularly villainous in those episodes. So! Now I have seen the scene in question! And I shall be moving right along to 1x08 soon.

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So, how many eps are left, yet? (Never fell for the red hearing with Peter myself)

Oh, small recommandation: Do not, I repeat NOT watch Burke's seven before Point Blank. Those two are too connected.

Heh, it's much too late for that ... Burke's Seven was one of the earliest episodes I watched. (At that point I was going mostly by intriguing titles and/or episode descriptions.)

I'm actually close to finished! I've now seen all of season two, and all I have left are a chunk of episodes at the end of season one. Which means I'll finally be able to put together just what exactly happened with Kate and Fowler in season one. I think I've gathered the salient bits from later episodes, but there are still a lot of holes. But sadly ... then I'll be done!

That's sad...the ending of point blank was so twisty, it had me on the edge of my seat.

So you haven't seen front man yet?

Augh! I had to dig up an episode guide for White Collar because I couldn't remember which one that was! Yeah, "Free Fall" was great. "The Greatest Cake"! I'm not sure if I would have realized that was a pun if someone hadn't said there was a great pun in the episode; Brilliant Husband missed it entirely, and I had to tell him later.

I think the only reason for Peter to refuse to let Neal go to the exhibit in 2.07 was so that the überboss could do it. That was a moment of writer-fail, I thought: not a serious one, but unmotivated for Peter. Neal had just helped save him!

I always favored Peter a little over Neal, though I have to admit I think that Neal is cuter. This season, though, I'm totally rooting for Peter. Peter is teh awesome: he has all his stuff together while Neal can't hold his together, and Peter wins. He's ultimately smarter than Neal, particularly at life. (Who has the "hot wife" again? Uh-huh!)

Yeah, the uberboss going with him was a neat moment, but Peter not letting him go was somewhat less than stellar. I guess maybe I want to believe Peter's not that much of a hardass when there's no real reason for him to be, especially when Neal just saved his ass.

I like both of them. I've always had a huge soft spot for the "grifter with a heart of gold" type, and I'm particularly fond of Neal because I think the show does a good job of writing him as both a good person and a conman; one of my big problems with a lot of the depictions of that type of character is that the writers can't seem to juggle both sides of the character (it's one of the reasons I stopped watching Leverage, which was way too much "heart of gold" and not nearly enough "con" for me -- the show never really sold me that these people were crooks). But there's just something about Peter, or maybe the way Tim DeKay plays him, that has utterly stolen my heart. I love that he's not the dumb cop that the criminals run circles around; he's a worthy adversary for Neal's genius-criminal type.

To be fair, Peter has a wife who is anxiously waiting for his return, and it was Neal's own fault that he waited until the very last day of the exhibition to ask.

And I think that it's high time for Peter to prove himself...all his talk that he caught Neal twice. Sorry, but the first time the trap wasn't even Peter's idea and Neal went into it willingly, the second time Neal was too heartbroken to resist. Plus, the only crime they could prove was the one Neal did at the very beginning of his career.

Actually Neal did ask earlier, at the beginning of the episode when Peter and Neal were talking about what they planned to do for the weekend.

I didn't mean earlier the day, but earlier for the exhibition. If you remember, Diana told him that she already went a week earlier, and that he should have asked back then.

Ah, okay.

Yeah, Peter ditching Neal rather than making it possible for him to go to the museum rather bugged me. But like many in fandom I lean toward the idea that Peter left the brochure on his boss' desk to get him to take Neal without directly asking him to.

Peter needing to keep on his toes around Neal, and his authority over Neal, has at times made me rather uncomfortable with Peter. In Home Invasion, for example, though Neal did invite Peter to stay with him the way Peter just barges in without warning and makes himself at home so quickly still makes me squirm (I have somewhat of a territory/privacy squick - I feel really uncomfortable having people stay at our house and feel uncomfortable staying at other people's house - and a little bit of an authority squick, in that I hate being bossed around and told how to handle my own business). I often have to remind myself that Peter is in this tricky place of wanting to trust Neal but needing to be careful of him at the same time, and that means doing things that seem rather unkind or knee-jerk reactive.

But like many in fandom I lean toward the idea that Peter left the brochure on his boss' desk to get him to take Neal without directly asking him to.

Heh. That thought had crossed my mind -- it does seem like Peter's sort of sideways thinking -- though I figured it was mostly rationalization on my part.

Yeah, I think in general, I can see both Peter and Neal's point of view, and I think the show does a pretty good job of being fair in the way that it treats their viewpoint when it comes to the issue of Neal's autonomy. Admittedly I really love Peter, so it's hard to tell when I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt where I shouldn't be -- and Peter definitely comes down way harder on Neal sometimes than he ought to; there are times when I really dislike his intrusion on Neal's personal space or refusal to accept Neal's word. But Peter's also dealing with a similar situation to Neal, where he's having to unlearn the habits of a lifetime. Neal keeps getting drawn back into the con-artist lifestyle because it's all he knows, and Peter is similarly having to deal with thinking of people like Neal (and Mozzie, and June) as friends who can be trusted rather than opponents to be kept at arm's length and never taken at their word. He's always had a fairly black-and-white attitude towards the law versus things outside the law, and now he's being forced to acknowledge that there's a huge gray area and that Neal's way can sometimes get things done where his way can't. (Well, actually I think it's more complicated than that -- I think Peter believes very strongly in justice, and in doing what's right. And he's always conflated that in his head with law and the system. But being around Neal is making him recognize that what's legal and what's right aren't always the same thing, and that's difficult for him to wrap his mind around.)

It did bother me a little in Home Invasion, too -- I felt like they were going a little overboard with the lousy-roommate thing for a joke's sake when it shouldn't have been entirely in character.

Admittedly I really love Peter, so it's hard to tell when I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt where I shouldn't be

Yeah, this is what I dislike about being so deeply into a show - having a favorite character and never knowing if your reaction is favoritism or legit. I've actually become pretty dang protective of Neal (if you haven't noticed) and it's driving me crazy because I really don't want to become that type of fan. Just like I have to remind myself of Peter's situation with Neal, I also have to remind myself that Neal is a criminal with a very loaded criminal background.

But I think a lot of my reaction and protectiveness is in response to fan reaction, because the show is awesome about balancing the two characters' and their personalities out, it's awesome in how complicated the relationship is, but fandom, at times, can get a little black-and-white happy and that gets frustrating.

A bit more nattering about White Collar

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