![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Last night's 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).
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).