sholio | Yet another post on the White Collar summer finale

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Yet another post on the White Collar summer finale

Well ... just a passing thought this time!

Something I was thinking about last night is that most of the show's finale/premiere pairs have had a general theme of conflict between the characters (in the finale) followed by resolution/teamwork/rebuilding trust in the next episode. Both the two mid-season finales in past seasons were very much that way: 1x07 ended with Peter being apparently revealed as the bad guy, followed by 1x08 and all its lovely rebuilding-trust scenes (♥); and 2x09 devoted most of the episode to Neal conning Peter et al in order to get close to Fowler, followed by 2x10 (Burke's Seven) which was all about everyone working together as a team to get Peter's job back.

In general, the premiere episodes have been very good character/friendship episodes; even this season's premiere had Neal throwing away his chance of making a clean getaway to save Jones' life, and patching things up with Peter after the major conflict at the end of the previous season's finale.

So ... it seems likely the trend will continue, and we'll get a reconciliation/rebuilding/teamwork episode next time? *fingers crossed*

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This is what I keep saying every time people get all up in knots about the finales - that no matter what happens or how bad it gets the show has always managed to fix it and get things back on track. The writers know what the audience likes so know better than to trash that irrevocably.

I also think, from what I've seen, that when things are at their most worst that's when Neal is at his most honest (Burke's Seven, Hard Sell, to name a few). Though it will be interesting to see if this trend continues since being honest will also mean implicating Mozzie and I can see Neal being torn about that.

*nods*

I thought it was really interesting to look at the past finales and see that this was a pretty consistent pattern -- they ratchet up the tension by threatening the trust between the characters, having them work independently, go off on their own, even scam each other (both Peter and Neal have done this), but this is always followed by an episode or two that focuses really heavily on teamwork, working together, and rebuilding the trust.

This is the first finale I've gone through in realtime when I haven't been able to get the catharsis and reconstruction immediately afterwards, which is probably why I reacted to it as strongly as I did. :D

I also think, from what I've seen, that when things are at their most worst that's when Neal is at his most honest (Burke's Seven, Hard Sell, to name a few). Though it will be interesting to see if this trend continues since being honest will also mean implicating Mozzie and I can see Neal being torn about that.

Yeah, that's a really tricky one. He's in a rough position, where there's no way he can help one friend without, in some sense, betraying the other one.

But I think you're right that when the chips are down is when Neal's sincerity and basic good nature tends to show. I don't want to let my hopes get too high for the next episode because I don't want to be disappointed if it doesn't do what I'm hoping for. But so far, the writers have been pretty good about delivering on the character stuff. *crosses fingers*

Maybe that's why I felt better at the end of the mid-season finale, rather than worse, as I had felt at the end of some of the previous episodes. Neal has already made his choice, and his choice was to stay with Peter and Elizabeth. Darned if he's going to lose Elizabeth after he already said goodbye to Mozzie!

(I'm still hoping Mozzie will be somewhat redeemed too, but I don't think he can ever fully be redeemed for me after all he has done, including ordering a hit.)

I ... don't know how to feel about some of the stuff Mozzie's done this season. I think the show's always been fairly up-front that Mozzie is an amoral guy who has some fairly dark/ugly stuff in his past. But it's different to know that and to actually see it. In particular, I really had trouble with the hiring-a-hitman thing; I wish the show had done a better job of selling me on the idea that it was really necessary (or something he had good reason to feel was necessary) and that he hadn't done it in a way that was so likely to cause collateral damage.

Sigh.

But having said that, he is unquestionably friends with Elizabeth, and we've seen in past episodes that he's willing to do things up to and including risking his life for people he cares about (or even people who care about people he cares about; I'm pretty sure that Mozzie saving Peter in "Dentist of Detroit" had at least as much, if not more, to do with Elizabeth as with whatever it is that Peter and Mozzie have between them). So I'm hoping that there is some awesome coming up for Mozzie too. And if not ... I agree that Neal's made it clear where he stands, which is actually a departure from some of his (stated) intentions in earlier seasons, so ... fingers crossed for the rest of season three! :D

Well, welcome with the waiting masses...

I'm not worried at all. I'm sure that Elizabeth will be okay, just as I was sure that Mozzie will be okay and Peter won't be the man with the ring. And I just know that after all the tension they build up, the next episodes will provide some patching up.

One thing which is really good about White Collar is the fact that they don't tend to drag out their story arcs endlessly. Whatever they will do with the treasure, it will be over by the end of the season - and we'll get a new story arc.

I'm still ... tense. :D But it helps a lot to realize that they have an established pattern that they seem to be following once again.

I'm actually gonna need to see the next episode, I think, and how they do it, before I'll be confident that I'll be happy with the resolution of the tension that they've built up. It's not that I don't think El will be okay, because there's no way they're gonna kill off El. Like I said somewhere else, I know El will be rescued, and I know Peter and Neal will keep working together. It's the how of it that matters to me -- if they can do it in a way that leaves me feeling comfortable with the characters' restored dynamic, or if I'm left uncomfortable and alienated.

I think I'm actually very glad that I didn't see 1x07/1x08 in realtime, because if I'd been watching in normal sequence and with a break between the episodes, I suspect I would have been angry with the ... manipulativeness of that cliffhanger and the fact that Peter was not the bad guy in that scenario. There are aspects of it that still upset me; it feels like such a huge cop-out to start to go to the "our fine upstanding hero is a seekrit bad guy" place (which would have been such an awesome twist) and then pull back from it. It would have been very dark, but damn, what a rush. :D But then, the next episode after the cliffhanger, 1x08, had enough awesome character stuff that it made me forgive the melodrama and the potential of what they could've done. That's how I feel about the 3x10 cliffhanger, I guess - they could go dark and it could be seriously awesome, if they were HBO or TNT, but they're not, so I know they won't and I'm just hoping that they'll have something that is awesome enough to make me pleased with the resolution rather than wishing they'd gone for the dark option instead. (Um. If that makes any sense.)

ETA: Oh, and yes, I agree about not dragging out the storylines. Actually, I think part of my startled reaction to the mid-season finale is that I was expecting the storyline to be resolved and was surprised that it wasn't. They don't usually stretch them out that far! But, yeah, I do expect that they'll tie it up within an episode or two, and move on to something else.

Edited 2011-08-21 08:52 (UTC)

We'll see...they did a very good job with "Hard Sell", which is still one of my favourite episodes. They did a piss poor job with "Burke's Seven". Still disappointed about that. It was such a great start and then they suddenly shifted from Neal to Peter, although what I really wanted to see was Neal dealing with the fall out of his actions and not another round of Super-Peter.

Knowing the pattern I expected Neal making a choice in this episode (which he did), but the treasure story line staying unresolved. I actually considered stopping watching when the door fell shut, because I know something bad would come next, but I knew, there was no way that I would awaid spoiler until january.

I liked both 1x08 and 2x10. :D But there is also a part of me that really wants to see them go ahead and explore the darker things that they hint at and then don't go ahead and plunge into. I think this is one of the reasons why I loved Highlander so much, because it actually did go to those dark places that most shows only hint at. White Collar, I think, gets closer than a lot of shows do -- it's more honest about its own darkness. But then it doesn't go ahead and take that extra step (which Highlander used to do), into having the characters make really dark decisions and then stagger from the fallout. When WC does do that, it feels ... flippant, almost. Like Mozzie hiring a hitman in 3x09. You never really got the feeling that truly bad things were going to come out of that -- people he cared about dying, Mozzie himself confronting the dark side of his own soul -- and that he was going to have to spend episodes coming back from that (or not coming back from it, as the case may be). In Highlander, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine most of the characters going truly evil, and most of them have episodes where they flirt with it, if not totally falling off the good-guy wagon to the dark side. WC hints that it's a possibility and then pulls away at the last minute.

I thought that 1x07 was kinda cheap in that it suggested that Peter had done that (done something really dark) and then pulled away from it and whipped up an unconvincing explanation for why it really wasn't as dark as you thought it was. Which frustrates me - there is no reason for him to have done what he did, in the way that he did, except to create unnecessary melodrama. Vex! But the next episode (1x08) used the pointless melodrama to create really awesome character scenes, which I loved despite being vaguely annoyed with the show manipulating me. Awesome episode! Frustrating cliffhanger! What to do! (Me being me, "what to do" is apparently "float in the happy, and ignore the implausibility" *g*).

... and now that you bring it up, 2x10 kinda does the same thing, doesn't it, where they have Neal go pretty dark and then, rather than going ahead and dealing with it, they wander off into fluffy caper territory instead. Which might be another valid look-ahead to the mid-season premiere, where they start in a dark kind of direction and then go fluffy in the second half. Very much in keeping with their pattern up to this point, and, um, oh dear. XD Well, here's hoping that they have enough fun character bits in 3x11 to make up for muffing the character arc ...?

Highlander became too depressing on me. I don't mind venturing into dark areas, but I want to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm not sure that the thing with the hit is over yet. The show sometimes prepares ahead in a surprising manner. Like Neal stealing the key for his anklet, but only using it two episodes later. There is also still the matter with his father dangling around, I'm sure we haven't heard the last of this one, yet.

And in a sense, Mozzie is facing the consequences now. If he hadn't ordered the hit, Keller wouldn't have get away and Elizabeth hadn't been kidnapped.

It's a bit of a tricky balance to walk, because shows that raise serious issues and then deal with them tend to be bleak, and sometimes hard to wade through -- I've never tackled Battlestar Galactica for that reason. I think I keep bringing up Highlander in discussions of this nature because (from my perspective as a viewer, anyway) that show actually managed to pull off dealing with the heavy/serious stuff while still keeping its happy/bouncy/fun side, in a way that I've almost never seen done. But it was pretty dark at times. And I think in the end, that's why I haven't managed to stay very deep in the fandom -- it's a quite depressing show, overall, and a lot of the fic is really depressing, and most of the stories I want to write in the fandom are depressing too! And there's only so much depressing I can take.

I get conflicted because, on the one hand, I want shows to not simply sweep under the rug the darker stuff that the characters do, or the darker implications of the situations they set up. But if they do deal with it, then the show itself ends up being super-dark, and with most of the shows I watch, the lighter/fluffier side is what actually drew me to them in the first place. SO CONFLICTED!

And, in general, I've been pretty happy with the way that White Collar has handled it. There's enough long-term plot arc stuff, and enough willingness to take the characters to dark places and then bring them out again, that I don't generally end up feeling cheated of everything they're not doing. But the heart of the show is its sense of fun and play, and I certainly wouldn't want them to lose that when they do the more serious stuff.

I liked dark skies during the first season for this reason - until the show writers went crazy.

I like White Collar because, while it is escapism, it doesn't treat the viewers as idiotic morons (mostly, they slip sometimes). Dark undertones are fine with me, as long as they pull back in time - and as long as they stay IC. I can see Mozzie ordering a hit, but I can't see him being a cold blooded killer himself, just as I can see Neal following an impulse going for revenge, but not planing ahead to kill someone (although I'm not sure if Neal really wanted to kill Fowler or if he mostly wanted to know why he killed Kate).

The good thing with White Collar is that it is so inspiring - everthing the writers don't do will happen in fanfiction sooner or later.

Oh, I'm sure they'll repair the Neal-Peter relationship and probably even do a good job with Neal-Mozzie. But what I really want is Elizabeth being awesome.
We didn't get even one El episode until now, as far as I remember: Mozzie, Diana and Jones each got one, but not El. And now she has the damsel in distress role. I know she'll be okay, and she'll most likely be rescued by Neal, Peter and Mozzie working together, but I want her to be strong and still herself. I want a realistic aftermath with El being allowed to be vulnerable and scared, but getting over it, being her usual awesome self all the time, and I want a lot more El to make up for this plot.
Also if I could wish, I'd want an El&June friendship scene :)

I've got a back-half-of-season spoiler (not for the second half of the finale, but for a different episode) that addresses this -- not sure how much spoilage you want, though!

The damsel-in-distress thing doesn't seem to be bothering me as much as it's bothering a lot of people on my flist -- I guess because the show is usually pretty good about avoiding that, so I'll let them have a damsel in distress every once in a while. *g* But I really would love seeing El take an active role in her rescue, and yeah, one thing that I bet you're right we're not going to get is any sort of emotional aftermath for her.

Tbh, it's not bothering me very much by itself, because they haven't done it often before and it's believable that Keller would go after El to get to Peter. I just want more awesome El in exchange!

Ooh, does that mean El will get her episode? Just yes or no, please :)

Ooh, does that mean El will get her episode? Just yes or no, please :)

Yes. :)

And yeah, I think in general the show's been good enough about avoiding damsel-in-distress syndrome that I'm okay with a plotline that deals with it, especially since it makes sense in terms of the overall plot.

But I really do hope that it's not just "let's rescue El!" and that we get some of her side of it, as well.

Indeed, I am not worried! :D

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Yet another post on the White Collar summer finale

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