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White Collar preview for next week
I decided to put this in a separate post so that people can discuss the other episode without potentially being spoiled! I generally avoid previews of the next episode like the plague, but in this case I watched about 2/3 of it.
... mostly because I wanted to find out from the beginning of the preview if Peter and Neal are working together on retrieving the evidence box now -- which they most definitely are! :D
And then there's the scene with Neal and James -- I stopped watching immediately after that, because I was afraid of getting too many clips from late in the episode (there have been some previews that have clips from all the way at the end, which, just, no!) but that one line of Neal's, about Peter being more of a father than James ever was, is all over Tumblr and everywhere, so it's not like a person can avoid it. :D
And I ... don't know how I feel about it, honestly. I guess we'll have to see how it plays out, but like I've mentioned in the past, as much as I love the pseudo-parental relationship the two of them have, I like it best by far when it's fairly low-key and isn't openly labeled as such. The problem, I guess, is that Peter isn't Neal's father, and explicitly describing him as such seems to strip some of the magic out of it, for me. It takes away a lot of Neal's agency, puts him in a subordinate/child role with regards to Peter, and one of the things I like about them is that it doesn't usually feel that way to me -- Peter is in charge in certain ways, and Neal looks up to him in certain ways, but they are much more equal than an explicitly father/son relationship. Putting Neal in the role of "child" just feels all kinds of wrong to me. He's a thirty-something adult for pete's sake. He shouldn't be treated as a child, by Peter or anyone else, and one of the things that does occasionally bug me about the way that Peter relates to him is that I do think Peter sometimes slips into the trap of seeing Neal as a child, and can be overly condescending, protective, etc. -- like I said in one of my episode reactions a few weeks ago, one of Peter's failings is a tendency to assume that Neal can't handle things on his own. In the early days, it was largely because he didn't trust Neal not to slip back into his criminal ways; these days it's more because he loves Neal and wants to protect him, but either way, a little of it is good but a lot of it is unhealthy for both of them. (And, in general, it has improved overall. Peter has been doing a good job, I think, of incrementally stepping back and letting Neal handle his own affairs over the last four years, as he shifts from "parole officer" to "friend". This just feels like a step backwards to me, even though it's coming from Neal, not Peter ...)
And I also don't like the general trope of Neal choosing Peter over James. If they have to come into open conflict as father-figures, like I've said before, I would rather see it go the other way (lots of potential for interesting emotional spillover, if nothing else!). However, I guess we don't know how it'll go ultimately down until next week.
(ETA: Having said all of that, though, watching the fandom erupt in squee over Neal's "Peter is more of a father to me ..." line is fun, and heavens, I don't want to take away anyone's squee. I'd much rather have the fandom be happy than not-happy, and if nothing else, I know that we'll be getting some good Peter-Neal warm fuzzies next week. :D)
ALSO! And IMPORTANT! I haven't watched the last part of the trailer, at least not at this point, so I would rather not be spoiled for it or for anything else you might know about the upcoming episodes, please.
... mostly because I wanted to find out from the beginning of the preview if Peter and Neal are working together on retrieving the evidence box now -- which they most definitely are! :D
And then there's the scene with Neal and James -- I stopped watching immediately after that, because I was afraid of getting too many clips from late in the episode (there have been some previews that have clips from all the way at the end, which, just, no!) but that one line of Neal's, about Peter being more of a father than James ever was, is all over Tumblr and everywhere, so it's not like a person can avoid it. :D
And I ... don't know how I feel about it, honestly. I guess we'll have to see how it plays out, but like I've mentioned in the past, as much as I love the pseudo-parental relationship the two of them have, I like it best by far when it's fairly low-key and isn't openly labeled as such. The problem, I guess, is that Peter isn't Neal's father, and explicitly describing him as such seems to strip some of the magic out of it, for me. It takes away a lot of Neal's agency, puts him in a subordinate/child role with regards to Peter, and one of the things I like about them is that it doesn't usually feel that way to me -- Peter is in charge in certain ways, and Neal looks up to him in certain ways, but they are much more equal than an explicitly father/son relationship. Putting Neal in the role of "child" just feels all kinds of wrong to me. He's a thirty-something adult for pete's sake. He shouldn't be treated as a child, by Peter or anyone else, and one of the things that does occasionally bug me about the way that Peter relates to him is that I do think Peter sometimes slips into the trap of seeing Neal as a child, and can be overly condescending, protective, etc. -- like I said in one of my episode reactions a few weeks ago, one of Peter's failings is a tendency to assume that Neal can't handle things on his own. In the early days, it was largely because he didn't trust Neal not to slip back into his criminal ways; these days it's more because he loves Neal and wants to protect him, but either way, a little of it is good but a lot of it is unhealthy for both of them. (And, in general, it has improved overall. Peter has been doing a good job, I think, of incrementally stepping back and letting Neal handle his own affairs over the last four years, as he shifts from "parole officer" to "friend". This just feels like a step backwards to me, even though it's coming from Neal, not Peter ...)
And I also don't like the general trope of Neal choosing Peter over James. If they have to come into open conflict as father-figures, like I've said before, I would rather see it go the other way (lots of potential for interesting emotional spillover, if nothing else!). However, I guess we don't know how it'll go ultimately down until next week.
(ETA: Having said all of that, though, watching the fandom erupt in squee over Neal's "Peter is more of a father to me ..." line is fun, and heavens, I don't want to take away anyone's squee. I'd much rather have the fandom be happy than not-happy, and if nothing else, I know that we'll be getting some good Peter-Neal warm fuzzies next week. :D)
ALSO! And IMPORTANT! I haven't watched the last part of the trailer, at least not at this point, so I would rather not be spoiled for it or for anything else you might know about the upcoming episodes, please.
no subject
Peter is in charge in certain ways, and Neal looks up to him in certain ways, but they are much more equal than an explicitly father/son relationship
Yes, definitely, and I think this is something that gets lost in fandom, both by the gen crowd and by the kinky sex crowd. (The fanon conception of an ultra childlike and/or submissive Neal is one of my pet peeves.)
The one thing I want for Neal's character development more than anything else is for him to stop looking for his identity in other people. First it was his father, then in all likelihood Keller, then Adler, now Peter. His choice in mentors is improving, but that's not addressing the central problem.
no subject
I feel like labeling them as father and son actually diminishes their relationship, because it erases all of those other aspects.
Yes! That's basically what I meant by taking the magic out, although this is a much better way to put it: it diminishes them, takes away some of the complexity of the relationship. One of the things I love most about them is that they're so twisty and have so many facets, and taking just one of those facets (and, to me, one of the less appealing ones) and saying "This is how it is" -- to me, that makes it less, not more.
The fanon conception of an ultra childlike and/or submissive Neal is one of my pet peeves.
Augh, me too. And like you say, both the gen and the pairing people do this. I really hate that particular characterization of Neal. It erases his most interesting aspects and takes away most of his agency, and it's just not him.
The one thing I want for Neal's character development more than anything else is for him to stop looking for his identity in other people. First it was his father, then in all likelihood Keller, then Adler, now Peter. His choice in mentors is improving, but that's not addressing the central problem.
*Exactly*. I really do think that's the next step in Neal's character development. He's moved from having unhealthy mentors to a more or less healthy one, but it doesn't fix the underlying problem, which is that he still hasn't really decided who he is, and looks to other people to tell him that. My hoped-for conclusion to Neal's character arc is that he eventually stops looking for his identity in other people, and find it in himself -- not that he can't lean on others for advice and support, but I think that eventually he needs to separate himself from Peter and stop seeing Peter as a parental stand-in.