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Fretting about season five
Spoilers for White Collar season four, obviously, and some really vague ones from Jeff Eastin interviews regarding season five. (There's really nothing concrete out there yet, as far as I know.)
The only thing we really know about season five yet is vague references from Jeff Eastin to getting the show and the Neal-Peter dynamic back to how it used to be in the past. I think in one interview he specifically referred to going back to a season one dynamic? I don't have any links handy because I've been reading things all over the place and random stuff lodges in my head (though probably I got most of them from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aqwt101).
Anyway. I ... don't really know how I feel about this, because from the various hints that are being dropped, the most plausible thing to assume that Peter, in the wake of however he gets his job back, is going to back off from how he's been the last couple of seasons and crack down a lot harder on Neal, and Neal's going back to hiding things from him and running cons behind Peter's back, and ...
... DO NOT WANT. :'(
Or that's been my main reaction, anyway. If that's actually what happens, a rollback to their season one "Neal is always on the verge of running and Peter is on the verge of throwing him back in prison" dynamic, I anticipate a lot of heartstomping in my future.
But I was also complaining earlier this season about how I've gone from seeing them as good for each other to (sort of) bad for each other (I go back and forth on that), so I guess this might actually be a good thing for them in the long run, if they back off a bit and aren't so emotionally tangled up in each other. It's probably healthier for them not to be that reliant on each other and to have their main emotional connections be with other people anyway. (Not to mention it would probably be less emotionally fraught for me if they were! This is something I'm noticing about watching Once Upon a Time ... tons of characters, with tons of relationships, means that it's easier to roll with the punches when things don't really go my way on one or two of them ...)
ALSO, I'm probably creating unnecessary angst for myself when I'm fretting about a season that hasn't even been filmed yet, based on extremely vague and open-to-interpretation spoilers from a creator who has been known to occasionally troll the fandom. *g*
I guess I'll end with a cute picture, because I can:
ETA: Upon further pondering, I wanted to clarify what I mean by "bad for each other" ... It's mostly that I think they're always going to keep hurting each other and messing up each other's lives. Things like Neal being so badly hurt at the end of 4x09, or Peter getting arrested at the end of the season, are always going to keep happening to them; there's no happy, safe middle ground for them, just this pendulum swinging between extremes, and sooner or later something really dire is going to happen to one or both of them. On the other hand, in a weird way they seem to be okay with that; it's part of their oddball appeal, honestly, because they would probably both be happier, safer, and more content if they'd get out of each other's lives, but they don't really want to.
The only thing we really know about season five yet is vague references from Jeff Eastin to getting the show and the Neal-Peter dynamic back to how it used to be in the past. I think in one interview he specifically referred to going back to a season one dynamic? I don't have any links handy because I've been reading things all over the place and random stuff lodges in my head (though probably I got most of them from
aqwt101).Anyway. I ... don't really know how I feel about this, because from the various hints that are being dropped, the most plausible thing to assume that Peter, in the wake of however he gets his job back, is going to back off from how he's been the last couple of seasons and crack down a lot harder on Neal, and Neal's going back to hiding things from him and running cons behind Peter's back, and ...
... DO NOT WANT. :'(
Or that's been my main reaction, anyway. If that's actually what happens, a rollback to their season one "Neal is always on the verge of running and Peter is on the verge of throwing him back in prison" dynamic, I anticipate a lot of heartstomping in my future.
But I was also complaining earlier this season about how I've gone from seeing them as good for each other to (sort of) bad for each other (I go back and forth on that), so I guess this might actually be a good thing for them in the long run, if they back off a bit and aren't so emotionally tangled up in each other. It's probably healthier for them not to be that reliant on each other and to have their main emotional connections be with other people anyway. (Not to mention it would probably be less emotionally fraught for me if they were! This is something I'm noticing about watching Once Upon a Time ... tons of characters, with tons of relationships, means that it's easier to roll with the punches when things don't really go my way on one or two of them ...)
ALSO, I'm probably creating unnecessary angst for myself when I'm fretting about a season that hasn't even been filmed yet, based on extremely vague and open-to-interpretation spoilers from a creator who has been known to occasionally troll the fandom. *g*
I guess I'll end with a cute picture, because I can:
ETA: Upon further pondering, I wanted to clarify what I mean by "bad for each other" ... It's mostly that I think they're always going to keep hurting each other and messing up each other's lives. Things like Neal being so badly hurt at the end of 4x09, or Peter getting arrested at the end of the season, are always going to keep happening to them; there's no happy, safe middle ground for them, just this pendulum swinging between extremes, and sooner or later something really dire is going to happen to one or both of them. On the other hand, in a weird way they seem to be okay with that; it's part of their oddball appeal, honestly, because they would probably both be happier, safer, and more content if they'd get out of each other's lives, but they don't really want to.
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But, like you, I also think I'm probably worrying too much. Or, at least, at this stage I'm worrying more than is warranted. And, honestly, over all White Collar is good at giving me what I want. That doesn't mean it won't break my heart in the future (the pain of an open canon), but its track record is good.
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But, yeah, we're still very much at the "vague, subjective spoilers" stage (they haven't even started filming yet!). So I am trying to tell myself not to worry too much. And like you, my general experience with the show is that it's been pretty good at delivering what I'm looking for -- even when it breaks my heart, it usually makes up for it an episode or two later -- so hopefully season five will be more of the same ...
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Yes, exactly! I don't see how they could go back to the way they were before with everything that's happened. I could see Peter trying to pull himself back from the edge, what with all the heartache it's caused him. But that's not the same as going back. Holding himself more to his old standards would be believable and quite reasonable, but I wouldn't want him to try to impose those standards on Neal.
And if Neal loses four seasons of character growth in order to fit him back into "ready to run" mode, I will be unhappy indeed.
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I also don't think that JE is all that good at talking about future plots. He said a bunch of stuff in that interview that I found contradictory. So I wouldn't worry too much about it.
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For me, being able to move the dynamics of the two guys back to something closer to the pilot, where Peter is more the taskmaster and Neal is trying his best to be good when the circumstances around him aren't allowing him to do that. [. . .] The real key in the next season, as usual, the show works the best when Neal has something going on that Peter doesn't quite trust. The more Peter puts his career in jeopardy for Neal, it makes it more difficult for him to sneak around Peter's back. I have a really good idea on how to restore that to the show.
I guess that gave me the impression that we might get more of an emphasis on Neal trying to be good? Because Neal has not been trying all that hard these last couple of seasons. But I'm not at all fond of this whole "Peter puts his career in jeopardy for Neal and then Neal sneaks around behind his back and makes things worse" dynamic we've had going on. I would like less of that, please. And it felt like that wasn't quite as bad in S1. So . . . basically, I have no idea. That was not the most coherent answer I've ever seen a showrunner give.
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I'm totally with you on that; it was the big thing about the first half of season four that made me unhappy. It kind of ... unbalances the dynamic, I guess. If they're each running their own game (as with season two and the music box, or season three and the treasure) then it feels fairly balanced on both sides; they're both keeping secrets, they're both playing angles. But the early season four dynamic just felt lopsided and unhappy-making; it isn't nearly as much fun if Peter's doing most of the giving in the relationship.
But I also hate the idea that Peter is going to come out of the whole prison experience without learning anything, either -- with no takeaway from his experiences except that he'll be a lot more frigid and strict towards Neal, and Neal will react to that by going behind Peter's back. That's not any better! I'd hate to see the show turn into precisely the sort of fanfic I don't like. :p
Still, I'm trying to remind myself that it's awfully early to be making value judgments. And even though he can be kind of incoherent when he's talking about the show, Jeff Eastin does seem to be genuinely invested in the Peter-Neal relationship, and in Neal's personal growth. He also talks a lot in "looking ahead to season five" interviews about Neal figuring out how to separate himself from James -- figuring out who he is, and who he wants to be. I would love to see that be a major theme in season five.
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This, absolutely. This is something that was especially strong in seasons one and two. In those seasons, I didn't feel that either Neal or Peter was being portrayed as absolutely right or absolutely wrong. They were both keeping secrets, with their own agendas. Neal was sneaking around Peter's back, but Peter was keeping information that (IMO) Neal had the right to know. That slid away in season three, when, yes, they were both playing their own game, but trying to catch someone with billions of dollars of stolen art and trying to keep billions of dollars in stolen art are very different things. And then, as noted, season four shifted things to where Peter was doing most of the giving.
And to some extent that's not surprising. Neal is the main character, so most of the stuff that happens, happens to him. It's his girlfriend who's murdered, it's his long lost father we find. So, Peter reacting to major plot events is the same as Peter reacting to Neal's issues. Which is why I'm feeling some hope over the season four cliffhanger. Because this is something that's happen to Peter that Neal will have to react to.
And, okay, moving on to my big issue, I know we're continuously told that as soon as Neal and Peter trust each other, the show is over, but I just... don't believe that. I don't see why that has to be true. Granted, I don't think Neal and Peter will ever be totally in sync. Their basic worldviews are too different for that. But I would love to see them get rid of "Neal and Peter lie because that's the show." If they let secrets arise from natural characters conflicts rather than "distrust is the theme of the show," I think things would actually improve. And we wouldn't get problem like early season 4, where Neal's dishonesty doesn't really make sense. Frequently, he doesn't have any reason to lie to Peter except that he has too because that's the show. I mean, yeah, I can fanwank it. But I'd like to not have to.
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Aargh, yes, SO MUCH THIS! I think that you nailed it here, that there really was no compelling reason for Neal to lie in early season four except that he "has to" according to the show's premise. But he doesn't! The back half of season four proved that they can still have Peter and Neal on opposite sides in a plausible kind of way, without having to contrive reasons for Neal to go behind Peter's back. For that matter, nobody was at odds at all in the second halves of seasons two and three, with no negative effects on the show.
As the characters get closer and have more invested in each other, it's getting harder and harder to divide them without having to resort to either character assassination or having one or both of them act like a dick. And they don't have to! They're different enough people that conflict is going to arise naturally, just through their different ways of seeing the world.
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In roughly five minutes of thinking, I have come up with an alternate conflict for the first half of season four:
Revenge versus justice. It's a big thing in season two, but it's only barely toyed with in season four. But let's roll with it. Because in early season four, Neal's feeling the same things he did at the start of season two: rage, grief, and the desire to make whoever did it pay. But he's seen where that can lead: eventually you're crashing through windows and pointing guns at people.
In season two, Peter talked about justice, about letting the law do its job. But when Elizabeth was kidnapped, he didn't care a thing for proper procedure. He did what it took to save her. For him to now tell Neal that Neal has to do things properly would be hypocritical. And that's not Peter.
So, how do they proceed? Neal and Peter both have very basic, very different views on this, but both of those views have been shaken. I think this would have been fascinating to explore. And no arbitrary dishonesty in sight.
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(I also wished that there had been more callbacks in "Checkmate" to the entire situation with Kate and the revenge vs. justice thing. Again, I thought there were going to be, and the setup was perfect for it -- and I'm not talking about Peter having a sudden "oh wait, I was so wrong, I should have let Neal shoot Fowler!" epiphany or anything like that, but it just would have been very interesting to see those issues touched upon again, with Peter having a more visceral understanding of where Neal was coming from in Point Blank.)
It's frustrating, because the writers are capable of doing some really interesting character stuff, and they have the potential to address these issues in a very nuanced way. When they really hit the right notes, like you were saying, they don't really present it in terms of "this character is right and this one is wrong"; rather, both Peter and Neal are too wrapped up in their own headspace to really get where the other one is coming from, and they can't see their own blind spots. There is a ton of potential for character-based conflict that often gets overlooked because of the show's over-reliance on gimmicky excuses for putting them on opposite sides.
Now that I'm thinking about Eastin's season one comment, and the show getting back to being more like season one ... my most positive spin on that comment is that they won't have so much over-the-top stuff (Nazi subs, Revolutionary War spies, massive conspiracies) and they'll focus more on the characters and the conflicts naturally arising from their different points of view. I was rewatching the pilot recently, and there was something less glossy about it, more down-to-earth and real. The show has picked up a veneer of glamour over the seasons that in some ways detracts from the characters feeling solid and believable. Their plots have gotten more outrageous and silly, and while I've greatly enjoyed some of the outrageous silliness, I really wouldn't mind if "getting the show back to basics" means more episodes of Peter and Neal chasing mortgage fraud while arguing over the ethics of the law. That's really the heart and soul of the show for me.
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Yes, absolutely. I can see that "Point Blank" might not have been the exact right place for it. Neal certainly isn't going to bring it up then, I don't think he ever would, not considering his role in Elizabeth's kidnapping. And Peter, understandably, wasn't in the mood to be considering Neal's feelings. But later? Yeah, I think it should have come up. Peter had this ideal, and it was a nice ideal, but when confronted with reality, he found he couldn't live up to it. And I think everyone has had that experience.
The problem is, as an episode ends, it becomes increasingly unlikely that anything in that episode will ever be mentioned again. With all the intense things that happen to this characters, I think White Collar needs a stronger sense of continuity. I know Jeff Eastin prefers that individual episodes stand more on their own. He's stated that he dislikes having to do "perviously's" on the episodes. In fact, I think the "more like season one" comment may refer to his desire to take the show away from deep conspiracy plots that require a lot of recap each time. So, your hope for season 5 may not be groundless.
But even given the looser season one and two type of plotting, I think stronger continuity would be a benefit. Because even before the Nazi subs and thirty year conspiracies, we had events the were momentous for the characters. I mean, Neal's girlfriend died in the season one finale, and yet after she stopped being a plot point, we virtually forgot about her. In the entirety of seasons three and four, we have: Neal reacting to to the "Victor Moreau" passport in "Scott Free" and Peter mentioning her in "In the Wind." And in the latter instance, it was more a listing of old plot points. The only time past season two where Neal as a (fictional) person relates to Kate as person, is the Victor Moreau moment. I wasn't surprised that she wasn't mentioned in "Shoot the Moon," because I wasn't expecting any better, but it sure seems weird from a character standpoint. All this talk of letters from prison and true love, and the woman who was the center of Neal's universe for eight years doesn't get a mention?
But Kate is just one example of this. (Though obviously an example I feel passionately about.) "Burke's Seven" is possibly my favorite episode, but I'm hardly the first to note that it sure doesn't resolve anything from "Point Blank."
And, uh, that's my rant. Which has very little to do with your comment, actually.
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On the one hand, I agree with you that I would LOVE to see more follow-through, both plotwise and emotionally, and that the show often comes across shallow for not having it.
On the other hand ... the thing the writers are worst at is long-arc plots. Recent case in point: Ellen's death. It's the event that kicked off the entire James/The Box/Pratt plot ... but we still don't know who killed her, or why. And we probably never will. When I wrote my AU version of the Fowler/music box plot in "Shelter on a Foreign Shore", I practically had to tie myself into knots trying to get that mess to make some kind of sense.
They're just not really good at it. And I think I have more fun watching the show when it sticks to its strengths -- character interaction and the lighter, less arc-oriented plots -- and then filling in some of the gaps with my own imagination. I'm usually disappointed in the resolutions of most of the arc stuff (or at least, what I had imagined was preferable to what actually occurred). The show just isn't going to be "The Wire", and I'd rather not see the writers try too hard in that direction, since they're categorically not that good at it.
And for me anyway, wanting that stuff too much, when I know the show's never going to provide it, is just going to upset me and make me unhappy with the show. There are shows out there where I can get my fix for that kind of darker, more cohesive plot stuff. I mean, I'm not disagreeing, I guess I'm just saying that for me it's a case of revised expectations, because the show isn't going to provide that and when it tries, it doesn't usually do a very good job of it.
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I am all for WC being a fun, lighthearted caper show. That would actually be my preference. But they want to eat their cake and have it too. They toy with darkness--and killing the girlfriend and the mother figure of your main character is damn dark--but then pull away and never actually deal with the ramifications. And that's what drives me nuts.
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I get what you're saying, I do. I suppose it's just that for me, I enjoy the darkness that we get (it balances the light; I don't really want the show to be straight-up comedy all the time) and I don't really want to spoil it for myself by wanting it to be more than it is, when it's never going to be. That way lies constant disappointment, and, eventually, dropping the show from my to-watch queue, probably sooner rather than later. Which is not to say that I never get frustrated and disappointed in the show, but ... I guess I try to hold my expectations low enough that it doesn't happen so much. I really hated the 2-part season four premiere, and looking back on it, I think it was simply because I wanted so much from it that I didn't get. Because the show just wasn't going to go there. While I had a few gripes with the first half of season four that I still think are legitimate (Neal's behavior in particular), a lot of it simply comes down to me wanting things from the narrative that it wasn't going to give me -- that it wasn't ever going to give me. And the first half of season four is, by far, the unhappiest I've been with the show since I've been watching. So I don't really have any desire to do that again.
White Collar is a show that I enjoy best when I don't really expect too much from it (because it's not going to deliver; it's never been that well written) and just relax and take it as it comes.
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Actually, watching with minimal expectations is my main MO for TV. And I do pretty well. Sometimes too well. I'm actually finding it kind of hilarious to go back and read my episode reactions, because it's so obvious that I was taking whatever I wanted to see and trying to convince myself that it wouldn't happen. "NOPE, SARA AND NEAL ARE NEVER EVER GETTING BACK TOGETHER." "JAMES IS DEFINITELY 100% A GOOD GUY." And, well, look at what actually happened.
Because I meant what I said above. White Collar is good at making me happy. I love the characters. I love their relationships. It's an incredible difference from my last fandom, Merlin, which, seriously, could not have made me any more frustrated and unhappy if the writers had gotten together with express intention of screwing with me.
White Collar is a good show. Not a brilliant show. But as long as Peter, Neal, Elizabeth, and the rest continue to be ridiculous and amazing, then I'm getting what I want. And if sometimes I want what the show is never going to give me, then I'll remember the time June sang, or Elizabeth was an integral part of her own rescue, or Neal and Mozzie in the hospital, or Neal and Sara's kiss by the fountain.
In other words, I think you're right and at least for the moment, I'm putting a kibosh on the negativity. Because it's only making me unhappy.
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... which obviously doesn't mean that I think there is anything wrong with doing it differently! There's more than one way to fan on things. I'm definitely of the "squee!" school of fanning, but that is certainly not the only way and perhaps not even the best way to do it.
White Collar is a good show. Not a brilliant show.
That's an excellent way to put it. It's frustrating because I sometimes think it could be brilliant, and it very definitely is not. But I'm not sure if it could achieve that without losing the aspects that make it fun. Most of the really brilliant storytelling I've encountered is not particularly fun -- it's mind-expanding and thought-provoking and it sometimes makes me cry, but it definitely isn't a lighthearted romp around the town. And sometimes I need the lighthearted romp just as much.