Mixed Feelings

The White Collar season finale has come and gone. I want to say that it's a depressing reality we have to face, but I find that my heart just isn't in it. I'm really not that upset about it at all actually. Part of my calm comes from knowing that production on Season 3 has already begun. It's amazing, the state of relaxation that comes over a fan knowing he/she's got another full season on it's way. I'm comparing this feeling of ease with the tension I experience every time I think of Community and its impending doom.

There's another reason I'm not terribly depressed about the end of White Collar Season 2 though, and that's that I was rather disappointed by the finale. I feel kind of like I imagine Mozzie must every time someone tells him that Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK. I keep saying to myself, "But there's a so much better, more intricate, more sinister explanation that just makes more sense."

What am I talking about? None of my predictions for the end of the season came true.

This is something I was expecting. The White Collar writers have a way of conning me even when I think I've got it all figured out. It's part of what I love about the show. In an age of dramatic television where every "twist" seems to have been done before, and you can predict plot points months in advance, White Collar has always managed to keep me guessing. Usually they manage to out-think me though, not under-think me.

In the online commentary for the finale, show runner Jeff Eastin said that he felt that this episode finally and completely puts to bed the driving plot line of Seasons 1 and 2, ie Kate and the Music Box. So let's look at the resolutions we arrived at this week, character by character.

We'll start at the bottom and work our way up.

Kate: In response to a Paleyfest question, Jeff Eastin has definitively stated that Kate Moroe is really dead. While I desperately wanted her to come back for the effect it would have on Neal, I can't say that I'm really surprised. As I mentioned before, I don't particularly feel that the actress could convey the subtleties required to pull off the "ex-con-woman turned by love," that would be required if her character were to return. However, based on one of Adler's lines in the finale, I believe my general concept of Kate (she began as Adler's lackey, but fell in love with Neal, and decided to back out and run) is the only prediction I actually got right. After Caffrey accuses Adler of killing Kate, Adler shoots back that Neal "changed her," saying something to the effect of "the Kate I knew wouldn't have had to die." Still, if Eastin would let her come back from the dead, they wouldn't need to force Alex into such a prominent role.

Alex: I still have too many questions about Alex's involvement in this episode to take Jeff Eastin at his word that the Adler storyline has been fully wrapped. Why did Adler kidnap her, for one? It is revealed midway through the episode, as Peter and Neal try to diffuse the TNT in the U-boat hatch, that Adler had no idea of Alex's connection to the German soldier who received the last radio broadcast from the scuttled U-Boat. I understand why Adler picks up Neal, and Peter by association. I just still have no clue why Alex would have been present. The only explanation that makes any sense to me is that she had to have been working with Adler but withholding that crucial piece of information. If anyone has a better explanation though, I'd love to hear it.

Also, her new position as one of Neal's love interests rather than just a casual and occasional exciting option for the Neal Caffrey flirtation is one of the only aspects of the White Collar plot that I have ever felt to be unnaturally imposed on the storyline. But more on that when I get to Neal.

Peter: This is a twist I didn't even guess was coming, Peter once again distrusting Neal. Burke's final moments in this episode have set the tone for Caffrey's entire Season 3 journey. It brilliantly returns both of our leads to their positions at the beginning of Season 1, with both distrusting the other. Usually pushing the restart button on character based shows feels cheap and false. See every episode of Glee ever. The White Collar writers, though, have managed to set up a scenario where, realistically, in a single moment, all the work Peter and Neal did to develop their mutual partnership has been pulled away. I can't wait for Peter to start questioning Neal's motives on every decision again. It should be interesting if they manage to make it continue to feel fresh. There is a huge risk though, in a character driven show like this, that forcing the characters back to a pre-growth state will make them feel tired and boring as Peter and Neal spend the next season resolving issues they have already spent two seasons resolving.

Neal: I'll admit it, I cringed every time Sara was on the screen tonight. The love triangle seemed arbitrary and stupid the entire episode. The entire episode, that is, until the final moments, when Neal finds himself in a warehouse full of Nazi treasure. Suddenly I was able to see Sara and Alex not as potential love interests in an unnecessary love triangle that seems out of place in a show that has traditionally focused more on the bromance between Peter and Neal. But as I watched Neal's final moments, I suddenly understood. The girls themselves are unimportant to the viewers. Sara or Alex, whichever Neal chooses the audience will get plenty of eye candy and plenty of attitude. The writer's aren't putting Neal in a love triangle for us.

They're giving him this choice between girls as a metaphor for the much bigger life choice he now faces. Neal can go good, or Neal can go bad. Sara represents the straight and narrow path Neal has been following beside Peter, whereas Alex represents the wild and crime fueled life he had before. It struck me that my inability to realize the metaphor the entire time was kind of stupid, especially after I had already commented weeks ago on the upcoming choice Neal would face between his house and the white picket fence or the lock picked open windows of other people's penthouses. Granted, when I made the comment then it was because I was expecting Kate to be the counterpoint to Sara, not Alex. I still think Alex's relationship with Neal is being shoe-horned in when Kate would have been the more natural choice though.

Conclusion: Overall, a decent stand alone episode. The shots with Neal and Peter on/in the U-boat made me giddy, and I loved the final cliffhangar question posed at the end. Which of Neal's accomplices moved the art, Alex or Mozzie? More importantly, did Neal have anything to do with it? As a teaser for Season 3, the episode has done an excellent job at raising the stakes on the central question of Caffrey's character raised earlier this season during talks about his Father. Neal may want to be good, but he was born bad. Can he overcome his natural tendencies for crime, and does he really even want to?

As a wrap up of Season 2 (and Season 1 since it was all a direct continuation) the episode fell short. An elaborate Adler con may seem like a conspiracy theory of absurdly large proportions, but I still maintain that the pieces would have fallen together better. The lingering questions of Season 2 all got resolved, but they didn't necessarily fit together as well as they could have.


White Collar has raised the bar for dramatic television writing to an unheard of high, it was inevitable that they'd fall a little short of my expectations every once in a while. But they're still miles above most other shows on the air right now.