White Collar 6x06
I had intended to post this last night, since I like to post reactions as soon as possible. Honestly, I don't usually rewatch episodes until a while after they air, so I try to get anything I have to say out while it's still fresh in my head.
But there was just so much that happened in the finale, I knew I was going to have to rewatch it before really talking about it much.
- It's always fun to see Peter get a chance to show how smart and badass he can be. His encyclopedic knowledge of crimes and his ability to stay calm under pressure are great here.
- Now Woodford has three moles in his operation. Not the most secure group....
- Wait, who told Mozzie about Peter "joining" the Pink Panthers? Seriously, how does Mozzie know this all of a sudden?
- LOL. Even in desperate times, Mozzie won't drink a zinfandel. :P I wouldn't have pegged Mozzie as that picky, to be honest.
- Mozzie's revenge for being left out: drinking Neal's best wine. :P
- Ooh. Keller.
- Plotting with Keller is seldom a good idea.
- Also, now I want a bunch of fic about Neal and Keller conspiring.
- Seeing Neal shoot a gun is definitely mysterious. And surprising.
- June! I'm so glad to see June in the finale. And the callbacks to the pilot are nice. That said, this scene between her and Neal is really sad to me. From the start, I got a strong sense that Neal was saying goodbye. He's not usually quite this affectionate toward June.
- Aw, the playing card. Also: more foreboding. Neal is tying up loose ends....
- "After this, we go back to the basics." Interesting, considering we do see Mozzie go back to doing the same card con at the end.
- Aw, Neal is so excited for Peter and Elizabeth.
- I love Neal showing off and pretending to have predicted the sex of the baby. And Peter seeing through it. :P
- Italian roast!
- Neal looks very dashing as a pilot. Also, nice nod to Catch Me If You Can
- I'm proud of myself for noticing the Jeff Eastin cameo the first time I saw it.
- Mozzie, leader of the mole people! I can...actually see that. He kind of has a mole person vibe about him sometimes.
- Also, is is terrible that I kind of want to write a fic where Mozzie does become the leader of the mole people for a while after the events of the finale?
- Mozzie is looking very steampunk with those glasses.
- Lucky Peter, getting to ride with Keller.
- As we first learned from "Withdrawal," keeping a keycard clipping to your clothes isn't that secure.
- I love seeing Neal pull cons, and this episode is just wonderful for that. I love Neal's quick change from pilot to guard.
- They send a hundred dollar bill through the tube as a test? They couldn't test a one or a five? :P I guess the Panthers just like to be fancy.
- Someone needs to remind Keller that cracking this safe is supposed to be a cooperation, not a competition.
- The music in this episode is really nice.
- Mozzie has never looked happier than when he's drowning in money.
- I'm a little surprised that they were able to leave in the hearses before the airport got locked down. I would've thought security would lock everything down as soon as the alarm was registered.
- I like Diana teasing Peter about "joining a gang."
- Neal is having fun with Peter being cuffed.
- Come to think of it, that would be a fun porn fic: Peter lets Neal handcuff him, and Neal is very smug about it.
- When the "main" plot is over within thirty minutes, you know something big is coming....
- Watching this part the first time around, I was very nervous that Neal might let Keller get under his skin. Of course, Neal has his own plans.
- I was quite confused when Neal's anklet started transmitting. He hadn't been wearing it.
- ...Did Neal and Keller stop to buy/steal suits on the way to meet Mozzie? Is that what's being implied?
- Keller brought a knife to a gunfight. Literally.
- Keller actually looks a bit shocked when Neal gets shot. I guess it's all fun and games until you accidentally shoot your frenemy.
- Keller gets over it pretty quickly, though. What a sociopath.
- Okay, so, I'd been suspecting for a while that the big twist Eastin and co. kept referring to was that Neal was going to fake his death. And frankly, I never in a million years thought that they would actually kill Neal. So, I firmly believed that the shooting was fake and all part of Neal's plan. But damn if the show doesn't sell it. Neal is way too convincing when he gets shot.
- Anklet!
- "That's the thing about you, Keller. You're so damn predictable." He is, and that's what Neal was counting on.
- Thinking about it...it's a bit ruthless of Neal to essentially frame Keller for his murder.
- My jaw dropped the first time I saw Peter shoot Keller. I mean, realistically, I guess I wasn't expecting Keller to come out of this season alive. And there was really no other way that confrontation could have ended. But wow.
- I'm kind of surprised that no one found it odd to discover that Keller's gun was empty. I mean, it's not the most unlikely thing, but it is a bit odd.
- Okay, this ambulance helped cement my belief that Neal was faking. Seriously, how could an ambulance have gotten to Neal so quickly? Peter just found out he was hurt a minute ago, and the shot wasn't even that long ago. The EMTs are so totally fake.
- But Neal's deathbed speech is touching all the same.
- And the morgue scene is heart-wrenching. Poor Mozzie. Poor Peter.
- I love that Neal has sixteen credit cards under various names. Also, what is he doing with all the hotel key cards? Makes me wonder if the promo pic of him leaving a hotel room looking disheveled is more accurate than I realized. :P More likely, maybe he has master keys?
- Aw, the anklet.
- This whole stretch feels like an h/c fic....
- Poor Peter is devastated.
- One year later? That makes me more sad than anything. It feels like such a long amount of time for Neal to be "dead."
- Could Peter have finally learned to have a work-life balance?
- I swear this is like, the fifth time they've been working on a Mortensen case.
- Very interesting to see Mozzie going back to running the types of cons he ran before he met Neal.
- And giving up conspiracy theories. Poor guy. Also, I find him going by Teddy Winters again a bit sad. I mean, in a way, it's a positive thing. But it's like "Mozzie" died with Neal.
- Considering it seems apparent later that Mozzie knows Neal is alive at this point, I get the impression that he's telling Peter about his "wrong" theory about Neal faking his death in order to put the thought in Peter's head.
- I really like this little moment between Peter and Mozzie. It's been my headcanon for a while that even if Neal wasn't a shared link anymore, they would still interact occasionally.
- I'm actually a little surprised that they named the baby Neal. The show is really going all out.
- "You know I can't stay in one place too long." "Hey Suit, I'll see you around." I read this as Mozzie saying that he's going to be going to Paris soon to join Neal (at least for a while), and that he expects Peter to find them.
- Mozzie totally left that wine on the Burkes' porch.
- I'm kind of surprised that the Burkes are drinking the mystery wine that was left on their porch. :P I would think Peter would be paranoid about its origins.
- The Neal box!
- I'm surprised Peter didn't investigate the storage unit before now. Even if he didn't realize the key went to it, I still would've thought he'd look into it.
- I love Peter discovering the con. And finding Mozzie's card there.
- I'm assuming that the crates and paintings in the storage unit are things Neal stole.
- That Paris street looks really fake, but it kind of fits with the tone for me. Especially since this episode felt like it had a lot of retro glamour to it.
- Okay, so my verdict:
I loved the finale for the most part, and I'm pretty satisfied with the ending. I'm not sure if it's my top choice for how I would have liked to have seen things end, but I do like it. Though, I think how much I like it depends a little bit on how I interpret it. Basically, there seem to be two ways you can read Neal's actions:
1. Neal faked his death so that he could get exactly what he wanted and also keep himself and his loved ones safe from the wrath of the Pink Panthers. He knew that the Panthers were likely to figure out that he was a mole, and didn't want that to happen. And remember that at the end of season five, Neal was prepared to go to Paris but was concerned about not having money. This plan allowed him to go there and live comfortably. He set up the storage unit because he wanted Peter to know that he was safe and where to find him. Peter is happy because Neal is alive.
2. Most of the above, but Neal has gone back to crime, and the end is suggesting that he's going to rob the Louvre and that Peter is back on the chase. Neal clued Peter in as a sort of challenge.
Jeff Eastin seems to be going with #2, which I dislike. I was never fond of the idea of Neal just going back to his old life and him and Peter falling into the old pattern they were in pre-canon. To me, that's frustrating. What's the point of six seasons' worth of character and relationship development if, in the end, it doesn't change anything?
Personally, I think the first explanation makes a little bit more sense. Aside from the fact that Neal does seem to have developed as a character, I just don't see him as being cocky enough to incriminate himself this much. He left behind a storage unit that appears to be full of stolen artwork. If he were going back to his old life exactly, I can't really imagine he'd make it easier for the FBI to connect him to past crimes (unless the statute of limitations has run out on all of them, though I really doubt that). By leaving behind his stash, I see that as a message to Peter that he's moving on. I also think he trusts Peter to return that stuff without incriminating him.
I kind of doubt that Neal is going straight (I mean, he did steal 23 million dollars...), but I don't see him going back to exactly how things were. Getting his freedom has been so important to him. Why would he jeopardize it?
It bothers me a little bit that Neal didn't "officially" get his freedom. I liked the idea of him finishing his sentence, one way or another, and he didn't quite see this through. It also seemed odd to me that he was planning this even as he was very insistent about the contract. It's also sad to see him leave behind the people who matter to him. Peter, Elizabeth, and Mozzie, obviously (though I'm convinced that Mozzie knows he's alive and is going to join him in Paris), but also June. Poor June adores him. That said, I see this ending as being very in-character for Neal. Even though he's formed strong attachments, he's still fairly good at picking up and starting over somewhere else if he needs to. You could argue that the fact that he left behind clues and seems to want Peter to know where he is means that he has grown as a character and does want to maintain those ties that's he's formed.
Also, I'm not sure how easy it would be for Neal to go completely straight. I see him as sort of being in a limbo between his old self and a law-abiding citizen right now. I have a hard time imagining him going back to his old life, but I'm not sure I could see him settling down and getting a 9-to-5 job, either.
Finally, it's great to see him in Paris.
In the same interview where Eastin talks about his interpretation of the finale, he talks about the original idea for the finale, which was that Neal would finish his sentence and we would see two potential possibilities for how his life would go, but we wouldn't know exactly what he chose. To be honest, I think I might have preferred that. I feel bad saying that, because Tim and Matt helped come up with the ending that was used. But I feel like the original ending would have fit some of the major themes of the show well, chiefly that Neal has to make a choice.
But I do really like the ending we got, and I think it's ambiguous and optimistic enough that it's satisfying. You can see it as Neal going back to crime, but you can also see it as Neal trying to build a legitimate life. Yeah, it's a little sad to see him away from the people who care about him, but at least Peter learns the truth. If he didn't, then I would have found it sad.
So overall, I feel very satisfied. I feel like the show pulled off the ending well.
- Some unanswered questions I have:
1. When, exactly, did Neal start planning this? It was implied from the start that he had a hidden agenda, but if he was always planning to fake his death, why was he so adamant about the contract? Or was faking his death something he started to put into motion once he realized how dangerous the Panthers were?
2. When did Mozzie learn the truth? I'm inclined to believe that Mozzie didn't know Neal's plan at the time. The show made a pretty big deal about Mozzie feeling left out of the loop.
3. Was the storage unit set up for Peter to find all along? I've seen some suggestions that perhaps Neal didn't want anyone to know the truth until after the Panthers were tried and sentenced. This would make sense--though there's no guarantee that the Panthers won't learn the truth from prison, it might have been conspicuous if Neal mysteriously didn't have a trial. But I don't see how Neal could have controlled when Peter figured out what the key was for.
4. Speaking of the Panthers, are we just supposed to believe that Peter's not at any risk from them? I guess it would make sense if they had more of a problem with criminal informants than undercover FBI agents, but still....
5. The newspaper at the end talks about the Louvre getting a new security contract. Are we supposed to glean from this that Neal got the security contract and is now managing security for the Louvre? Or was it just intended as a hint that he may be planning to rob the Louvre?
I'll really miss the show. I'll miss the characters. I still plan to write fic for a while, but there's something really sad about their stories being "done" (even though I think the finale left a ton of room for interesting exploration in fic). Today at work, I kept seeing a display of cornish hens (one of Neal's favorites), and couldn't help but think of him.
I got into the show in the space between seasons 3 and 4, so I only started recapping episodes with season 4. I'm thinking of rewatching the first three seasons and doing recaps of those episodes, like I would have if I'd been watching as they aired. I've thought about that before, and I think it could be fun. Yeah, the eps aren't new to many people, but there's still some nostalgia value in it.
This entry was originally posted at http://citrinesunset.dreamwidth.org/130720.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
But there was just so much that happened in the finale, I knew I was going to have to rewatch it before really talking about it much.
- It's always fun to see Peter get a chance to show how smart and badass he can be. His encyclopedic knowledge of crimes and his ability to stay calm under pressure are great here.
- Now Woodford has three moles in his operation. Not the most secure group....
- Wait, who told Mozzie about Peter "joining" the Pink Panthers? Seriously, how does Mozzie know this all of a sudden?
- LOL. Even in desperate times, Mozzie won't drink a zinfandel. :P I wouldn't have pegged Mozzie as that picky, to be honest.
- Mozzie's revenge for being left out: drinking Neal's best wine. :P
- Ooh. Keller.
- Plotting with Keller is seldom a good idea.
- Also, now I want a bunch of fic about Neal and Keller conspiring.
- Seeing Neal shoot a gun is definitely mysterious. And surprising.
- June! I'm so glad to see June in the finale. And the callbacks to the pilot are nice. That said, this scene between her and Neal is really sad to me. From the start, I got a strong sense that Neal was saying goodbye. He's not usually quite this affectionate toward June.
- Aw, the playing card. Also: more foreboding. Neal is tying up loose ends....
- "After this, we go back to the basics." Interesting, considering we do see Mozzie go back to doing the same card con at the end.
- Aw, Neal is so excited for Peter and Elizabeth.
- I love Neal showing off and pretending to have predicted the sex of the baby. And Peter seeing through it. :P
- Italian roast!
- Neal looks very dashing as a pilot. Also, nice nod to Catch Me If You Can
- I'm proud of myself for noticing the Jeff Eastin cameo the first time I saw it.
- Mozzie, leader of the mole people! I can...actually see that. He kind of has a mole person vibe about him sometimes.
- Also, is is terrible that I kind of want to write a fic where Mozzie does become the leader of the mole people for a while after the events of the finale?
- Mozzie is looking very steampunk with those glasses.
- Lucky Peter, getting to ride with Keller.
- As we first learned from "Withdrawal," keeping a keycard clipping to your clothes isn't that secure.
- I love seeing Neal pull cons, and this episode is just wonderful for that. I love Neal's quick change from pilot to guard.
- They send a hundred dollar bill through the tube as a test? They couldn't test a one or a five? :P I guess the Panthers just like to be fancy.
- Someone needs to remind Keller that cracking this safe is supposed to be a cooperation, not a competition.
- The music in this episode is really nice.
- Mozzie has never looked happier than when he's drowning in money.
- I'm a little surprised that they were able to leave in the hearses before the airport got locked down. I would've thought security would lock everything down as soon as the alarm was registered.
- I like Diana teasing Peter about "joining a gang."
- Neal is having fun with Peter being cuffed.
- Come to think of it, that would be a fun porn fic: Peter lets Neal handcuff him, and Neal is very smug about it.
- When the "main" plot is over within thirty minutes, you know something big is coming....
- Watching this part the first time around, I was very nervous that Neal might let Keller get under his skin. Of course, Neal has his own plans.
- I was quite confused when Neal's anklet started transmitting. He hadn't been wearing it.
- ...Did Neal and Keller stop to buy/steal suits on the way to meet Mozzie? Is that what's being implied?
- Keller brought a knife to a gunfight. Literally.
- Keller actually looks a bit shocked when Neal gets shot. I guess it's all fun and games until you accidentally shoot your frenemy.
- Keller gets over it pretty quickly, though. What a sociopath.
- Okay, so, I'd been suspecting for a while that the big twist Eastin and co. kept referring to was that Neal was going to fake his death. And frankly, I never in a million years thought that they would actually kill Neal. So, I firmly believed that the shooting was fake and all part of Neal's plan. But damn if the show doesn't sell it. Neal is way too convincing when he gets shot.
- Anklet!
- "That's the thing about you, Keller. You're so damn predictable." He is, and that's what Neal was counting on.
- Thinking about it...it's a bit ruthless of Neal to essentially frame Keller for his murder.
- My jaw dropped the first time I saw Peter shoot Keller. I mean, realistically, I guess I wasn't expecting Keller to come out of this season alive. And there was really no other way that confrontation could have ended. But wow.
- I'm kind of surprised that no one found it odd to discover that Keller's gun was empty. I mean, it's not the most unlikely thing, but it is a bit odd.
- Okay, this ambulance helped cement my belief that Neal was faking. Seriously, how could an ambulance have gotten to Neal so quickly? Peter just found out he was hurt a minute ago, and the shot wasn't even that long ago. The EMTs are so totally fake.
- But Neal's deathbed speech is touching all the same.
- And the morgue scene is heart-wrenching. Poor Mozzie. Poor Peter.
- I love that Neal has sixteen credit cards under various names. Also, what is he doing with all the hotel key cards? Makes me wonder if the promo pic of him leaving a hotel room looking disheveled is more accurate than I realized. :P More likely, maybe he has master keys?
- Aw, the anklet.
- This whole stretch feels like an h/c fic....
- Poor Peter is devastated.
- One year later? That makes me more sad than anything. It feels like such a long amount of time for Neal to be "dead."
- Could Peter have finally learned to have a work-life balance?
- I swear this is like, the fifth time they've been working on a Mortensen case.
- Very interesting to see Mozzie going back to running the types of cons he ran before he met Neal.
- And giving up conspiracy theories. Poor guy. Also, I find him going by Teddy Winters again a bit sad. I mean, in a way, it's a positive thing. But it's like "Mozzie" died with Neal.
- Considering it seems apparent later that Mozzie knows Neal is alive at this point, I get the impression that he's telling Peter about his "wrong" theory about Neal faking his death in order to put the thought in Peter's head.
- I really like this little moment between Peter and Mozzie. It's been my headcanon for a while that even if Neal wasn't a shared link anymore, they would still interact occasionally.
- I'm actually a little surprised that they named the baby Neal. The show is really going all out.
- "You know I can't stay in one place too long." "Hey Suit, I'll see you around." I read this as Mozzie saying that he's going to be going to Paris soon to join Neal (at least for a while), and that he expects Peter to find them.
- Mozzie totally left that wine on the Burkes' porch.
- I'm kind of surprised that the Burkes are drinking the mystery wine that was left on their porch. :P I would think Peter would be paranoid about its origins.
- The Neal box!
- I'm surprised Peter didn't investigate the storage unit before now. Even if he didn't realize the key went to it, I still would've thought he'd look into it.
- I love Peter discovering the con. And finding Mozzie's card there.
- I'm assuming that the crates and paintings in the storage unit are things Neal stole.
- That Paris street looks really fake, but it kind of fits with the tone for me. Especially since this episode felt like it had a lot of retro glamour to it.
- Okay, so my verdict:
I loved the finale for the most part, and I'm pretty satisfied with the ending. I'm not sure if it's my top choice for how I would have liked to have seen things end, but I do like it. Though, I think how much I like it depends a little bit on how I interpret it. Basically, there seem to be two ways you can read Neal's actions:
1. Neal faked his death so that he could get exactly what he wanted and also keep himself and his loved ones safe from the wrath of the Pink Panthers. He knew that the Panthers were likely to figure out that he was a mole, and didn't want that to happen. And remember that at the end of season five, Neal was prepared to go to Paris but was concerned about not having money. This plan allowed him to go there and live comfortably. He set up the storage unit because he wanted Peter to know that he was safe and where to find him. Peter is happy because Neal is alive.
2. Most of the above, but Neal has gone back to crime, and the end is suggesting that he's going to rob the Louvre and that Peter is back on the chase. Neal clued Peter in as a sort of challenge.
Jeff Eastin seems to be going with #2, which I dislike. I was never fond of the idea of Neal just going back to his old life and him and Peter falling into the old pattern they were in pre-canon. To me, that's frustrating. What's the point of six seasons' worth of character and relationship development if, in the end, it doesn't change anything?
Personally, I think the first explanation makes a little bit more sense. Aside from the fact that Neal does seem to have developed as a character, I just don't see him as being cocky enough to incriminate himself this much. He left behind a storage unit that appears to be full of stolen artwork. If he were going back to his old life exactly, I can't really imagine he'd make it easier for the FBI to connect him to past crimes (unless the statute of limitations has run out on all of them, though I really doubt that). By leaving behind his stash, I see that as a message to Peter that he's moving on. I also think he trusts Peter to return that stuff without incriminating him.
I kind of doubt that Neal is going straight (I mean, he did steal 23 million dollars...), but I don't see him going back to exactly how things were. Getting his freedom has been so important to him. Why would he jeopardize it?
It bothers me a little bit that Neal didn't "officially" get his freedom. I liked the idea of him finishing his sentence, one way or another, and he didn't quite see this through. It also seemed odd to me that he was planning this even as he was very insistent about the contract. It's also sad to see him leave behind the people who matter to him. Peter, Elizabeth, and Mozzie, obviously (though I'm convinced that Mozzie knows he's alive and is going to join him in Paris), but also June. Poor June adores him. That said, I see this ending as being very in-character for Neal. Even though he's formed strong attachments, he's still fairly good at picking up and starting over somewhere else if he needs to. You could argue that the fact that he left behind clues and seems to want Peter to know where he is means that he has grown as a character and does want to maintain those ties that's he's formed.
Also, I'm not sure how easy it would be for Neal to go completely straight. I see him as sort of being in a limbo between his old self and a law-abiding citizen right now. I have a hard time imagining him going back to his old life, but I'm not sure I could see him settling down and getting a 9-to-5 job, either.
Finally, it's great to see him in Paris.
In the same interview where Eastin talks about his interpretation of the finale, he talks about the original idea for the finale, which was that Neal would finish his sentence and we would see two potential possibilities for how his life would go, but we wouldn't know exactly what he chose. To be honest, I think I might have preferred that. I feel bad saying that, because Tim and Matt helped come up with the ending that was used. But I feel like the original ending would have fit some of the major themes of the show well, chiefly that Neal has to make a choice.
But I do really like the ending we got, and I think it's ambiguous and optimistic enough that it's satisfying. You can see it as Neal going back to crime, but you can also see it as Neal trying to build a legitimate life. Yeah, it's a little sad to see him away from the people who care about him, but at least Peter learns the truth. If he didn't, then I would have found it sad.
So overall, I feel very satisfied. I feel like the show pulled off the ending well.
- Some unanswered questions I have:
1. When, exactly, did Neal start planning this? It was implied from the start that he had a hidden agenda, but if he was always planning to fake his death, why was he so adamant about the contract? Or was faking his death something he started to put into motion once he realized how dangerous the Panthers were?
2. When did Mozzie learn the truth? I'm inclined to believe that Mozzie didn't know Neal's plan at the time. The show made a pretty big deal about Mozzie feeling left out of the loop.
3. Was the storage unit set up for Peter to find all along? I've seen some suggestions that perhaps Neal didn't want anyone to know the truth until after the Panthers were tried and sentenced. This would make sense--though there's no guarantee that the Panthers won't learn the truth from prison, it might have been conspicuous if Neal mysteriously didn't have a trial. But I don't see how Neal could have controlled when Peter figured out what the key was for.
4. Speaking of the Panthers, are we just supposed to believe that Peter's not at any risk from them? I guess it would make sense if they had more of a problem with criminal informants than undercover FBI agents, but still....
5. The newspaper at the end talks about the Louvre getting a new security contract. Are we supposed to glean from this that Neal got the security contract and is now managing security for the Louvre? Or was it just intended as a hint that he may be planning to rob the Louvre?
I'll really miss the show. I'll miss the characters. I still plan to write fic for a while, but there's something really sad about their stories being "done" (even though I think the finale left a ton of room for interesting exploration in fic). Today at work, I kept seeing a display of cornish hens (one of Neal's favorites), and couldn't help but think of him.
I got into the show in the space between seasons 3 and 4, so I only started recapping episodes with season 4. I'm thinking of rewatching the first three seasons and doing recaps of those episodes, like I would have if I'd been watching as they aired. I've thought about that before, and I think it could be fun. Yeah, the eps aren't new to many people, but there's still some nostalgia value in it.
This entry was originally posted at http://citrinesunset.dreamwidth.org/130720.html. Please comment there using OpenID.