Monsters of Television

“That’ll do, pig.  That’ll do.”

Let’s just give up the pretense and call it the Peter and Mozzie Show.

For a show that likes for Neal to operate in such a moral gray area they really don’t like their good guys to be bad, do they?

After yet another false cliffhanger from last episode (Diana having the music box locked away), I’m not sure if the show is just going to constantly pitch me on their good guys going rogue (even if they never do) or if it’s setting me up, crying “villain” until I don’t believe it then flipping the script when Peter takes off his mask and reveals that he’s really Kate or something.  For now, however, the good guy characters are very much good guy characters, no matter how much they try to fake me out.

In fact, everyone in the series is pretty much a white hat right now.  Neal operating in his gray area of the law has almost evaporated with the “death” of Kate.  There is no seasonal villain now that Fowler has gone underground, just a mystery left from the detritus of last season’s botched music box hand-off.  Neal has stopped his search for what happened and just works for the FBI now, nothing extracurricular.  The only connection he has to his past life is Mozzie, and even Mozzie is warming to the suits.

So even this show, once upon a time steeped with the story-world-consuming (if completely annoying) seasonal search for Kate, is kind of becoming the thinly-plotted but character-heavy fare summer USA is known to do and do well.

And we’re kind of fine with that.

It might sound repetitive since I say the same thing about both USA shows I review but it really is beach-reading. We would be entering House territory (though with lighter fare) if it weren’t for the half-hearted attempt to keep the arc from last season going, keeping the music box in play.  But the intrigue is severely limited and, instead, we’re delving into the characters more while phoning in a plot. In this episode we talk about Diana. And, when we dive into a female character that is also attractive, that means it’s time to make her a prostitute.

Diana goes undercover as a high-class call girl and Neal casts himself as her mark. We could learn about her through various story-telling hacks but, instead, we get the old “locked in a room” crutch. That’s not to say good things can’t come from that scenario or that nothing of value came from this particular example (the beginning of the “Peter with a mustache” gag is pretty awesome) but it seems a little easy for Neal to melt her heart and coax dark images from her past. The writers didn’t let us earn her backstory. It was all so very expository.

The better story in this episode is the Mozzie and Peter show, going on the scavenger hunt to get some cash from Neal’s secret stash. Much in the same way that I was looking forward to Morgan and Casey destroying some scenes together, Peter and Mozzie scenes are well-executed. Mozzie is such an eccentric criminal it’s almost like Peter couldn’t be mad at him. Annoyed, maybe, but it doesn’t seem like Peter is ever angling to take him downtown. They play well off each other (Tim Dekay is the perfect straight man to Willie Garson being equally calculated and ridiculous) and I’m almost sad when their scenes are finished.

Beyond that (and Neal making fun of Peter’s mustache by hopping up the stairs like Mario), there wasn’t much to the episode. Everything that is interesting about the plot only has intrigue because of how it reflects on the characters. For example, we have a crooked politician but I only care because Mozzie (who votes and writes old man letters!) is one of his supporters. Otherwise, the story is unremarkable and reveals very little about anything unless explicitly expository. But it’s okay because I like to watch these characters interact and let the show wash over me (as much as a media studies student can anyway). Beach-reading, my friends.