Monsters of Television

“Image is everything.”

White Collar has been a frustrating show. With each passing episode, the show lost a little bit of its charm, its energy, and general pizazz that really turned me on during the pilot. Neal and Peter’s relationship, what should be the driving force behind the show, felt ill-defined, as Peter goes between trusting Neal and thinking’s he’s a total crook to asking the guy for advice on how to improve his marriage. And Peter’s a remarkably competent agent and man, so these little bouts seem forced, to create some tension that never fully surfaces.

Neal, on the other hand, is held down by the elusive Kate, a plot that was DOA because I didn’t have a reason to give a damn about Kate except that Neal does (and I need a bit more than that, as likable as Matt Bomer is). And the shadowy “Man With The Ring” aspect didn’t help matters any. It led to a wide guessing game of who it could be, enhanced by notion that it was someone at the FBI. I jokingly tweeted that the show wasn’t dark enough for it be Peter.

But then the mini-break episode came and we find Kate entering a hotel room. In front of her, sitting in a chair, is “Man With The Ring” and *GASP* it’s Peter! Craziness ensues. I snark that the ring is making Peter evil (he never has the ring on otherwise!) and it’s up to Neal and Mozzie to bring the damn thing to Mount Doom. I had already put the show on a fairly short leash with the decline in interesting stories, but with this (alleged) reveal, I was hooked for at least one more episode to see how/if the show figured out way to get itself out of this corner.

I’ll dive right in and say that I’m really not sold on the way the show presents what happened between Kate and Peter, and the reason boils down to narrative and character. The Ring of Evil that Neal has been tracking is actually is a FBI thing, given for 10 years of service. Peter has one as do many many many agents, including Fowler, the man Peter says is controlling Kate, keeping her captive. It turns out that Fowler wants a music box that Neal stole way back in the day and is using Kate to get to Neal to get it. Additionally, Elizabeth was aware of Peter’s meeting with Kate, and convinced Neal that Peter was doing the right thing, and should be trusted.

The show’s explanation doesn’t work for me, and here’s why. First is that the account of Peter and Kate’s conversation is told to us by Peter, not a pick-up from the end of the previous episode, but is a character’s flashback. This throws the entire nature of the scene into question. Peter can easily be lying to Neal (and Elizabeth) about his involvement in Kate’s captivity. To top this off, the information about the music box is largely relayed to Neal (and us) in the present by Peter, not by Kate. This shift calls attention to the fact that Peter is talking about it, and not Kate. This is can be easily interpreted as Peter wanting the music box.

Why Peter would want this music box is beyond my guessing, but it leads to the next issue and that is that the character of Peter has been horribly compromised in terms of integrity. I can’t believe him, or in him, any longer because of how the show selected to frame that narrative event of his conversation with Kate. With a lack of explanation of why he was wearing the ring to see Kate in the first place, the entire nature of Peter’s character will constantly be in question. While for some people this can create a sense of suspension, “Is he playing everyone? For what ends?”, it ultimately creates, for me, a way for the show to do a “twist” in either direction and have it be justified. It is sloppy, lazy writing, and it kills the show.

By compromising Peter like this, you compromise his marriage (something that was touted for its stability, albeit this stability seems more to come from Elizabeth’s supporting part in the show), his relationship to his partners in the FBI, and, most importantly, his relationship with Neal. Each episode will have this air hanging over it, and it’s not an air I’m particularly inclined to keep breathing.

Now the episode did something I appreciate and it supplied Neal with a new goal, which was to find this music box(he was accused of stealing it and he just let people think he did). I appreciate this new shift in large part because it moves beyond the “Find Kate” and the “Perform well on this mission or go back to jail” stakes onto something new, that the show very much needed. But I feel that this goal is too little, too late in light of the Peter developments. Barring some serious (legitimate) twists, I doubt you’ll see the show on here again (or at least I won’t be writing about it).

FINAL THOGUHTS

• The chess analogy at the start of the show lacked creative thinking. The fact that the show calls attention to it by saying it lacks creativity doesn’t make its lack any less. It’s still creatively inert.
• Comic book boxes are heavy as hell (I’ve shifted through enough back in the day to know). You can’t just push those aside that easily, Neal.
• The USA promos for their original programs moving to 10pm on different nights calls attention to how one branch of NBC-U saw a chance to counter program against its sister branch (read: The Jay Leno Show on NBC) was a crafty move then. Let’s see how it works with Burn Notice tonight and Psych next week. (White Collar did very well, according to the network’s press release.)