Author’s Note: I am going to be discussing this episode WITH SPOILERS after the jump. So, if you don’t want to know, please do not click to read the entire post.
White Collar gets better every week. This is coming from someone who loved the pilot. I feel like the series has been building to this fall finale in subtle and layered ways from the beginning. I didn’t see it coming (which was great!), but when it came, the math added up. It wasn’t like an episode of Dallas, in which Bobby Ewing wakes up and several seasons were only a dream.
This week’s episode, “Free Falling,” was both a play on Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) jumping four stories onto the awning of a bakery he has newly purchased and a play on the feeling I had (and was presumably supposed to have) while watching. I have time between now and January 19 (when the show returns on Tuesday nights) to re-watch every episode, which I now have to do with the new information I have.
I felt like a chump when Kate entered the dark hotel room to find Peter (Tim DeKay) sitting there, with that idiotic pinky ring on his finger that is just supposed to cue us that Peter is the bad guy who is “holding” Kate (though, apparently, she can roam more freely than Neal can, unless she has an anklet too). I have been so focused (right where Peter wanted me, and hopefully you) on whether or not Neal was going legit that I did not stop to question Agent Burke’s squeaky clean exterior. Who better to be a crooked FBI agent than the one with the best record of arrests and the one who seems to be the most honest?
However, look at every single time Peter has turned a blind eye to one of Caffrey’s antics. It looked like Neal was starting to worm his way into Peter’s good graces, and that a friendship was emerging between the two characters. This was enjoyable and I think it would have built to a satisfying show. But it is so much more interesting to make Peter, with whom Neal is second-closest in the world, his actual nemesis.
I am torn between hoping that there is some additional twist that redeems Peter and that he is really a corrupt, irredeemable character. Only, if the latter is the case, I would love for him also to be so smart that his investigators can’t catch him. This episode certainly caught my attention, and left me eagerly wanting more. What did you think?
Clacked by Jen Creer
on Dec 05, 2009 @ 20:26 EST5EDT
If this show goes with Burke as the bad guy, I’m going to be pissed.
I don’t think they have the balls to make him a bad guy. I am sure they are going to explain it away pretty soon in the first episode back.
I thought that overall it was a great episode, but the “big reveal” was a bit ridiculous. Contrary to what you think, Jen, I don’t think that it fits at all, and I think it was just a bad attempt at making a forced, “dramatic” cliffhanger. And even if I am wrong and Peter is playing a role in this (beyond something easily explained away in the first five minutes of next episode), clearly Kate is not a prisoner. I never liked the whole Kate storyline, so maybe Peter is just there to tell her to stop messing with Neal?
I see and hope that ‘bad Peter’ is some sort of twist….again I hope. I just can’t see them spinning him into the corrupt g-man. Doesn’t work for the overall demographics and buddy thing going forward from this point. I hope…..
Great show, though, overall. And it’s got a good vibe overall in line with the previous six shows. I can’t wait for the back seven for season one. Not happy with the new night, though. I thought it had a perfect slot, but what do I know.
Great review and thanks for taking the time to put these in!
i kinda think ^abigail might have something…maybe kate is the one playing neal for something? or maybe there is a very good reason why peter is playing kate…maybe he is keeping kate on the edges so neal will keep clean? idk but if they screw it im gonna be very very very very mad…cause peter is amazing…and his wife? she wouldnt know that hes crooked?? shes too sweet to be married to a messed-up agent. i love this show so i hope they had a good reason for doing this…cause im gonna die before the next episode airs. and if they did make that turn…well….
My biggest question at the end was…who set up the theft of the diamond?
Peter?
Fowler?
Someone else?
Tulane stole it but who was he thinking set him up?
This has been a great show so far and I, too, hope that Peter is working an angle and isn’t the bad guy he’s made out to be. I’m hoping that Peter is helping Kate redeem Neal, for the sake of Peter’s wife as much as anything, but two oddities tickled my brain: a) what’s with the wack pinky ring? and b) he felt the need to refer to him by his first and last name? Hmmm…