Once again I found myself thoroughly enjoying White Collar last week, and one the main reasons why I loved this episode is due to the fact that it featured a lot interaction between Peter and Mozzie since they were working together at the beginning of the episode to find Neal, and then later Peter, Neal and Mozzie were all working together to set Dobbs up to be arrested. The fact that Peter works for the FBI and Mozzie is very distrustful of the FBI and the government constantly fuels some pretty funny moments between the two of them.
The writers continued to surprise me with how quickly they resolved the issue of Neal going back to New York City, getting his old deal with the FBI reinstated and going back to working for the bureau’s white collar division. Based on all of the spoilers that I read for season four before the season started, they made it seem like Neal was going to be on the run for more than just two episodes before he got back to New York City. However, like I mentioned in my thoughts post on the season four premiere (The Random Thoughts of a Writer: White Collar: Everybody’s favorite “reformed” white-collar criminal is back! (My thoughts on episode 4x01 Wanted) since this is a cable TV series, it’s understandable that they have to have storylines progress more quickly than storylines on TV shows that air on network TV typically do.
The episode began with Neal being held captive by Collins in a prison cell, but somehow Neal managed to make the prison cell fall apart by removing the screws that were holding the cell together, which prompted Collins to shoot him in the leg. I have to say that it was pretty clever of Neal to do that, and as stupid as this may sound since this is a TV show; I really want to know how he learned to do that.
Pretty much everything Collins did in both the season four premiere and in this episode seemed like it would be considered illegal for an FBI agent to do. He seems like a rather corrupt agent, and how he has managed to keep his job and not be sent to prison is beyond my comprehension. It seemed like he’s also got a serious anger management problem, especially given how he treated those kids when the fruit from their fruit stand was blocking the street. Anyway, I just hope this episode was the last episode that we’ll see Collins, because I don’t like him at all.
While Peter and Mozzie were trying to find Neal they quickly realized that Dobbs (The guy that Neal and Mozzie paid for sanctuary on the island) was actually a white collar criminal named Robert Macleish that the FBI had been trying to catch ever since Peter was training for the FBI at Quantico. Peter initially didn’t realize it was him until he saw the names of Dobbs boats, which had been on a test he took for his training since they were also the names of women he had been romantically involved with, which gave him the idea to propose to the FBI that if they were able to bring Robert Macleish/Dobbs into custody, then they would consider reinstating Neal’s old deal with the FBI.
Part of their plan to catch Dobbs/Macleish involved Peter working as a bartender for Maya’s café, which was catering the party that he had once a month for the island’s residents that paid him for sanctuary. As Peter was working as a bartender at the party, he started spreading fake gossip to the people at the party as a way of making them think he was stealing their money, which would turn them against Dobbs/Macleish and make them be willing to turn him into the FBI. Their plan ended up working, but not without hitting a few snags, primarily having the mirror they were planning to use in order to make Neal’s painting of an open safe appear like the safe had really been opened and the island residents’ money stolen.
After that plan fell through, Neal and Mozzie quickly took almost everything out of Dobbs/Macleish’s office, making it look like he was planning to flea from the island soon, taking all their money with him. The guy that was with Dobbs/Macleish when he went to his office in order to prove he had their money quickly believed that Dobbs/Macleish was planning to flea from the island, and Neal continued to make things look Dobbs/Macleish guilty when he publicly accused him of setting him up to be captured by Collins, and this is ultimately what led to Peter being able to capture and arrest Dobbs/Macleish. Peter made it look like Collins had been a part of their plan to bring Dobbs/Macleish into custody when he wrote his report for the FBI, which would make him look good in the FBI’s eyes since Dobbs/Macleish had ranked very high on the FBI’s most wanted list for years. Personally, I think Peter was an idiot to do anything that would make Collins look good. That really frustrated me.
Collins wasn’t the only one who irritated the hell out of me in this episode; Maya also royally pissed me off in this episode. In the season premiere she seemed like a genuinely nice woman who truly cared about Neal, but by the end of this episode she came across as a cold, heartless bitch who would sell her own mother for a pair of designer jeans. Collins visited her at her café and basically talked into helping him find Neal for the $500,000 reward money that he had been offering people in the season premiere for information on Neal’s whereabouts. I’m glad that Neal told her off, basically telling her that he hopes that her betrayal comes back to bite her in the butt. However, her response to that really made her seem like all she cared about was money, because she told him that she would think of him every time she spent some of the reward money that she got from Collins.
As despicable of a person as Maya ended up being, I did like how they tied Maya’s betrayal towards Neal back to what Peter had said about the FBI searching for Dobbs/Macleish by asking the women he had been romantically involved with, because they believed that the girls will always give the guy (criminal) away and betray him. Being a writer myself, I love it when writers tie things together like that.
The ending of this episode was great for a lot of reasons. First off, I thought it was hilarious that Neal was pouting about Peter denying him the reward money for the capture of Dobbs/Macleish and that he was only given a letter of appreciation from the bureau for his role in Dobbs/Macleish’s capture. That scene was altogether perfect in terms of both the writing and acting from everyone involved in the scene. I also like how the writers set up the possibility of Neal searching for information about his father when he was saying goodbye to Ellen. Also, Mozzie told Neal that he was going to go off on his own for a while. I think it will be interesting to see how the writers handle that and whether they show Mozzie off on his own, or simply have Willie Garson not appear in several episodes.
The episode definitely ended with quite the shocker, if you ask me. I wasn’t expecting Peter to be fired from the white-collar crime division and reassigned to another division of the FBI for searching for Neal against the FBI’s specific orders, but Neal gets his old job as a consultant for the FBI’s white-collar crime division back after he went on the run from the law. That really was an unexpected twist. It will be really interesting to see how things play out with that since Neal is still working for the bureau, but Peter isn’t now.
All things considered, this really was a great episode. It had a perfect balance of drama, suspense and humor, but I especially enjoyed the interactions between Peter and Mozzie in this episode.
That being said, I give this episode a rating of an A+.
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