White Collar, "Bad Judgment": Quit bugging me

Still not likely to write about "White Collar" regularly, but I found last night's episode an improvement enough over the last few that I have some thoughts coming up just as soon as I find a tailor in the middle of the night...

"White Collar" has two obvious strengths in the rapport between Tim DeKay and Matthew Bomer and the idea of a lawman working with a con man, but it has two fundamental flaws: 1)The show has yet to give us any reason to care about Kate, other than the fact that Neal cares about her; and 2)White collar crime (or, at least, the way the show has so far depicted white collar crime) isn't all that interesting.

"Bad Judgment" worked around both those flaws while playing up the series' strengths. We got a lot of Neal and Peter working together well - and, at times, working towards the same goal with one party not realizing it was happening - we got a whole lot of Moz moving in Peter's world, and we got a lot of glimpses into how Neal and Mozzie's cons work. At the same time, Kate didn't appear at all (though she was, as usual, talked about a lot), and the mortgage fraud case was treated as a MacGuffin-ish excuse to have Peter and Neal go against the judge and Fowler, and not as something we should care about in and of itself.

I don't know if they can downplay the cases this much every week, particularly with Fowler heading back to Washington for the time being, but this was still a much more satisfying episode than last week's "Hard Sell" or many of the later episodes from the first half of the season. If Jeff Eastin and company can find a way to either make Kate interesting or ditch her for good, we might be cooking with gas eventually.

What did everybody else think?

White Collar, "Hard Sell": Comic book guy

I'm taking some time off post-press tour, but even if I wasn't, I don't know that I'd have much to say about last night's return of "White Collar." Neither the explanation for the December cliffhanger nor the boiler room case that Neal and Peter worked interested me all that much. The show still feels like it's missing some crucial element that's keeping it from living up to Tim DeKay and Matthew Bomer's performances and chemistry with each other.

What did you think?

White Collar, "Free Fall": Who's the man?

"White Collar" aired its "mid-season finale" last night, but because the show is coming back in mid-January, that seems less of a big deal than usual with USA shows.

While it was fun to see Neal act like a criminal again, I'm really hoping that the final scene of the episode was designed to be misleading. Because if it was what it looked like it was, I may be even less interested in the show than I was before.

What did everybody else think?

White Collar, "Flip of the Coin": A hip, modern antiquities thief

Quick thoughts on last night's "White Collar" coming up just as soon as I have a round of drinks and Parcheesi...

I didn't write about last week's episode, and I don't think "White Collar" is a show that, as presently constituted, is going to get regular blog treatment from me. Like "Burn Notice" in its first season, it feels too slight. I enjoy watching Tim DeKay and Matthew Bomer work together - and in this episode I liked seeing Moz get pulled into the case and come face-to-face with Agent Burke - but the stories seem barely there, and they aren't doing much with the guest stars so far. (How do you get Garrett Dillahunt and only use him for two scenes?)

But it's amiable enough, and maybe in time it'll make the same creative leap that "Burn Notice" did between seasons one and two. In the meantime, I'll watch, but unless there's something I specifically want to write about, I won't be writing.

What did everybody else think?