Contributor: Gregg Wright
I like the idea of recurring villains in “White Collar”. Unfortunately, in Matthew Keller’s case, they seem to be going with a pattern of one episode per-season for him. Keller is a villain with a lot of potential, but his limited number of appearances makes it difficult for him to reach that potential. Still, I appreciate a case-of-the-week episode that ties in with a previous one.
I won’t lie. A significant amount of my appreciation for this episode was derived solely from the presence of its guest star, Eliza Dushku. Without her, the episode would have been fairly bland, especially considering how little we actually see of Keller. He’s supposed to be the driving force behind the episode, but it felt like the majority of the time was spent on Neal’s undercover work with Raquel. Despite being a fan of Dushku, I can admit that her performances are often hit-and-miss. But there are times when she can be quite good. I was a little apprehensive of how she’d work in “White Collar”, and though this won’t go down as one of her finest performances, she fit in a lot better than I expected her to. The writing managed to play more to her strengths than her weaknesses.
I enjoyed staring at Eliza Dushku for the duration of her scenes, but part of me was a little disappointed. Since this was the return of Keller, I suppose I expected something bigger. The whole thing felt like little more than another minor skirmish. Then when Mozzie put out a six million dollar bounty on Keller (does this make him the “Six Million Dollar Man”?), I was expecting a bullet-ridden showdown. There was a brief bit of shooting between the FBI and Raquel, but I was led to believe that every hitman in New York was converging on the palace, so the showdown ends up feeling like something of a let-down.
In the midst of all this, trust is breaking down between Neal and Mozzie. Neal lied to Mozzie about the manifest in an effort to buy himself more time in New York, and now its resulted in Mozzie selling the Degas, which was on the manifest. The myth-arc feels like it’s been moving at a painfully slow pace, so I was glad to see something major finally occur. The stage has been set reasonably well for the mid-season finale.
I’ve criticized this season’s myth-arc aplenty in previous reviews, so there’s no need for heavy reiteration of my opinion on this. But I would like to make a brief point on the subject. The core ideas behind this season’s myth-arc are perfectly fine. It’s really all in the handling of those ideas. But even if the execution had been better, I still think that something would be missing; another layer of some sort; another mystery or threat to serve as a thematic backdrop to Neal’s inner-conflict over whether to stay or go. (Heck, maybe they could have found a way to use Matthew Keller as a season-long antagonist.) Without it, I worry that the resolution of the current conflict is going to be a disappointment. At this point I’m only passively interested in how things turn out, since there are a very limited number of ways this can play out; none of which I’m terribly excited about seeing.
Rating: 7/10