White Collar: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

What do I have to do to get Neal Caffrey to make a house call where I live? This week, our handsome con man drops in at a private residence to investigate the theft of a valuable portrait – and, because he’s Neal, he does a little flirting with the victim before he leaves. I’m beginning to think his second biggest asset to the FBI (other than his obvious criminal knowledge) is that he doesn’t look like an agent – his charm doesn’t just open doors, it busts them clear off their hinges.

Peter and Neal use this to their advantage when a Haustenberg painting is stolen from the Manhattan home of Julianna Laszlo, a 22-year-old who inherited the house and the painting from her grandmother. Immediately Burke and Caffrey suspect Julianna’s Uncle Gary, who also lives at the house. When Uncle Gary lawyers up faster than you can say “felony,” Burke decides they need to find out what he’s hiding. So Neal, in a brilliant game of ‘pretend-you-know-something-you-really-don’t-know’ gets a visibly nervous Gary to reveal the name of the real mastermind behind the theft of the painting. Gary says he didn’t want to keep it, just pass it off for a small profit to the real culprit, a loan shark named Gerard Dorsett.

Dorsett has been trying to unload the painting with no luck, so Neal poses as a prospective buyer at a sting operation Burke has arranged with Taran VanDerzant, a beautiful museum buyer willing to accompany him for the sale. Dorsett gets spooked, the deal goes sour and he escapes with $100,000 of the FBI’s money. Ouch, Peter that will be coming out of your pay check – sorry.

Now Dorsett has dived back down the rabbit hole, and to further complicate things a curator from the Channing museum has surfaced claiming that the Haustenberg painting actually belonged to them and not Julianna Laszlo. Burke and Caffrey, working off only a small tip that Dorsett’s girlfriend came into town from Paris set out to locate the elusive “Brigitte” with a stakeout operation – find her, find Dorsett, find the painting and the money, at least that’s the plan. But, since Neal is Neal he trades his low brow position in the stakeout car with Burke and his stinky sandwiches for a chance to wine and dine Brigitte at the Hotel Gansevoort, and soon Neal and Peter are entertaining a very French and very drunk Brigitte and her friend Claire up in their hotel room in the hopes of finding the evidence. Peter’s a bad liar, and Elizabeth sniffs it out right away when she calls to check in on him, while Neal breaks into the locked bedroom in Brigitte’s suite and finds the painting (but no money, damn). Neal swipes the painting and replaces it with an origami butterfly – an obvious tip off to Dorsett of who was behind the theft after Dorsett referred to Neal as a butterfly (read: man whore) earlier in the episode. You just couldn’t help yourself, could you Neal…

Here the game of cat and mouse shifts, as Dorsett – angered by Neal’s actions – decides to pursue him instead of the other way around. Meanwhile, Neal is busy painting his own Haustenberg forgery and aging it in the oven with the help of Mozzie (who got short changed on screen time this episode), and putting his own inscription on the back of the picture. The original proved that the Channing curator was lying, the painting was meant for Julianna, and the Neal Caffrey original essentially gave him the middle finger and assured that it would be returned to its rightful owner. So, round two of the painting swap is arranged with Dorsett, only this time the FBI swoops in and the crook is nabbed. They never address the missing money again, but I guess arresting Dorsett gets Burke off the hook for fronting his tab. But that wasn’t all the action from this episode…

The Kate story (chuckles), really? I mean, really? The writers were doing so well with that, only this week that subplot took a ridiculous and clichéd left turn, one I wish they would’ve avoided. Firstly, the X that marked the spot from last week lead Neal and Mozzie to Grand Central Station, or rather to a support beam outside Grand Central Station where Neal sees an X and pulls a note out from a crack in the steel. As if you weren’t gagging already, then Kate’s note says to forget her and move on, only when Neal folds the paper in a certain way it reveals the real meaning of the message, to meet there at noon on Friday. When Neal goes back with Mozzie, we finally see Kate (in person, not on prison tape) as she calls him on a payphone and begs Neal to give her the location of every asset he has hidden, or else her captor won’t let her come home. Sigh. Could this be any more implausible than the quickie endings that White Collar sometimes features to solve their crimes? I didn’t think so, but it looks like that’s the case. And it’s cheesy, and I don’t think they should’ve revealed Kate just yet – better to hold out until late in the season until we see her and keep the suspense. Anyway, at least Neal didn’t agree to give up the info, but if that’s the direction this story line is going in, I’d just as soon see more Mozzie and less Kate.

Things that I did find entertaining, however, were the fact that Neal now knows that Burke checks the location on his anklet every day, and that Elizabeth suggested that perhaps pairing Neal off with some beautiful woman might get him to stop chasing Kate. Fat chance, but good thinking. Lastly, the best line of the episode goes to Neal, when Burke asked him if there has ever been a woman who wasn’t totally in love with him, and Neal said “Brittany Nicole, second grade…I had a gap in my teeth.” Amazing. Next week finds Caffrey and Burke navigating the inner workings of Chinatown, and I think it’s safe to say that even if there’s a language barrier, the language of Neal’s hotness will still be pretty universal.

For another take on this episode, check out A Modern Day Robin Hood by Allison Toner.

Season 1, Episode 5: The Portrait (originally aired November 20, 2009)

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Fridays at 10/9c on USA Network

Photographs courtesy of USA, Electric Artists, and David Giesbrecht