White Collar Review: The Suit Meets the Corporate Suits

Corporate espionage, poison and murder, oh my. All in a day’s work, so to speak, for our dynamic duo, Neal Caffrey and Peter Burke. They are working to take down criminals, and dealing with their own inner dilemmas.  This week, Peter ponders “what if” he had chosen the corporate lifestyle and Neal wrestles with the concept of revenge versus justice.

We join White Collar as Peter introduces the team to their new case: the murder of a technology firm’s (Novice Systems), research and developmental specialist, Joseph Hayes. The murder is believed to be linked to corporate espionage. Peter explains that Hayes was murdered for the valuable prototype for binary code breaking that he created. Their suspect: founder and CEO Wesley Kent, who had a meeting with Hayes the night he died and seems to be hiding something. The plan: Peter, yes Peter not Neal, armed with his accounting degree, to go undercover as the annual auditor for Novice Systems.

At the Burkes’ home, Peter is preparing for his undercover work and Neal questions “what if” Peter had taken the corporate accounting career route rather than the FBI. Peter responds, “I’ve got the bureau. I’ve got Elizabeth. No regrets.” Peter then tells Neal that he wants to work together on the cockpit recording and to arrange a meeting between Mozzie and Diana to exchange information.

Peter reports to Novice Systems for his first day of auditing/undercover work and is provided with a lavish office with amazing views of NYC. He secretly plugs in a thumb drive that gives Agent Jones access to the Novice Systems database.

Meanwhile, in a very funny scene, Neal referees a meeting between Diana, “Lady Suit,” and Mozzie, his “pocket sized pal.” Neal encourages them to work together to find Fowler—the one person that can tell them what really happened with Kate.

In Peter’s luxurious hotel suite, Peter and El are skyping. In an “aw how cute” moment, Peter shows El the best part of the room—her picture that he brought. Neal arrives with some information from Jones: failed password attempts on Hayes’ laptop. The upper executives, like Kent, are ruled out since they have access to the passwords, so Peter suggests focusing on the junior executives. Peter decides to bring in Neal to “work” in marketing. Neal says, “marketing? I can do marketing.” I say, with that face, he can do anything.

At Novice Systems, Neal easily bonds with the junior executives and gets invited to dinner. Neal and Peter decide to make the mole come to them by having Neal spread gossip about Hayes at dinner, which he does.

The plan works—later that night, Neal catches a junior executive, Jessica Breslin, snooping around Peter’s office. Back at the hotel, as Peter is enjoying his new life of espresso, silk sheets and room service, he receives a dinner invitation from Kent for the next night. Neal shows up to discuss Jessica and they agree she could be spying for a competitor.

Diana and Mozzie swap information on Fowler at Neal’s apartment. June conveniently interrupts to allow Mozzie to take a quick look in Diana’s bag. He sees Mozart sheet music—so now Mozzie’s wheels are spinning.

At the same time, Neal searches in Jessica’s office—he finds mail containing information about Wesley Kent’s recent international travels, which he shares with Peter. Neal then has a “business lunch” with Mozzie who explains that Diana has the Mozart sheet music from 1775—the year the music box was made. Mozzie deduces that she had to have heard the music to know it was Mozart. Mozzie also alerts Neal that Jessica was following him. Neal follows and goes to talk to Jessica when she pulls a gun on him, demanding, “who are you working for?”

Back at the bureau, Jessica explains that she was dating Hayes and now is investigating his murder. She says that Kent lied about the prototype and has been shredding documents in his office. The FBI decides to put a hidden scanner on Kent’s shredder to copy the documents pre-shredding. But Kent’s office door is password-protected, so Peter must get a recording of the password from his dinner with Kent.

Peter’s dinner goes smoothly—not only does he use a recording device built into a pen to record the password but Kent also offers Peter a job. The next part—getting into Kent’s office is up to Neal—goes off without a hitch, and he puts the scanner on the shredder.

At the FBI office, Neal shows Jessica the pen recorder and explains how he got in Kent’s office. Jessica pours out her feelings and suggests that arresting Kent may not be enough for her, which Neal seems to understand.

The scanner proves to be helpful—Peter sees documents that reveal that Kent had Hayes’ prototype the whole time and was planning to sell it to a foreign government. Hayes did not want to be involved so Kent killed him making it look like a competitor did. Peter wants to use Jessica as bait even though Neal explains he’s not sure if she wants revenge or justice.

Agent Burke and Kent have a final meeting regarding the audit. Peter plants the seed about Jessica and then has a drink with Kent.

Outside, Neal receives a phone call from Mozzie while waiting with Jessica for an FBI agent to put her into protective custody. Mozzie tells Neal that Peter knows Diana has the music box. Neal suddenly sees the pen recorder with Kent’s office password in Jessica’s purse and demands to know what she did. She explains she poisoned the Armagnac in Kent’s office, which he and Peter just drank.

Neal runs in the building, past security, who calls 911, and hotwires the elevator to get to Kent’s floor. Meanwhile, a dying Peter questions a dying Kent about the poison and Hayes. Neal arrives as Peter collapses and Neal drags him to the elevator but Peter sends Neal back for Kent. The paramedics arrive to help both Peter and Kent—while on a stretcher Peter, with some help from Diana, arrests Kent for the murder of Joseph Hayes. Also, Jessica is arrested for attempted murder.

Peter, with a clean bill of health, is back at work. Despite his week of living the corporate life, he has no regrets about his career path with the FBI because without it, he wouldn’t have met the love of his life, Elizabeth. Neal then confronts Peter about the music box and says he is ready to see it. At Neal’s apartment, Peter warns Neal that his options are revenge or justice but with him involved it will have to be the latter. Peter shows Neal the music box and explains that he thinks there is a missing key, which Neal produces. The duo agrees to “no more secrets” and open the music box together as the episode comes to a close. Oh, I hate having to wait another week for some answers…

The scenes with Mozzie and Diana were very entertaining. I enjoy seeing the different and unique dynamics of Mozzie’s relationships with Neal, Peter, Elizabeth, June, Jones and now Diana.

It was so nice to have a short and sweet June cameo. We don’t see her enough…more June please!

I’m excited to see what is in store for us next week with White Collar’s summer finale. Let’s not forget last season’s midseason finale when they nearly gave us all heart attacks suggesting Peter was the man with the ring. I’m preparing myself.

Will Neal choose revenge or justice? Looks like he is leaning towards revenge, check it out for yourself here.

For more on White Collar, click here.  You can follow Poptimal on Twitter @poptimal.

Season 2, Episode 8:  Company Man (originally aired August 30, 2010)

Tuesdays at 9/8c on USA Network

Images courtesy of David Giesbrecht and the USA Network.