White Collar Review: What A Ride!

Picture yourself on a rollercoaster ride. The excitement builds even before it begins. Your anticipation grows as the ride chugs up to the highest peak and your stomach drops as it plummets down towards the end. Afterwards, you feel a combination of shock and awe but a desire to ride again. That describes the White Collar midseason finale in a nutshell. Jeff Eastin and the gang expertly guided us through the rollercoaster ride that was the fantastic White Collar summer finale. This pivotal finale was full of twists and turns, a range of emotions, and a shocking ending which left me wanting more.

The episode begins when Neal and Peter enlist Mozzie to help with the music box—we finally see the inside of the box and discover a comb, which plays a second song that they decide must be a code.

When alone, Neal and Mozzie discuss whether Alex, who helped them steal it, could have taken something out of it or have already started to solve the code. Mozzie comments that it would be good to talk to her. Neal agrees and hints that he knows Alex is back from Italy.

Peter returns the music box to Diana at her apartment for safekeeping. Diana explains that there has been a withdrawal from Agent Garrett Fowler’s bank account. Peter suggests that Fowler could be desperate for money and decides to draw him out by faking the confirmation of an insurance claim for his deceased wife.

Neal and Mozzie meet with an old friend who believes Alex is in NYC stealing Spanish silver. They decide to “con the FBI” to help them find Alex. In an amusing scene, they create, age and plant a case file about the silver thefts knowing that it is a “diamond in the rough” case Peter would choose. Another cameo appearance by June who interrupts them to ask Neal to take care of her dog while she is out of town.

Neal is right on about Peter, who with Elizabeth’s help chooses the silver burglary case. At the FBI office, Peter announces the new case and that they will stake out possible burglary targets that night.

Meanwhile, Diana tells Peter that Fowler took the bait and withdrew money from an ATM in NYC and that she will check it out.

Back at Neal’s apartment, Mozzie is struggling with decoding the music box. He decides to go see Akihiro Tanaka, a code maker he thinks can help. Meanwhile, Neal plans on finding Alex during her recon work for another silver heist.

In the surveillance van, Diana reports back to Peter that she discovered that Fowler has been staying in short term housing and bought explosives under an alias. Peter sends Diana home to work on finding Fowler.

Neal catches up with Alex on a rooftop—she denies cracking the code from the music box. Neal convinces her to steal the music box from Diana’s apartment and return it to the Russian Heritage Museum.

Peter clues Neal in about Fowler and the explosives. Alex is almost caught in Diana’s apartment but gets away with the music box, which she leaves at the museum.

When Peter discovers that the music box was stolen and left at the museum, he (correctly) assumes Neal had something to do with it and was trying to draw Fowler out of hiding. A furious Peter benches Neal.

Mozzie talks with his code-maker friend at his antique shop, who suggests it is a two-part code and is willing to help Mozzie. Neal catches up with Mozzie at the shop and steals a gun.

The Russian Heritage Museum hosts a reception to showcase the music box, which the FBI plans to stake out in hopes of catching Fowler. Meanwhile, Neal is also planning on attending the event, sans his anklet. Fowler shows up at the museum and Peter follows him inside. Fowler tries to elude Peter but ends up barricading himself in a second floor room. A determined Peter and an employee of the museum are outside the door trying to get in.

Back at Neal’s apartment, Mozzie returns because he had a breakthrough with the code and finds June’s dog wearing Neal’s anklet plus the bullets on the table. He immediately calls Peter, fearing that Neal is about to do something stupid, and says, “Suit, we have a code red” and explains that Neal has a gun.

Neal arrives at the museum and begins searching for Fowler. In the courtyard where the reception is taking place, Neal sees Fowler in a window. He rushes up to an opposite balcony and uses a banner to dramatically swing across the courtyard and smashes through the window and into the room Fowler is in. (Side note, Matt Bomer actually did this tricky stunt himself!) In an extremely tense scene, Neal shoots at Fowler and demands to know why he killed Kate, as Peter, who forced open the locked door, tries to talk Neal down. After what felt like forever (and me holding my breath), Peter manages to convince Neal to hand over his gun. A handcuffed Neal is brought back to the FBI office.

Back at the FBI, Fowler has some serious explaining to do…His wife was murdered and he received an anonymous phone call telling him where his wife’s killer was. Fowler tracked down and murdered his wife’s killer. But the anonymous caller videotaped the murder and began blackmailing Fowler to get the music box. Fowler explained that he assumed Kate knew where the music box was, which is why he went after her while Neal was in prison. He also revealed that it was Kate’s idea to buy the explosives and fake their deaths so she and Neal could disappear together. However, the bomb went off early and Fowler denies being involved in that. After the Fowler explanation, Peter pulls rank, much to Neal’s dismay, and sends him home.

We then see an emotional Neal stewing at home while Peter continues the interrogation of Fowler. Peter questions Fowler about his mysterious meeting with the “Patchwork man” and then shows him the picture, which Fowler identifies as Julian Larsson, a man he trained with in Special Forces.

Diana interrupts with news about a homicide at the shop where Neal got his gun—turns out Mozzie’s friend was murdered, who also may have had a major breakthrough with the music box code. The surveillance tape in the shop was cued up to Neal, which leads Peter to believe he is the next target. This is when my freaking out began…

Peter and Diana rush to Neal’s apartment, where Alex is talking to Neal. As she goes to pull something out of her purse, Peter and Diana rush in with guns blazing—turns out it was her phone number for Neal. I was able to breathe a momentary sigh of relief until Peter explained about the murder and Neal says, “I wasn’t there alone”—recommence my freaking out and yelling, oh no Mozzie! Cut to Mozzie, sitting alone on bench, as Larsson walks by and shoots him in the chest and then steals the code he was working on. The final scene is Mozzie bleeding and slumped over on the bench.

Let’s tally up the score here: Jeff Eastin and his cliffhangers: 3. Me having any clue what was going to happen: 0. You got me again, Mr. Eastin, I was blindsided by the ending. But…you did the unthinkable—shot the loveable Mozzie. After my initial shock and panic wore off, I’ve come to the conclusion that Mozzie will be fine (just like Peter wasn’t the man with the ring). They couldn’t kill off one of my favorite characters, right? What would I do without my Mozzie-isms?

The finale had everything I could have asked for and more. There was suspense, intrigue, action, drama infused with the typical witty White Collar banter. I also enjoyed the diversity of characters—we saw the entire cast, including the Burkes’ dog, Satchmo.

When I think of Neal Caffrey, I immediately picture his put together, polished and sophisticated look. In the finale we saw some of that, plus we witnessed a distraught and disheveled Neal that we’ve never seen before. Hats off to Matt Bomer…I was blown away by his spectacular performance.

White Collar has certainly upped their game this season. Not only was the finale exceptional but it was the perfect ending to the first half of a strong sophomore season. It’s like a fine wine, better with age.

Collars, I’ve only got one thing left to say: how many more days until January?

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

Season 2, Episode 9: Point Blank (originally aired September 7, 2010)

Tuesdays at 9/8c on USA Network

Images courtesy of David Giesbrecht and the USA Network.