tiggymalvern (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tiggymalvern) wrote2024-10-05 09:17 pm
tiggymalvern) wrote2024-10-05 09:17 pm
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White Collar
I finished watching White Collar, which is a late 2000s era doing crime for good causes polyamory vibes show that often gets mentioned alongside Burn Notice and Leverage.
It started off so well! The opening two parter was hilarious fun and established great characters and I was solidly into it. It had the same mix of plot of the week and little bits of arc plot each ep that early Burn Notice had, but it hit the ground running so much faster than Burn Notice. BN took a while for the writers and actors to really gel with the characters, but then when they did, it became amazing.
I loved the first season of White Collar. Really enjoyed the second. Enjoyed the third. And by the fourth it was starting to become stale. Nothing changed. The characters didn't change. Their relationships didn't change. The innate premise was whether Neal would be a thief for selfish reasons or for the greater good, and that same will he-won't he was driving every season's plot six years later, by which time it had frankly ceased to be tension at all.
I watched the whole six seasons through because I kept hoping there would be a change, that things would develop. Every now and then there were suggestions that it would. There was a great season ending where Neal was betrayed and Peter told him to run, and at the start of the next season Peter went off the books trying to track Neal down before his colleagues did. Imagine if that had been left to play out, to disrupt all of their lives, to send the series in a new direction? But no, by the end of the season opener, the status quo was re-established and everything went on as before. When I compare it to Burn Notice, with the people we met in the pilot and who they were by the end - there is no comparison.
There was so much wasted potential in the White Collar characters, in their situation and their moralities, in those actors because they're great. But at the end of all those eps, after all the traumas and moral conflicts they'd suffered together, Neal was exactly the same person as he was at the start, Peter was the same as at the start, and so were El and Jones and everybody. Frankly, the biggest character development was in Mozzie, who genuinely came to like and trust Peter.
Another thing I really disliked about the final season was Peter and El having a baby. It had been great to see on screen for five seasons a professional couple late 30s/early 40s without kids where the subject was never raised. Nobody acted like it was odd they didn't have kids, nobody questioned it, and why should they? It's a perfectly reasonable thing for people just not to have kids. And then suddenly El's pregnant at 40, and they're all, 'Oh, we've been trying for years, we just thought it would never happen!' Really? It's the first we've heard of it. So suddenly the show's selling the whole 'Now their married life is complete' angle and it's so ugh.
I'm glad I watched it, I won't ever watch it again, and frankly I'd say watch a couple of seasons for giggles and then don't bother with the rest.
It started off so well! The opening two parter was hilarious fun and established great characters and I was solidly into it. It had the same mix of plot of the week and little bits of arc plot each ep that early Burn Notice had, but it hit the ground running so much faster than Burn Notice. BN took a while for the writers and actors to really gel with the characters, but then when they did, it became amazing.
I loved the first season of White Collar. Really enjoyed the second. Enjoyed the third. And by the fourth it was starting to become stale. Nothing changed. The characters didn't change. Their relationships didn't change. The innate premise was whether Neal would be a thief for selfish reasons or for the greater good, and that same will he-won't he was driving every season's plot six years later, by which time it had frankly ceased to be tension at all.
I watched the whole six seasons through because I kept hoping there would be a change, that things would develop. Every now and then there were suggestions that it would. There was a great season ending where Neal was betrayed and Peter told him to run, and at the start of the next season Peter went off the books trying to track Neal down before his colleagues did. Imagine if that had been left to play out, to disrupt all of their lives, to send the series in a new direction? But no, by the end of the season opener, the status quo was re-established and everything went on as before. When I compare it to Burn Notice, with the people we met in the pilot and who they were by the end - there is no comparison.
There was so much wasted potential in the White Collar characters, in their situation and their moralities, in those actors because they're great. But at the end of all those eps, after all the traumas and moral conflicts they'd suffered together, Neal was exactly the same person as he was at the start, Peter was the same as at the start, and so were El and Jones and everybody. Frankly, the biggest character development was in Mozzie, who genuinely came to like and trust Peter.
Another thing I really disliked about the final season was Peter and El having a baby. It had been great to see on screen for five seasons a professional couple late 30s/early 40s without kids where the subject was never raised. Nobody acted like it was odd they didn't have kids, nobody questioned it, and why should they? It's a perfectly reasonable thing for people just not to have kids. And then suddenly El's pregnant at 40, and they're all, 'Oh, we've been trying for years, we just thought it would never happen!' Really? It's the first we've heard of it. So suddenly the show's selling the whole 'Now their married life is complete' angle and it's so ugh.
I'm glad I watched it, I won't ever watch it again, and frankly I'd say watch a couple of seasons for giggles and then don't bother with the rest.
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