White Collar, "Bad Judgment": Quit bugging me

Still not likely to write about "White Collar" regularly, but I found last night's episode an improvement enough over the last few that I have some thoughts coming up just as soon as I find a tailor in the middle of the night...

"White Collar" has two obvious strengths in the rapport between Tim DeKay and Matthew Bomer and the idea of a lawman working with a con man, but it has two fundamental flaws: 1)The show has yet to give us any reason to care about Kate, other than the fact that Neal cares about her; and 2)White collar crime (or, at least, the way the show has so far depicted white collar crime) isn't all that interesting.

"Bad Judgment" worked around both those flaws while playing up the series' strengths. We got a lot of Neal and Peter working together well - and, at times, working towards the same goal with one party not realizing it was happening - we got a whole lot of Moz moving in Peter's world, and we got a lot of glimpses into how Neal and Mozzie's cons work. At the same time, Kate didn't appear at all (though she was, as usual, talked about a lot), and the mortgage fraud case was treated as a MacGuffin-ish excuse to have Peter and Neal go against the judge and Fowler, and not as something we should care about in and of itself.

I don't know if they can downplay the cases this much every week, particularly with Fowler heading back to Washington for the time being, but this was still a much more satisfying episode than last week's "Hard Sell" or many of the later episodes from the first half of the season. If Jeff Eastin and company can find a way to either make Kate interesting or ditch her for good, we might be cooking with gas eventually.

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White Collar, "Hard Sell": Comic book guy

I'm taking some time off post-press tour, but even if I wasn't, I don't know that I'd have much to say about last night's return of "White Collar." Neither the explanation for the December cliffhanger nor the boiler room case that Neal and Peter worked interested me all that much. The show still feels like it's missing some crucial element that's keeping it from living up to Tim DeKay and Matthew Bomer's performances and chemistry with each other.

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White Collar, "Free Fall": Who's the man?

"White Collar" aired its "mid-season finale" last night, but because the show is coming back in mid-January, that seems less of a big deal than usual with USA shows.

While it was fun to see Neal act like a criminal again, I'm really hoping that the final scene of the episode was designed to be misleading. Because if it was what it looked like it was, I may be even less interested in the show than I was before.

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White Collar, "Flip of the Coin": A hip, modern antiquities thief

Quick thoughts on last night's "White Collar" coming up just as soon as I have a round of drinks and Parcheesi...

I didn't write about last week's episode, and I don't think "White Collar" is a show that, as presently constituted, is going to get regular blog treatment from me. Like "Burn Notice" in its first season, it feels too slight. I enjoy watching Tim DeKay and Matthew Bomer work together - and in this episode I liked seeing Moz get pulled into the case and come face-to-face with Agent Burke - but the stories seem barely there, and they aren't doing much with the guest stars so far. (How do you get Garrett Dillahunt and only use him for two scenes?)

But it's amiable enough, and maybe in time it'll make the same creative leap that "Burn Notice" did between seasons one and two. In the meantime, I'll watch, but unless there's something I specifically want to write about, I won't be writing.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

White Collar, "Threads": Who's wearing the hat now?

I want to write a bit about tonight's second episode of "White Collar," but this cold/flu bug is barely letting me string sentences together. So I'll just say a couple of quick things: 1)I'm confused as to why they ditched Matthew Bomer's Rat Pack wardrobe so quickly, as that was one of the more distinctive things in the pilot; 2)Natalie Morales replaces Marsha Thomason as the junior FBI agent, presumably so there can be some sexual tension with Cafferty; 3)Nice to see Tiffani Thiessen worked into the story a little, though they can't do that every week in that way.

What did everybody who's a little more coherent think? Click here to read the full post

Tune-in alert: White Collar

I didn't get an opportunity to review USA's "White Collar" (which debuts tonight at 10) for the paper, but it's a fun show, a solid addition to USA's stable.

The short version: Tim DeKay ("Carnivale," "Tell Me You Love Me") is a brilliant FBI agent specializing in white collar crime, and Matthew Bomer (Bryce Larkin from "Chuck") is an equally brilliant (if not moreso) white collar criminal sprung from prison by DeKay (the only man who ever caught him) to help crack a case. It's a little bit "Catch Me If You Can" (Bomer even gets to wear a bunch of Rat Pack-era suits), a little bit "48 Hours"/"Hardcastle & McCormick," and DeKay and Bomer play well off each other. In a particularly nice touch for the genre, there's no attempt to manufacture phony tension or dislike between the two of them, because these guys are too smart to waste their time on that.

It's not perfect. Tiffani Thiessen isn't particularly well-used as DeKay's wife, there's some odd shuffling going on with the actresses playing DeKay's junior FBI partner (Marsha Thomason in the pilot, Natalie Morales from "The Middleman" starting next week), and I liked the pilot more than next week's episode. But it definitely feels like something that's going to be in my rotation for a while.

I'll try to bump this post up tonight after the episode finishes - which should be around 11:12, due to a long running time - so you can discuss it more after you've seen it. Click here to read the full post